Sonia realized that the situation was getting worse. She would not have made it to the Office on time for her morning meeting, as she had promised her colleague who had called her earlier, so she thought it best to warn him of her delay or maybe even her impossibility to attend, which seemed to be the case. She went back into the bar and dialled her Office’s number.
Stefano, her colleague, anxiously answered following the first ring: “Sonia, finally! Is everything alright?”
“Yes, of course Stefano, why do you ask?”
“So you weren’t on that bus?”
“My God, no, - said Sonia, alarmed – what happened?”
“A bad accident, Sonia, they’re talking about it on the local radio station, the bus that you usually take, number twenty-nine, collided into a truck and caught fire. A disaster, they say that one person is dead and several wounded!”
Sonia recoiled. She couldn’t believe that such a thing had happened and that it had happened to her bus that morning, and at that hour. Yes... That hour... The hour her watch had stopped on, allowing her to avoid such a tragedy.
“I was late Stefano – said Sonia reassuring her colleague – so thankfully I didn’t take that bus. Now I see that there is a lot of traffic and I won’t be able to make it on time for the morning meeting. You can go ahead without me; we’ll catch up later, okay?”
“Okay Sonia, don’t worry!” And as Stefano hung up, she could hear the relief in his voice.
It was almost ten o’clock. Sonia considered that it would be better to go back home by foot, it wasn’t that far away.
The morning was gone now. Once home, she would try to put the pieces of the puzzle together, the absurd picture of a nightmarish morning, which ended luckily for her, compared to the tragedy if she had taken that unlucky bus no. 29.
Part seven (Damien’s resistance)
On Saturday mornings, especially a sunny one such as “that Saturday” of the end of April, Damien’s store was rarely visited, while in the afternoon there was always a lot of work, whatever the weather. Therefore Damien took advantage of that time to restore his manual regeneration atomizer, a job which gave him great satisfaction.
The work consisted in building a coil, namely a “spring” made by winding a resistance wire around a small screwdriver, forming a series of turns, very tight and not crossed, heated by a flame of a caramelizer and then pressed down again with pliers.
Finally this coil was mounted on two conductive towers, placed on a base, called “the heart” of the atomizer, and through this spring, he passed a cotton strip which he then put around it, after closing the whole device with the steel cylinder that was the pre-funnel of the atomizer.
Once he soaked the cotton with the liquid to be vaporized and once he assured himself that the resistance he built had the right value of desired ohms, once he set the right dispenser voltage, he pushed the button of his electric battery. Thus, the incandescent resistance caused the liquid with which the cotton was soaked to nebulize into the atomizer’s combustion chamber, coming out full of aroma and fluffiness, when a person inspired from the little tube called drip-tip. Every time he built a coil, he had the foresight to try its incandescence before he dipped the cotton into it, in order to be certain that the resistance became incandescent from the centre outward in a uniform manner and within the required time.
That Saturday morning, something extraordinary happened to Damien’s resistance, something which explains the need for the above explanation.
The coil had just been placed on the conductive towers, Damien had screwed the little screws that held the two ends of the resistance wire to the positive pole and to the negative pole, and was about to mount the stand on its battery to test its value, when Sonia stepped into the shop.
“Good morning!” said Damien. He sounded as though he was expecting her.
“Good morning Damien – said Sonia with a radiant smile – I came to thank you for the other morning, you have no idea how lucky I was to stop in here!”
Damien looked at her with the tenderness of a father who is about to receive a gift from his child, he leaned on the counter, resting on his arms and turning his palms to Sonia as if waiting for a gift.
“What happened?” He asked while holding out his hand to shake Sonia’s, and she promptly shook his back.
“Did you hear about that bus, number twenty-nine, which caught fire at the end of Via Baracca?”
Damien nodded and shook his head as if to say: “Okay, go ahead!”
“I could’ve been on that bus, and maybe I wouldn’t be here to tell you about it!” She said with her eyes wide open.
“Yes, I heard about it, an awful story, I heard that the passengers couldn’t get out of the vehicle”. He said.
Sonia was wearing a pair of tight-fitted faded jeans, a pink cardigan and a pair of strap sneakers, also pink. Even without heels she was tall.
Although not as much as Damien was.
Sonia told him that her watch had stopped and that thanks to that, she had missed the bus that went up in flames, and especially thanks to his kindness, when he had distracted her by offering her a coffee.
They chatted about this event for a while and finally Sonia decided she could trust Damien and the items he sold. She asked him if she could try a VAPE and he happily agreed, also tempted to bring out a sampling of coloured batteries so she could choose the one which, (he was sure); she would buy that Saturday morning.
Sonia had a craving to smoke, and talking to Damien elated her extraordinarily. She had never felt so attracted to a man, mentally and physically.
Damien handed her the electronic cigarette, after charging it with a good tobacco liquid containing a certain percentage of nicotine and Sonia took it from him as a child taking an ice cream cone from the hands of its mother.
She took two or three puffs, long and close between them, turning her back to Damien, maybe to hide the yearning she was feeling.
It was a good chance for Damien to watch her from behind. He noticed her rounded hips, straight legs, which were so tightly wrapped within her tight jeans that he could admire their perfect shape. Her shortly cut hair, allowed him to admire her long elegant neck.
Damien walked silently towards Sonia, stood to her left and then moved in front of her like a dancer who takes the hand of his companion to invite her to dance. While he moved he could smell the fragrance that radiated from her neck and hair.
He closed his eyes and fully savoured the scent, mentally picturing Sonia, as if he had a three-dimensional view, in front of her mirror at home, as she sprayed the scent on, raising her neck, turning it, bowing her head and lifting it up again to see her reflection, in all its beauty.
Sonia turned her face towards Damien’s, who was just a few inches away from a kiss; they looked at each other for a moment that seemed endless and eventually Damien, more alert than Sonia, took the cigarette from her hands, which she gave up as a robot without its CPU.
“What do you think?” asked Damien, while moving slightly away.
“It’s good! I didn’t imagine it would be!” Sonia answered, recovering from her momentary confusion.
“This might help you stop smoking, Sonia. You have no idea of the benefits that you will find, not only for your health, but also for your whole being. Don’t allow tobacco to waste what nature gave you, your beautiful smile, the colour of your skin, its softness!” Damien spoke as he continued to look into Sonia’s eyes, trying to communicate that he really believed that those words were meant for her wellbeing.
At that moment Sonia decided she could talk to him about her illness, surely he would listen to her; something told her that he would help her face her disease with