The first step after bus boarding–for me, and everyone else it seems–is to scan all the way to the back for one of the rare and coveted open rows: two whole seats to oneself for the long city to south bay commute.  If with luck obtained, each subsequent stop becomes an inverse beauty contest, as we all brave the Hunger Gamesean odds at keeping our solitude.  Losers frown or mutter with resentment.  Winners count down anxiously until the last city stop.  But on this rainy day, already resigning myself to share a space, I plop down next to a guy with an iPad (less elbow than typers).  Shortly into the ride, though, I look up a row to notice an open window seat, and then with disdain at the guy next to it.  He has pulled a very serious bus foul:  taking the aisle seat first, artificially increasing his solo odds by making the widow seat a confrontation away.  The position is fortified by miscellaneous items strewn about the open space.  And I realize that every time we come to a stop, he slowly begins to organize these things.  FIrst, folding the jacket carefully, checking pockets and such.  Then the laptop is closed gingerly and finds its way into a bag whose fascinating contents must also be surveyed.  The coffee cup gets adjusted in its holder.  And just as this rigamarole concludes, as he looks up to magnanimously offer his open seat–just at this moment–the driver shuts the doors and pulls away.  What I perceive to be this false generosity–this is even more infuriating than the first offense.  So I seethe for a while, then my mind eventually wanders onto better ways to make windshield wipers or why the rain gutters don’t more adroitly channel excess flow.  But somehow in this time I perceive something else.  I perceive that this guy ahead of me is sick.  As in bronchial, crumpled soggy kleenex, drippy nose, take something, get-that-checked-out sick.  And I wonder if he may not be doing us all a solid by going solitary, at least putting up a little buffer–the contextual equivalent of not shaking hands.  This reminds me that things are not always as they seem, and maybe people generally deserve the benefit of a doubt.  Unless he’s faking it.