Exact Fare Only

Geoffrey stood at on the sidewalk waiting for the next bus. He had counted the steps in his mind as he left the house. He had a fairly accurate notion of how many feet or yards his steps had taken him, and he had followed his friend's directions carefully. The tip of his cane found the curb, and he folded his arms across his chest with his jacket draped over them. He knew he was facing south because he could feel the warmth of the sun on his right cheek. It was four thirty. If the bus was on time, he would stand there for another twelve minutes.
He listened as the flow of suburban traffic began to increase as another day came to a close. Parents bringing home vans full of kids, fathers alone in their cars, teenagers heading out for the evening, all with an impossible array of music, news and commercials streaming out of windows rolled down to share with the neighborhood. Geoffrey tried to imagine driving one of those cars. He remembered the driver's seat of his father's Chrysler New Yorker. He could barely see over the steering wheel, but in the driveway of his childhood home he had taken dozens of road trips to exotic locales - who knew you could drive all the way to the Taj Mahal? When he could see over the steering wheel. When he could see. Before the CVI. The damn Cortical Visual Impairment: temporary or permanent visual loss caused by disturbances of the posterior visual pathways and/or occipital lobes. Just his luck, Geoffrey's visual loss was permanent. Or maybe it was going to come popping back on after twenty-three years, like the lights coming back on after a blackout. "Ah, here's that pesky fuse," he murmured. He shifted his cane to his left hand and with his right he fished in his pants pocket for the bus fare. He felt the smooth edges of two nickels before picking out four rough edged quarters. Running the coins across his fingers, he concentrated on feeling the faces: heads, heads, tails, heads. He dropped the coins back in his pocket and thought about the next ten minutes, waiting.