Night Train (186 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryRating: 2 on 1 review (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by coley (View user info) at 2006-11-06 01:52:12 EST
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
The girl with two coffees waited at the station for someone who never came.
She stood with her long coat, her red scarf draped around and hanging down her back; cups stacked perfectly in one hand with plastic lids aligned and dimpled cardboard collars protecting her undoubtedly feminine fingers from the heat. The cups were stacked perfectly in one hand while she stared at a piece of paper in her other; her eyes squinted behind her black-framed glasses and her forehead a roadmap of anxiety and anticipation.
Of course, she didn't know she was waiting for nobody. She'd never have gotten two coffees if she'd known. One for her, one for nobody? That would have been a waste. As things were, it was going to be a waste after all.
She didn't know that she was waiting for someone who'd never come.
She didn't even know who she was waiting for, actually. The girl with two coffees didn't even drink coffee. She just figured getting coffee for him would be a nice gesture, and it might be weird to not drink some with him. She actually didn't care for coffee at all. It was more of a sacrifice of her comfort for his. What's that song lyric, "the more you suffer, the more it shows you really care, right?" Something like that.
I stood with my back to the cool cement walls of the station, smoking in slow, deliberate, heavy drags. She would have never seen me if I hadn't coughed. I had one of those tickles that wouldn't go away and it caught me mid-puff, making it sound like I was doing one of those faux-throat-clearings that are more to get someone's attention than to expel foreign substances from one's trachea.
When I coughed, she jumped a little and turned to see where the sound came from. It took her a minute before she found me, what with the tricky echo effects going on down there in the cement-walled tunnel and the eye-twitch-inducing sodium vapor lights casting their yellow tinge on everything. If I wasn't used to everything being painted with that cheap urban shade, I'd have thought we were all doomed to die of some sort of contagious liver disease. I probably was, anyway.
After she turned to see me, and really saw me, she did that thing I'm so used to seeing: that thing where someone finds you and inadvertently makes eye contact for just a moment and both of you know it happened but they turn around so quickly it's like a flashback to "The Exorcist". I'm talking about the part where Linda Blair's head spins 360 degrees, not the puking pea soup on the priest or fucking herself with a crucifix. It's not nice, it's not gentle, and I refuse to call it masturbation.
I'm used to that shit; the quick breaks in eye contact and the not-so-subtle shuffle in the direction furthest from me. Have you ever seen "Poltergeist"? Do you remember the part in that movie where the boy is in bed during the thunderstorm, before the tree eats him? I'm talking about the part where the lightning strikes and he counts "one one-thousand, two one-thousand" until he hears the thunder. The longer the gap between lightning and thunder, the further away the storm is moving. I play that game with the people at the station. I usually don't even make it to the first "one one-thousand" after our eyes meet until they start to edge away from me.
I took a swig off the bottle of the warmish, cheap wine I held in my lap and traced the outline of her shape through her long coat and tall boots. A smooth curve of the waist, strong thighs, rounded calves. I took one more long pull off the bottle and tried not to stare when she made her own little sound. It wasn't a cough, it wasn't a sneeze, it was a whimper like a hurt animal. It was a whimper of a broken heart. The last train had pulled in, and the people were flooding past her on all sides like a stone in a stream. It was apparent within moments that she was waiting for someone who never came.
What a shame.
She tossed the now-cooled coffees into an open trashcan, chained to a pillar with heavy links to keep it safe from those refuse-thieves that prowl the underground in cities like this. She tossed them both and the lid popped off one, splattering French vanilla up the pillar and down the sleeve of her long coat. She kept walking. I turned my head to follow the sound of her boots, and I knocked over the near-empty Night Train at my feet. It landed on its side with a hollow clink that went well with the sound of her boots click tap click tap click tapping their way up the stairs, another whimper, and she was gone.
User Reviews
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2007-06-05 12:20:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2