Bill's Views on Most Everything

I’m in lower downtown, Denver. It’s January 12, a Friday evening and the temperature is four degrees. It hasn’t gotten above 18 degrees in a week. There are a few inches of dirty snow on the ground, sidewalks and streets are icy. Tempers are short, people irritated.
I fit right in. We were supposed to meet at the new sushi bar 45 minutes ago. The place was crowded, a line of chilled people waiting to get in. She isn’t there. I call, her phone goes right to voice mail. My feet are cold, I start worrying about frostbite on the ear that got frostbitten on Loveland Pass years ago. I wait for thirty minutes and then head for my car.
It is a bit of a walk to my car. I know a spot on Champa that doesn’t have a meter, and people seem to avoid it. I get colder as I walk. I cross the street to the bus station. Time to warm up a little. I go in. The place is crowded, others warming up, travelers coming and going. I stomp and wiggle for a few minutes, then decide to cut through the bus bay for a short cut.
I go out the door to a noisy, smelly, frigid bus loading bay. Passengers are lining up for their busses, the off-duty cop is arguing with someone over his cell phone, ignoring the surroundings. A well-dressed African-American woman is trying to usher her four children to a waiting bus in the second row.
She looks distraught, the children, ages around four to nine, look cold, confused, and scared. The driver is loading luggage, passengers groping through layers of clothing for their tickets. A man walks through the bus entrance into the bay. African-American, he is wearing a tan trench coat, dark wool trousers, wingtips, and a gray fedora. He is talking on his phone when the youngest child looks up and sees him.
“Daddy!” She cries, running toward him. He lowers the phone as he sees her. She stops in front of a bus, realizing the man is not her father. The bus starts moving, the driver not seeing the little girl. The bus hits her, knocking her down and running over her head.
Screams, panic, people running to the accident, people running away. Blood, already starting to freeze, runs out from under the bus past small, motionless feet. The mother collapses, the cop moving toward her. Quickly, firefighters and paramedics run in. I vomit.
Still retching, I walk into the waiting room and sink onto a bench. Bad evening.