Catching the
Next Train to Nowhere
Flash Fiction Story
by Dave Nash
When I saw him for the first time, it was May already and he was waiting for the next train to New York, I thought just yesterday it seemed like there were snow banks ashy drooling cigarette buts and now he was here in his Italian shoes and tailored suit, and maybe he got off at the wrong stop because this station didn’t send folks to work on Wall Street in class-A office space, to perform self definitive roles they spent a lifetime preparing for - summers out east boarding schools in New England, internships with drinks on humid Manhattan nights stretching off rooftops to crimson horizons in the west.
I saw him again a few years later on the first day of school. My wife and I clicked pictures of our manicured kids, and waived to their teachers, who seemed much happier to see them than mine ever did. After the hoopla I took the train in - no sense lounging around. There he was at the platform edge in the same outfit, leather-bound notepad in hand as if the first role didn’t work and he had to audition for a new yet very much the same one. I should have spoken to him. Some words of encouragement to open before the inquiry of my curiosity. I shuffled near him, his blue eyes, full of confidence, an inner definiteness, yes, yes, things would do better than work out - he’d talked himself up while adjusting his Windsor knot.
Some days waiting for the train, cold, I’d sense my whole existence, in its phases, as an impatient crowd, motley, misunderstood. I saw a person who wished, full of hope, a person who carried disease, existential dread, I saw a changed person after that, more grateful, I saw childhood images, imagining, these different people - part of a whole, loosely - obscure shapes bundled in dark jackets, wrapped in scarves and such, as if by some random chance, but all gathered for one purpose - to leave, to arrive. The storytelling of which became my waking thoughts. And logically, one morning I thought is this it? Is this all there is, boarding trains to nowhere? So I calculated how much I needed to get divorced. I took my kids out that weekend like it was the last time I’d see them. I never felt better with them.
The next time I saw him, I spoke to him. It was dark before we got out the tunnel, that time of year when resolutions have been forgotten and snow is more likely than sun. To be honest, he spoke first, “Good, Sir, may I sit here.” I could have lit his breath on fire if I had a lighter; the alcohol vapours were so concentrated. He asked me, “Is it true what they’re saying - the whole world is going to shut down for a virus?” I told him I don’t talk politics on the train and besides this is a quiet car. “My apologies, things haven’t been going well and I forgot what taking the train was like.” I said, “That’s ok pal, nobody wants to say anything.” This was my opening to bestow some avuncular advice, but I turned to see how much snow melted near the tracks. I get depressed when it goes away and under the passing streetlights, it looked like it was holding on stronger than I thought. He thought I meant no one wants to talk but what I meant was no one wants to call you out for talking. But then he got up and said, “be well.”
I wish I could say that I met the love of my life after that. That love could explain things. Nowadays, love runs like water, necessary, but not enough. I could get on training to fresh waters and new loves. Love is what got me here. On the renovated platform I could see changes, chaotic, random, defying linearity. I saw how we exchange seats, places, waiting, going, suffering, hoping in silence alone in a crowd and I felt that I already met her, my love.
Dave Nash writes on grey trains to rainy Mondays. His work appears in places like South Florida Poetry Journal, Bulb Culture Collective, Jake, and The Hooghly Review. You can follow him @davenashlit1.
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