MJ
“Refreshments?”
When his eyes opened, everything was a blur. After a moment he felt his glasses crooked and low on his nose. He readjusted them quickly, hastening to sit up straight and gather the papers strewn across his lap. “Excuse me?”
“Refreshments, dear,” repeated the voice, which belonged to a matronly woman in a pale blue button-up. She smiled. The skin around her eyes wrinkled.
“Ah. No, thank you.” He smiled back, cordially.
“Sorry to disturb you.” She leaned against a pushcart loaded with cheap coffee and dusty bottles. “I’ll be around.” She gave a quick wink before continuing down the aisle; at least, he thought she did. He wasn’t sure.
His knees cracked when he stood up, and he wondered how long he’d been out. The train was not very crowded, and he was glad to be alone in the compartment. When he looked out the window everything was black, that dead kind of black you only get in the middle of jack-shit nowhere. Briefly he caught his reflection under the dim overhead light. A little overdue for a shave, and very tired. He didn’t mind; not all that much, anyway. It made him look a few years older than he was. He decided he liked that. Over his shoulder he could see the papers scattered across the floor. God, he thought, what a mess it all was.
Turning away from the window, he knelt to pick up his notebook. It was open to a page near the middle, dated a few weeks prior. He could tell he’d been in a mood when he’d written whatever was there; his handwriting was like a stranger’s. He gathered some loose-leaf papers from the floor and tucked them in between the pages. With everything picked up he had a seat for a moment, but as an afterthought decided to get up and draw the shade over the small square window that looked into the aisle. Finally settling down, he removed the pen that he’d clipped to his notebook cover.
He opened to a blank page. He didn’t like the way it looked, so he drew a straight line right down the middle. Lots of his papers looked like that-- little marks to take the blankness away before he ever really thought of what to write. It didn't always bother him. Today it did. He sat for about a minute, just staring. Blank pages, blank eyes. Everything vacant. He really was tired.
As he began to doze off again, a sound from the doorway jarred him awake. He looked up to see the door being wrestled open, and a boxy suitcase shoved through, followed by a flustered-looking young woman. He considered saying something, or at the very least gesturing toward the privacy curtain he’d pulled over the door’s little box window, but he decided against it. Instead he just looked at her, very neutrally, until she noticed him sitting there.
“Oh,” she said, with a little half-step back through the door. “I’m sorry.”
“Hmm,” he replied, not kindly, not unkindly.
“I was told this compartment was empty.” Her soft voice took on a defensive tone and she shifted her weight from one leg to the other, glancing into the aisle.
“Who told you that?” He folded the cover of his notebook shut. He knew he was being slightly rude. But so was she, really. The damn curtain was closed.
“That woman,” she leaned out the door, looking, apparently unaware that he couldn’t see a thing past her. “The one with the cart.”
He smiled.
“What’s so funny?” Her brow was arched and her lips pressed into a thin line. She had the look of someone who hadn’t caught a break all day, and he felt a little bad for giving her a hard time.
“Nothing,” he straightened out his face as best he could. Sympathetic. He really was trying.
“I guess I’ll go, then.”
“Don’t bother,” he said, and shrugged. “I don’t really mind.” That wasn't true, at least not completely, but if that frumpy old stewardess set out to bother him by sending people into his compartment then he'd rather her not have the satisfaction. He hoped the suitcase girl would be quiet, at least.
“Oh.” She paused a moment, then rolled her suitcase the rest of the way through the door, letting it close slowly after her. “Okay.” On the side of the compartment opposite him, she sat down in the window seat after laying her suitcase flat across the two adjacent and started fixing her hair. It was just down, and really quite plain, but it framed her face nicely. A few seconds passed, and then she paused for just a moment. “Thank you.”
He didn’t say anything, just smiled.
Tall lamps were beginning to appear outside the window as the train passed through a crossing, and now against the orange light he could see dense flurries of snowflakes. He liked them. They were nice to look at, and they always fell slowly. Even when they came down heavy and wet and violent, they fell slowly. He wasn’t sure how that was. Eventually he turned his attention back down to his notebook. Somehow he’d expected to see something written there, but there was nothing except that stupid black line. He made a few little snowflakes coming down the margin, but he didn’t like how they looked. He shut the notebook and set it on the seat beside him.
They’d finished passing by the lights, and he looked at the girl sitting across from him. She was asleep. He supposed he’d been a little less kind than he ought to have been. He wasn’t sure he’d meant it when he’d wished she wouldn’t talk, either. Places like trains were awfully lonely after a long enough time. She had a pleasant voice, too, pleasant in that mellifluous and songlike way, and he wondered if she liked to sing at all. He sighed very quietly and reclined with his head against the glass, swinging his feet up and across the two seats beside him. His notebook slid onto the floor and made a very loud slapping noise. The woman stirred a bit, but her eyes didn’t open. He did not bother picking up the notebook.
