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Greater Love

by

Dawn Bush

She was standing on a corner in the pouring rain. It wasn't that she was absolutely drenched; everybody had been caught in the sudden downpour. The rain had soaked through her thin dress, making it cling to every curve, but whereas on some women it would be sexy, it made her seem rounder than she really was. She was talking to an unsavoury looking tramp, who was gesturing unsteadily, the spray from his half-empty beer can mingling with the drops of rain, spattering her indiscriminately.
None of this would have drawn his attention. He would have put her down as one of that vague army of do-gooders, if he'd thought about her at all. No, there was nothing special about her; but as he passed her on his way home from work, impatiently revving the engine to draw out into the main street, his eye caught the scenario and it imprinted itself on his mind's eye like a photograph. All the way home it kept coming back. Indicate left - there she was. Draw into the lock-up - there she was again. When she popped up unbidden as he was putting on the football, he decided there must

be a reason, but he still concluded there was nothing special about her, and tried to dismiss her from his mind. It wasn't until she interrupted as he was swigging his lager (beer drops and rain spattering mingled over her face) that he caught her expression.
That was it.
It was the expression on her face.
All over town people were going about their business who had been caught in the flash storm. Men in shirts that stuck wetly to their backs: women with make-up wiped away in the onslaught: kids in sandals kicking delightedly in puddles whilst mothers pulled them roughly: but not one of them had that expression on their face.
Annoyance; resignation; rueful laughter perhaps: but she radiated an expression Max had never seen before. It wasn't spurious sympathy, or condescension. It was nothing he could name: but her face bore a radiance that he recognised somewhere deep inside. Joy? Too strong. Love? Close, but too many connotations. Anyway, who in their right minds would love a lousy stinking tramp? Max forgot about her and went for another beer.
The next time he saw her was on his way between nightclubs. She was serving out some kind of hot drink - soup maybe. It wasn't a salubrious part of town, and though