My flight was delayed by three hours, and when I finally reached the station the last train had gone. A man at the ticket desk mentioned that an old night bus still ran to the coast, so I bought a ticket and climbed aboard, tired and annoyed with the whole world.
The bus smelled of oranges and diesel. An elderly woman across the aisle was peeling one, and without a word she handed me half. At the back, two students were playing a battered guitar very softly, and the driver, who seemed to know every song ever written, hummed along. Somewhere past the last suburb I realized that I had stopped being angry.
At three in the morning we pulled up at a roadside café with a single buzzing light. Strangers shared a huge pot of soup as if we had known one another for years. Then, shortly before dawn, the driver left the main road. "Nobody misses this on my bus," he said, and he parked on a cliff above the sea. We stood in the cold and watched the sun rise in complete silence. I reached the coast hours late, but I arrived with the best story I had ever had.