He’d reached that lull of boredom inevitable when one takes a long trip with limited sources of entertainment. Slowly he became aware of sounds; his notebook pages fluttering in front of the radiator beneath his seat, sounds of train machinery much farther down, the faint tinkling of silverware as the refreshments cart made another round past the door. Sometimes these sorts of things bothered him. Not now, though. He was still very tired, but he could not for the life of him get back into a comfortable enough position to sleep.
He glanced over at the woman’s side of the compartment again. It was a little strange how she had her suitcase across the two seats instead of up on the luggage rack. Maybe it was heavy. It was very large, and very orange, with little white polka-dots all over. Generally he considered orange kind of an unpleasant color, but it was an alright suitcase anyway, he thought. One of her hands was resting on top of it, and the other on her lap. They were very small, and had skinny fingers with short nails painted dandelion-yellow. She had on earrings that were nearly the same color. He wondered if she’d done that on purpose, and if she was the type of girl to do that thing often or if there was some special occasion she was trying to look nice for. She did either way.
Suddenly from the intercom box above his seat there was static, and then a muted, sleepy voice announcing the next stop. It wasn’t his. He paused for a moment, then decided he ought to wake the woman, just in case. He paused. She looked very peaceful. He didn’t want to bother her.
“Excuse me?” He said regardless, keeping his voice soft.
Her eyelids fluttered, just slightly, and he repeated it a little louder. That time she heard him. She woke, very slowly, and for a moment had that look like she wasn’t sure where she was.
“We’re coming up on a stop. I wasn’t sure whether it was yours.”
“Oh.” Beside the compartment door was a dusty sign displaying a list of stops. A bulb marked with a large number 6 blinked on. “Mine’s not for a while.” She paused. “But thank you. I appreciate it.” With a nod, and a little smile, even, she turned toward the window. This time she didn’t close her eyes, at least not for a while. They were going through a tunnel now, and there really was not all that much to see; nevertheless she just stared, her profile outlined by the soft electric warmth of very sparse lighting. When they’d pass one it’d shine through the glass, and for a moment her face would be the only thing really lighted in the compartment. In those split-seconds of gentle illumination he’d glance at her, just very quickly, and it was funny, he thought, but he started to notice something different each time.
Fluorescent orange. Distant eyes, round and tired. It looked as though she was staring at something very far away.
Harsh white. Lips parted slightly, condensation on the window.
Yellow, dying. She had a very interesting face. They were coming out of the tunnel now.
Empty black sky. Nothing.
She closed her eyes.
He leaned over and picked his notebook up off the floor, but didn’t open it. The way the girl had her head now, her hair fell a little over her face. It wasn’t long, but it wasn’t short either, and had only a very slight wave to it. It was kind of an unremarkable shade of brown, though it looked shiny and soft under the warm ceiling light. He ran a hand through his own hair. He needed a haircut. It’d been weeks, at least. Since a haircut, a home-cooked meal, since anything home at all.
Slowly, he opened up his notebook, flipping through the pages and pages of stories and drawings and things in between until he found the one he’d started earlier. The long black line stared up at him. The snowflakes danced in the margin. Nothing, of course, had changed. Nothing at all.
Across from him, the girl opened her eyes, and for a moment just stared out the window before pushing her hair back from her face and glancing at him. He wasn’t sure if she’d noticed him looking at her. He didn’t really care.
“Excuse me,” she said, “but would you happen to know the time?”
He glanced at his watch. “Nine fifty-five,” he told her.
“Oh,” she replied, then smiled. Cordially. “Thank you.”
He smiled back. She was the first to look away, and she just turned to stare out the goddamn window again. He wondered if she liked the snow as much as he did. Lots of girls didn’t. God, was she interesting. He was dead tired and his thoughts were all over the place but he just kept coming back to that word. He still didn’t understand how she could make any sort of impression at all with nothing but a few ohs and thank yous and excuse mes and staring out the window all lofty as hell and looking nice when she was asleep, but she did make an impression on him, and that in itself was enough.
After a moment he realized that as he thought about her he’d been staring, but not at her. His eyes had drifted out the window towards the horizon, focusing on something very far away. Distant. It was in this moment of realization that he glanced over in her direction just as she pulled her own eyes from the same place, and in the brief moment before she was again the first to break eye contact, she smiled.
He didn’t know how, or why, or even what the hell it was, but something about that smile made him suddenly and blissfully aware of what he found so damn intriguing about her.
He picked up his pen, returned a smile that she may or may not have seen, and began to write.
