This story was one of my submissions for everydayfiction.com. Sadly, it didn't quite make the cut, but it was praised for "interesting characters and natural sounding dialogue," and "solid prose." In any case, it's no longer restricted from publication, so you can now read it here.

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"So, you're stuck here too?" The man asking the question was standing outside the bus shelter, the rain running in rivulets across the folds of his translucent blue poncho. Despite the stormy, grey expanse of sky above, the man’s eyes were mostly obscured by a pair of CHP-style sunglasses, and he had chosen to do away with the poncho’s hood in favor of a floppy, soaked-through boonie hat. Even with the poncho, he was soaking wet, and water even dripped from both sides of his thick, drooping mustache. I was almost afraid to ask him why he was standing there, instead of taking cover inside.

"Yeah," I replied simply, looking out across the road. There was nothing much to look at, really - just endless expanses of fields, bare from the fall harvest, stretching out until they disappeared into the fog and mist. I turned back towards him and watched as he sighed, his breath puffing out visibly in the cold air, momentarily fogging the few areas of his sunglasses not already covered in droplets. He glanced down, pulling a bit of dry shirt from under the poncho to wipe off the surface of his large metal watch.

"According to the schedule, there won't be a bus for another hour," he said, staring off into the grey.

I glanced around the interior of the shelter. I only took up one small corner of the bench, and the shelter was more than roomy enough for us both. And yet...

"You're sure you don't want to stand in here?" I asked, my curiosity overcoming my apprehension.

He looked at me, his face impassive behind the sunglasses, and finally raised an eyebrow, managing to shake loose a few stray droplets in the process. Then, without a word, he turned back to stare at the fields. His breath puffed out in another long sigh, and after a minute, he spoke.

"Ever been to a desert, son?"

I shook my head. Even looking away, he somehow picked up on it.

"You should go to the mideast sometime, then. Feel how it is to have sand get into every place in your body that you can imagine. Even crawls under your eyelids. You drink a canteen of water an hour, and maybe you piss twice a day. It's so hot the proteins in your brain start to break down, and you start hallucinating until your mates drag you down and stick your head in a bucket of icewater. And that's when you can even get ice." He paused, pulled out a sodden cigarette, and placed it between his lips without even attempting to light it.

"In the desert," he continued, "you can have all the cash in the world, but it doesn't matter. They're so impoverished for water, so addled by the heat, it's small wonder they can't stay peaceful. Hell, I couldn't - that's why I'm back here. And I don't mind in the least."

He finally turned back to me, and looked me straight in the eye. "And that's why I'm standing here, my friend. I may not have much in my pocket, but right now, I feel like I'm the richest man alive."

He tilted his head up, the cigarette falling unnoticed from his lips, opening his mouth to take in some of the bounty falling from the sky. A few seconds later, though, he made a face and spat onto the ground, adding incrementally to the forming pools of water and mud.

"Yeah, acid rain's kind of a bitch that way," I said. "I guess you can blame the mideast for that, too."

As it turned out, the bus, running on compressed natural gas, showed up fifteen minutes late.