“Are you from around here, mister?”
“Yes, I am. I came back to see my family due to some unfortunate circumstances.”
I’d fully intended to ignore him, but I’d gotten out of the habit.
“My condolences.”
“Thanks.”
And that was the end of the conversation. I wondered just what in the hell the point of that conversation had been, who it was for, but then nothing we do in life is every really for anyone, or for any purpose, so I couldn’t fault the driver. Anger just leads to exhaustion.
I gazed out the car window. In the past, I would have expected to see little else outside but the abandoned houses that had been left to nature and the like, but it was different now. Progress marches on, and now the only vestiges of that era were the fields that sat empty smack dab in the middle of clumps of condos, like pitfalls.
“This place has really changed, huh? You’re probably too young to remember, but it used to be nothing but mountains around here.”
I could have told him, I do remember, but I realized that the driver was not actually expecting a reply and left it at a soft sigh. I’d half expected to feel more emotional about passing through this area, but no matter how close nor far I was from it, my emotions remained equally flat. As I traced my way through my memories, as I always did, the taxi arrived at the station.
It was still a rural station, but it was markedly cleaner than it had been eight years prior. I took a look at the timetable and then purchased a coffee at a little takeout stand that had not been there the last time I was here. A shelter sat prettily beside the ticket gate. Perhaps a train had just come, as there was no one inside it. I took a seat on the bench that sat against the wall. The cold season was well on its way out, but there was no point in me standing around freezing on the platform.
Inside the shelter was a space heater and a clock—or rather, a large LCD display. I took a sip of my coffee as the news played at an unintrusive volume. The coffee was weak, but that wasn’t the shop’s fault. Everything that entered my mouth was weak, tasteless, meaningless on my tongue—coffee, tobacco smoke, or other people’s spit. The fact that I was not yet accustomed to this, that I would still even acknowledge a flavor as weak, was perhaps proof that even my senses were still tethered to my memories. In memory lay expectations, which were only betrayed by reality.
It had already been fifteen years. Was that a long time? Or was it actually a short one? You could just as easily say that it was much too long as you could that it was far too short.
Again, I wandered through my memories—the special something that existed only inside of me. I traced through the things that I would not, dared not forget. Remembering was the only thing that kept me alive.
I hadn’t realized I would grow old so quickly.
I stared at the clock as I sipped my weak coffee. At some point, someone else entered the shelter. Out of my peripheral I glanced at the person, who had sat down on the bench at a gap, and saw a woman in a gray coat. It was a small-town train station, so I stole a glance at her face thinking she might be someone I knew, but her brilliant, willful gaze and thinly pressed lips rung no bells. I could only assume by the hope for the future that her expression betrayed that her own powerful wind had not yet blown away.
To be frank, I was jealous of her.
By the time the train was scheduled to arrive, a few more people had entered the shelter. The woman sitting beside me stood up almost in sync with me, moving through the manned ticket gate to the platform. The train soon arrived, and we boarded, finding the car fairly empty despite it being a weekend, and the woman and I sat side by side, again with some distance between us. It would be a bit over an hour before we reached my transfer station. Now and then the train stopped, taking on more passengers, and by the time we arrived at my destination there was a decent crowd, most of whom stood from their seats at the same station where I was exiting. That woman got off at the same stop as well. A headphone cord ran from her ears to her pocket. It was clear to me as I watched her walk in front of me, back straight, heels clacking, that she had not yet come face-to-face with that gale, or perhaps she was right now in the midst of a maelstrom. Jealousy bubbled up once more. On the flip side, I also felt a sort of grief as I thought of the dull, muffled world that lay ahead of her.
That said, the same fate awaits everyone in this world, so this was not a sentiment I felt toward her specifically. I rarely held an attachment to any individual person. I no longer had strong feelings about anyone.
I was never going to see this woman again. Or so I thought.
We walked in the same direction, and before I knew it, we were on the same train again, though this car was a bit more crowded and we were no longer sitting next to each other. After another hour of swaying on the train, I finally disembarked, but she remained on it. I hadn’t imagined we’d ride together even that far from such a rural origin point, but that didn’t really mean much to me either.
By the time I exited the ticket gate at the station, I had already forgotten about her.