When his eyes opened, everything was a blur. After a moment he felt his glasses crooked and low on his nose. He readjusted them quickly, hastening to sit up straight and gather the papers strewn across his lap. “Excuse me?”
“Refreshments, dear,” repeated the voice, which belonged to a matronly woman in a pale blue button-up. She smiled. The skin around her eyes wrinkled.
“Ah. No, thank you.” He smiled back, cordially.
“Sorry to disturb you.” She leaned against a pushcart loaded with cheap coffee and dusty bottles. “I’ll be around.” She gave a quick wink before continuing down the aisle; at least, he thought she did. He wasn’t sure.
His knees cracked when he stood up, and he wondered how long he’d been out. The train was not very crowded, and he was glad to be alone in the compartment. When he looked out the window everything was black, that dead kind of black you only get in the middle of jack-shit nowhere. Briefly he caught his reflection under the dim overhead light. A little overdue for a shave, and very tired. He didn’t mind; not all that much, anyway. It made him look a few years older than he was. He decided he liked that. Over his shoulder he could see the papers scattered across the floor. God, he thought, what a mess it all was.
Turning away from the window, he knelt to pick up his notebook. It was open to a page near the middle, dated a few weeks prior. He could tell he’d been in a mood when he’d written whatever was there; his handwriting was like a stranger’s. He gathered some loose-leaf papers from the floor and tucked them in between the pages. With everything picked up he had a seat for a moment, but as an afterthought decided to get up and draw the shade over the small square window that looked into the aisle. Finally settling down, he removed the pen that he’d clipped to his notebook cover.
He opened to a blank page. He didn’t like the way it looked, so he drew a straight line right down the middle. Lots of his papers looked like that-- little marks to take the blankness away before he ever really thought of what to write. It didn't always bother him. Today it did. He sat for about a minute, just staring. Blank pages, blank eyes. Everything vacant. He really was tired.
As he began to doze off again, a sound from the doorway jarred him awake. He looked up to see the door being wrestled open, and a boxy suitcase shoved through, followed by a flustered-looking young woman. He considered saying something, or at the very least gesturing toward the privacy curtain he’d pulled over the door’s little box window, but he decided against it. Instead he just looked at her, very neutrally, until she noticed him sitting there.
“Oh,” she said, with a little half-step back through the door. “I’m sorry.”
“Hmm,” he replied, not kindly, not unkindly.
“I was told this compartment was empty.” Her soft voice took on a defensive tone and she shifted her weight from one leg to the other, glancing into the aisle.
“Who told you that?” He folded the cover of his notebook shut. He knew he was being slightly rude. But so was she, really. The damn curtain was closed.
“That woman,” she leaned out the door, looking, apparently unaware that he couldn’t see a thing past her. “The one with the cart.”
He smiled.
“What’s so funny?” Her brow was arched and her lips pressed into a thin line. She had the look of someone who hadn’t caught a break all day, and he felt a little bad for giving her a hard time.
“Nothing,” he straightened out his face as best he could. Sympathetic. He really was trying.
“I guess I’ll go, then.”
“Don’t bother,” he said, and shrugged. “I don’t really mind.” That wasn't true, at least not completely, but if that frumpy old stewardess set out to bother him by sending people into his compartment then he'd rather her not have the satisfaction. He hoped the suitcase girl would be quiet, at least.
“Oh.” She paused a moment, then rolled her suitcase the rest of the way through the door, letting it close slowly after her. “Okay.” On the side of the compartment opposite him, she sat down in the window seat after laying her suitcase flat across the two adjacent and started fixing her hair. It was just down, and really quite plain, but it framed her face nicely. A few seconds passed, and then she paused for just a moment. “Thank you.”
He didn’t say anything, just smiled.
Tall lamps were beginning to appear outside the window as the train passed through a crossing, and now against the orange light he could see dense flurries of snowflakes. He liked them. They were nice to look at, and they always fell slowly. Even when they came down heavy and wet and violent, they fell slowly. He wasn’t sure how that was. Eventually he turned his attention back down to his notebook. Somehow he’d expected to see something written there, but there was nothing except that stupid black line. He made a few little snowflakes coming down the margin, but he didn’t like how they looked. He shut the notebook and set it on the seat beside him.
They’d finished passing by the lights, and he looked at the girl sitting across from him. She was asleep. He supposed he’d been a little less kind than he ought to have been. He wasn’t sure he’d meant it when he’d wished she wouldn’t talk, either. Places like trains were awfully lonely after a long enough time. She had a pleasant voice, too, pleasant in that mellifluous and songlike way, and he wondered if she liked to sing at all. He sighed very quietly and reclined with his head against the glass, swinging his feet up and across the two seats beside him. His notebook slid onto the floor and made a very loud slapping noise. The woman stirred a bit, but her eyes didn’t open. He did not bother picking up the notebook.
