The bus pulled away while I was still standing at the crossing. I could have run. It was close enough to make a small, ungraceful dash seem reasonable. Instead I watched it turn the corner, checked the next arrival, and put my phone back in my bag. Twenty-three minutes. The walk home would take thirty.
It had rained an hour earlier, the kind of brief Brisbane shower that leaves the air warm and the footpaths dark. I took the side street behind the station because I had time to waste, or thought I did. At the first house, an old dog slept under a frangipani. At the second, someone had left three lemons on the fence with a handwritten sign offering them away.
I have lived within two kilometres of that street for six years. I knew the route as a thin line on a map and as a shortcut I never used. Walking it slowly made the line wider. A woman was watering pots that looked too heavy to move. Someone had repaired a broken gate with a piece of bright blue timber. A child had drawn a hopscotch court in chalk, stopping at seven because the pavement ran out.
None of this was a revelation. That is what I liked about it. The street did not have to be beautiful in the official sense to deserve attention. It had bins waiting for collection and a car with a flat tyre. It also had the jacaranda that had dropped purple flowers across a whole corner, as though a celebration had happened without asking anyone to come.
The distance was the same. Only my pace had changed.
By the time I reached the little shop, the owner was pulling its awning in for the evening. I bought a bottle of water I did not need and asked how long it had been there. Thirty-one years, he said. His daughter had painted the window last winter. I had passed that shop on the bus often enough to know its roofline, but I could not have told you its door was green.
I am not going to pretend every missed bus is a gift. Sometimes you are late, tired, carrying groceries, and the next one is an hour away. This walk was possible because nothing urgent needed me. Still, it reminded me how quickly I make ordinary travel into a blank space between two important places. I fill it with a screen and arrive with no memory of having moved.
At home my shoes were wet and the light had gone from the kitchen. The bus I had missed would have got me there perhaps ten minutes earlier. I made tea, put the lemons from the fence on the counter, and tried to remember the name of the street. I had to look it up. Next time, I think I will know.