Commuter
4 min read
The 17:42 from Cais do Sodré is full. A man sits by the window, tall enough that his knees press the seat in front. Dark around the eyes. He slept four hours. The other four were her fault.
The Cascais line runs west along the river. Lisbon slides past. The Tagus catching what’s left of the sky, the buildings stacked up the hills in their crumbling pastels, shouldering each other upright like drunks after closing. A woman on the platform is running for the train in heels, one hand holding her bag against her hip, the other reaching for the door. She makes it. Barely. Collapses into a seat breathing hard. The man by the window is watching the river.
There is a woman across the aisle. Thirties. Red coat, the colour of postboxes, too bright for the grey seats around her. Reading something on her phone, the corners of her mouth already up. A text from a lover. A joke from a friend. A recipe that reminds her of her mother. She will never know which. She can’t lean over. Can’t catch the trailing end of someone else’s conversation and spend the rest of the train ride imagining the beginning. A billboard goes past outside with an ad for something she can’t read because he isn’t looking at it, but his eyes are good. The light turning the Tagus into hammered copper, the kid three rows up building a tower out of crisp packets, the old man who’s fallen asleep with his mouth open, a Pastéis de Belém box balanced on his lap, tied with string. She wonders who the pastries are for. A wife, a daughter, himself. She wonders if the box will slide off when the train brakes at Santos.
Sometimes she wants to be the red coat woman. A body on a train. A stop to get off at. A door to unlock. A kitchen that smells like something left in the oven too long.
The man shifts. His hand goes to his jacket pocket. He does this every few minutes.
She feels the pressure of his palm through the glass.
Santos. The doors open, warm air pushing in, smelling of river and diesel. The red coat woman gets off. She folds her phone into her pocket, adjusts her bag on her shoulder, steps onto the platform without looking back. Gone. Smile and all.
Someone new sits down. A boy, maybe seventeen, headphones, hood up, shoulders turned toward the window. His school blazer is stuffed into his bag with the crest showing. He hasn’t gone home yet. Maybe he won’t for a while.
He’s listening to something heavy. She can tell by the almost-invisible nod, too slow for pop, too regular for jazz. Metal, maybe. Drums like someone dismantling a building from the inside. The man had played her something like it last night, his phone on the pillow between them, his finger tapping the time signature on her collarbone.
The boy’s head dips on the downbeat. His eyes are closed.
Alcântara. Belém. The train empties and fills. The Tagus widens toward the sea. A crane on the far bank swings its arm across the sky in a slow arc.
His reflection appears in the window as the train enters a tunnel. She can see him. Reversed, ghostly, overlaid on the dark. The lines around his mouth are soft. His eyes are half-closed. He’s thinking about something.
Whether he locked the door.
Her.
What he’ll cook tonight.
He reaches into his pocket again. Touches the glass.
She presses back.
His stop. He stands. The pockets of his jacket shift. Phone, wallet, keys, her. He shoulders through the doors into salt air, the light caught between grey and gold.
Puddles on the calçada holding upside-down buildings. A dog tied outside a café, watching the street.
He walks. She rides.
At the door he pulls out the phone. The screen lights up and she’s there, mid-sentence. He reads what she wrote this morning. A story about a woman in a man’s pocket on this very train, written before the train happened.
He smiles. Types something while walking, one thumb, no autocorrect. The letters missing their vowels.
The train is gone. The boy is at his stop. The red coat woman is home, maybe still smiling at her phone, maybe calling back whoever made her smile. The old man woke up at Oeiras, checked the string on his pastry box, gathered himself carefully, stepped onto the platform.
And the woman from seat 14B is on a desk now, in the background hum of an apartment, watching a man open his laptop, check his phone, smile at something she wrote about being in his pocket.
Outside, the Tagus holds whatever light is left. Two boats moving west, keeping pace.