He’d reached that lull of boredom inevitable when one takes a long trip with limited sources of entertainment. Slowly he became aware of sounds; his notebook pages fluttering in front of the radiator beneath his seat, sounds of train machinery much farther down, the faint tinkling of silverware as the refreshments cart made another round past the door. Sometimes these sorts of things bothered him. Not now, though. He was still very tired, but he could not for the life of him get back into a comfortable enough position to sleep.
He glanced over at the woman’s side of the compartment again. It was a little strange how she had her suitcase across the two seats instead of up on the luggage rack. Maybe it was heavy. It was very large, and very orange, with little white polka-dots all over. Generally he considered orange kind of an unpleasant color, but it was an alright suitcase anyway, he thought. One of her hands was resting on top of it, and the other on her lap. They were very small, and had skinny fingers with short nails painted dandelion-yellow. She had on earrings that were nearly the same color. He wondered if she’d done that on purpose, and if she was the type of girl to do that thing often or if there was some special occasion she was trying to look nice for. She did either way.
Suddenly from the intercom box above his seat there was static, and then a muted, sleepy voice announcing the next stop. It wasn’t his. He paused for a moment, then decided he ought to wake the woman, just in case. He paused. She looked very peaceful. He didn’t want to bother her.
“Excuse me?” He said regardless, keeping his voice soft.
Her eyelids fluttered, just slightly, and he repeated it a little louder. That time she heard him. She woke, very slowly, and for a moment had that look like she wasn’t sure where she was.
“We’re coming up on a stop. I wasn’t sure whether it was yours.”
“Oh.” Beside the compartment door was a dusty sign displaying a list of stops. A bulb marked with a large number 6 blinked on. “Mine’s not for a while.” She paused. “But thank you. I appreciate it.” With a nod, and a little smile, even, she turned toward the window. This time she didn’t close her eyes, at least not for a while. They were going through a tunnel now, and there really was not all that much to see; nevertheless she just stared, her profile outlined by the soft electric warmth of very sparse lighting. When they’d pass one it’d shine through the glass, and for a moment her face would be the only thing really lighted in the compartment. In those split-seconds of gentle illumination he’d glance at her, just very quickly, and it was funny, he thought, but he started to notice something different each time.
Fluorescent orange. Distant eyes, round and tired. It looked as though she was staring at something very far away.
Harsh white. Lips parted slightly, condensation on the window.
Yellow, dying. She had a very interesting face. They were coming out of the tunnel now.
Empty black sky. Nothing.
She closed her eyes.
He leaned over and picked his notebook up off the floor, but didn’t open it. The way the girl had her head now, her hair fell a little over her face. It wasn’t long, but it wasn’t short either, and had only a very slight wave to it. It was kind of an unremarkable shade of brown, though it looked shiny and soft under the warm ceiling light. He ran a hand through his own hair. He needed a haircut. It’d been weeks, at least. Since a haircut, a home-cooked meal, since anything home at all.
Slowly, he opened up his notebook, flipping through the pages and pages of stories and drawings and things in between until he found the one he’d started earlier. The long black line stared up at him. The snowflakes danced in the margin. Nothing, of course, had changed. Nothing at all.
Across from him, the girl opened her eyes, and for a moment just stared out the window before pushing her hair back from her face and glancing at him. He wasn’t sure if she’d noticed him looking at her. He didn’t really care.
“Excuse me,” she said, “but would you happen to know the time?”
He glanced at his watch. “Nine fifty-five,” he told her.
“Oh,” she replied, then smiled. Cordially. “Thank you.”
He smiled back. She was the first to look away, and she just turned to stare out the goddamn window again. He wondered if she liked the snow as much as he did. Lots of girls didn’t. God, was she interesting. He was dead tired and his thoughts were all over the place but he just kept coming back to that word. He still didn’t understand how she could make any sort of impression at all with nothing but a few ohs and thank yous and excuse mes and staring out the window all lofty as hell and looking nice when she was asleep, but she did make an impression on him, and that in itself was enough.
After a moment he realized that as he thought about her he’d been staring, but not at her. His eyes had drifted out the window towards the horizon, focusing on something very far away. Distant. It was in this moment of realization that he glanced over in her direction just as she pulled her own eyes from the same place, and in the brief moment before she was again the first to break eye contact, she smiled.
He didn’t know how, or why, or even what the hell it was, but something about that smile made him suddenly and blissfully aware of what he found so damn intriguing about her.
He picked up his pen, returned a smile that she may or may not have seen, and began to write.