Dear Kevin,

One month ago today, I accosted you at Dublin airport at 5h00 something. You wore a reflective vest, so I thought you worked there. 

I was punchy after a long flight. The airport yawned in the early hours. It didn’t notice me, just another baggage-laden traveller with a searching look. 

You stepped around me. We were the only humans in this quadrant, an older design, the walls lined with empty glass-doored shops whose vendors still slept in their beds, the lucky sods. 

I stopped you. ‘Can you help me?’ 

Your immediate response was as heavenly human as I could have wished (you were not my first hail). 

‘Yes, how?’ you said. I pounced on your kindness.

‘I’m looking for an information desk. I need a sim card. And I need to get a bus from here to my accommodation,’ I listed, like that. Direct. On a mission. 

Your eyes twinkled. You caught my throw. 

‘Okay let’s take this one at a time,’ you said. ‘There’s no info booth open now. A sim card here? I doubt it. But for the bus, I’ve got you. I’m just’ … and here you nodded to the far wall… ‘going to the bathroom. Wait here, I’ll be right back.’

Well imagine. 

Your face was kind. I would wait.

You were the handsomest man in Ireland. Your shorn hair gave focus to your chiselled face. The classic Irish chin. Structured for an artist’s brush. Your eyes were blue green, weren’t they? Your build medium, strong. I remember how you walked. Relaxed like a man who knows his place in the world, arms swung. 

Driving the night or early-morning shift to the city from the airport. So many people to move. 

It was brutally cold, even for me, a Canadian. 

‘Where’s your accommodation?’ you asked when you came back. 

‘I can’t really pronounce it. Dun something,’ I said as I opened my phone to produce my destination. 

‘Dun Laoghaire’ you said, sounding like: dun leary. Your pronunciation didn’t really match the way I’d read it, but I suspended doubt, given Gaeilge was all around. And that twinkle in your eye again. The warm certainty in your voice. You knew where I was going. I didn’t.

‘Well…it has a gh in it. And the vowels ao…’ I trail off and show him the phone.

‘Yup. That’s Dun Laoghaire (dun leary). Here’s what. You can take my bus into city centre and from there, we’ll get you on the E2. 

‘I don’t have any Euros. Is there a…’ I’d meant to find a machine first thing.

You cut me off.

‘Don’t worry about that.’ 

‘I kinda need a simcard,’ I said. I had no connectivity. Without it, I envisaged standing at an intersection pre-dawn, freezing, laden with a suitcase and back pack, tired. Waiting for something kind to happen again. A little inconvenient.

‘Ach, there won’t be anything open here or in city centre at this hour for a simcard. But may I suggest’ you said, ‘that you go with Eir, not Vodaphone or Three. Eir is Ireland’s and has the best coverage and price.’ (You were right; I’ve got Eir.)

You were my man. I could present any problem and you’d have a solution. I got on your bus. We sat there until it was time for departure. We chatted. 

‘What brings you to Ireland?’ you asked.

‘I’m here to study,’ I said. 

‘O really. And what will you study?’  

‘Writing,’ I said. 

‘O really,’ you said. ‘I’ve always wanted to write a book,’ you said. 

Why, oh why, didn’t I ask what you’d write about? 

You talked about your kids and your past a bit. You’d been a hurler, you said. Hurling? I repeated, incredulous (M had mentioned the sport days before my departure.) You affirmed it like it was normal and went on. How you moved from another county to Dublin, because of a woman. And while the marriage didn’t work out, you were here driving bus. ‘It was a living.’ And I said: ‘You’re moving people where they need to get to.’ And that was good. And you nodded with pride.

You started up the bus. How kind you were to the small collection of passengers waiting–you let them on early so they could warm up. While I added another layer of clothing from my pack. Bone-chilling.

Away we went, in the dark of January towards Dublin city centre. I soon discovered that the bus had Wi-Fi. I figured out where I needed to get to. I had to kill time for about four hours from now, 6 AM-ish, to 10 when I could check in. I needed an early morning café to have tea and be warm for a few hours. And I needed an Eir store. All in the neighbourhood of Dun Laoghaire. 

I remembered I had no Euros. And Dublin buses do not take credit card tap. Once you let me off, what would I do? I couldn’t freeload again. Would I walk with my bags in the dark through central Dublin in search of an ATM? It was spitting with rain. 

I ambled up to the front of the bus and expressed my worry.

‘I’ll look after that.’ You dismissed my concern. You were busy driving. 

I sat back down. Trusting completely in the kindness of you, this stranger, my first hour in Ireland, marvelling at my fortune in finding you. 

Wanting your bus to go slowly, so that I could sit on it forever. 

I was warming up. 

At city centre, you called back to me: ‘Here’s where you get off.’ 

‘Take this.’ You handed me a ticket the length of a finger and breadth of a thumb for a €2 fare. ‘Tell the driver you got on the wrong bus and he’ll take you to Dun Laoghaire,’ you said. Like as if all the drivers were as kind as you.

I stood there next to you at the wheel, with my bags and my heart full of gratitude. People were mounting behind me. You had a job to do. I had to manoeuvre my heavy suitcase off your bus. 

‘You are so kind. You have helped me. My name is Valerie.’ 

‘I’m Kevin’, you said, but I didn’t quite catch it, as you held out your hand. ‘Cameron?’ I asked. ‘Kevin’, you repeated. 

Your handshake was so firm, it almost crushed my thumb. I loved that. 

I dismounted and turned around. You were smiling at me. You waved. I mouthed Where do I catch the E2? You were so in tune with me, already pulling away, that you understood. You’d understood me since I first stopped you at Dublin airport. 

Right there, you indicated, pointing a finger at where I stood. 

I saw your neck and profile as your face turned to look in your mirrors. You pulled away into the pre-dawn traffic. And were gone. 

I turned to the river Liffey behind me and stood waiting for my next bus. I held your paper ticket in my hand like a key that unlocked my future. And so it did. 

Kevin. Thank you. 

I don’t know your bus number. But when I leave Dublin in May, I will sure as hell take a bus from city centre in case. 

And if I find you, I will ask what your book will be about.

Valerie