> It could be that a handsome and sexily dangerous secret agent was due to meet his contact on that bus at exactly the same time.

Speaking as a character in an Oscar Wilde's play, "how utterly unromantic you are" !! :)

Coming back from Milan University, I was going to the same streetcar stop as ever.
Like all the fall November nights in Milan, it was cold, foggy dull. Motorcars passed by, their lights fading in the darkness. An out of service traffic-light was blinking for the eternity its yellow light. Yellow. Black. Yellow. Black. Yellow...

The streetcars in Milan are my friends. Everywhere I go, wandering around in the night time and feeling a stranger in a strange, silent city, I can always find two rails to follow and the comfortable wooden seats in the warm interior of a streetcar that, when I feel alone, suddenly appears from nowhere and helps me to find my way.

The familiar clatter of heavy steel wheels and the familiar bell ringing announced the number 23 I was waiting for; I got on and sat in a random seat, just behind the driver and near to the heating device. I was the only passenger aboard.

My thoughts immediately went back to the sadness of feeling alone another time; since some days, I was feeling like I've lost forever the sun light. A lost soul in the eternal darkness, or maybe a body without a soul anymore.
I stretched and yawned, trying to scroll away these bad feelings, when my feet hit something and kicked it on the streetcar floor.

Curious.

Someone lost a lipstick.

I opened it. It was a bright red lipstick, one of those expensive from a well-known Italian fashion stylist. It was, because the stick was almost over. I was thinking about what to do with it, including all the possible pranks one can do when's the only passenger, on a Milan streetcar dating back to 1928, with an almost finished lipstick.

No way.

A finished lipstick on an old Milan streetcar is almost useless.
I resumed my thoughts about eternal emptiness of my soul, when the darn lipstick, after a sudden brake, fell again on the floor, loosing its cap. I collected again the two pieces; a small, metal ring fell from under the cap right in my hand. It was a tiny, golden ring, too small for my fingers but appeared the right size for my sister's. A little gift from nowhere (sorry to whoever lost it), it slipped in my pocket.

It was about two stops before mine, when another passenger came aboard. An old man, wearing a grey coat, his shoulders carrying the weight of about seventy years of hard life.

No, two. A young woman, not more than 20 years old, got on by the rear door. She didn't attract me so much, anyway I fell again into my world of thoughts.
Suddenly I noticed she was looking for something under the seats, one by one, starting from the rear of the streetcar.

Maybe...

I got up and walked towards her.

We looked into each other eyes.
Gently, I reached her left hand; her surprised look turned into a joyful one, when she felt the cold metal of the ring on her warm, tender skin.

"Thanks", was the only word from her before she kissed me forever with an everlasting, heart warming, touch of her bright red lips. I lost myself in her brown eyes and suddenly a sun was again shining for me.
My soul was back.

She, was back.

...and now, back to work. I have to fix an IIS server that doesn't serve its clients and then kick in the @$$ whoever did that mess.
AP.