The Tuesday Table

For twelve years, Helen had ordered tea at the table by the window. On her first Tuesday after retirement, someone was sitting there.

The man stood at once. ‘They told me any table.’

‘They were right,’ she said, surprising herself. She chose the chair opposite him.

His name was Peter. He was waiting for a bus that had already been canceled. Helen was waiting to discover what people did with a morning that belonged entirely to them.

They unfolded a map across the table. Peter had marked every public garden on the bus route. Helen knew a smaller one behind the old library, which did not appear on the map at all.

By eleven, her tea had gone cold. By noon, they had found the garden and a bench beneath a pear tree.

Peter asked whether she always spent Tuesdays this way.

‘Never before,’ Helen said.

The next week, the café owner found two customers at the table by the window and a map between their cups. Outside, a perfectly good bus arrived and left without them.