One Ticket Past Your Stop

How it begins

I announced my own stop and stayed in my seat.

This was unprofessional in a way the staff handbook had not anticipated. Normally I finished my shift, put on my ordinary coat and got off where the bakery sign flickered above the platform. Tonight a man was painting the rain on the window, and I wanted to see what he would leave out.

He used a small blue notebook. No mountains, cottages or cheerful people with umbrellas. Just the light breaking over the glass and a tiny yellow shape I could not identify.

“Is that the sea?” I asked.

“A reflection.”

“Of what?”

He turned the notebook.

The yellow shape was my work scarf.

I had been reflected in the window for twenty minutes while deciding whether to interrupt him. This seemed unfairly informative.

The train slowed. My stop slid past in its familiar arrangement: bakery, bench, man waiting with an enormous bag of dog food. I knew his destination. I knew which door would open nearest the ramp. I knew almost everything about the journey except why I felt relieved to be missing it.

“Was that yours?” the painter asked.

“Usually.”

He closed the notebook as if giving me somewhere to put the answer.

Beyond the town, the line followed the cliffs. I had announced the view hundreds of times without sitting on the correct side to see it. Tonight the water lay silver beneath a sky the color of bruised peaches.

The driver called through the staff radio. There was a signal delay ahead. We would wait outside the next station.

I lifted the handset.

Then I looked at the painter.

“Any suggestions?”

“Tell them where they are.”

I thought of the approved phrase, an inconvenience beyond our control.

Instead I described the headland, the silver water and the light beginning to return.

Across the aisle, the painter opened his notebook again.