One Day in The Crescent
Just an episode in the lives of people who otherwise wouldn't meet, and otherwise shouldn't.
This is a work of fiction, and it's own standalone thing.
The bacchanalia promised in other places should come around someday.
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One Day in the Crescent.
Part one of two.
The air in the station is warm and thick despite the mid-winter chill. The high ceiling feels as though it should be obscured by some amber vapour, but it is clear and coolly lit, mismatched to Xan’s discomfort. Perhaps it was being caught in a crush of people trying to move off of one platform and onto another, perhaps it was the prospect of being stranded in the city, but in any case he felt like he was adrift, drowning, carried on a tide of frustrated commuters, with a toxic air above this water.
What it was, really, was human heat and breath. There must have been an easy hundred or so people decked in laptop-bags, backpacks, scarves, and the unending success of Mr or Mrs Macpac. The cancellation of a train shouldn’t be the cause of this much spectacle, but today, three different lines were abruptly changed from delayed to entirely bus-replaced. Sod it, he thought, as he about-turned to make his way out of the crowd and off the platform, I’ll go get a drink or something.
The café slash bar was now populated more so than you’d expect on a Tuesday evening. It seems he was not the only one who decided that a respite was needed before navigating if another line and a change of train could get them to their next there or anywhere. He hastily commits to a pint of DB and a coke when his turn comes at the counter. He hastens to add that he’d like a bowl of fries too. The cashier handles his awkwardness with the utmost neutrality. With the reliability of the trains as of the last few months, years, et cetera, the variety of customer’s bewildered states of being probably fazes her none at all. Looking out to the large windows at the end of the café, over her shoulder, he sees that it’s less densely populated. “I’ll be outside”, he said, as the cashier hands him a number on a stand, with a practised smile.
The mid-winter felt more real in the outside section, the wind had enough of a chill that Xan could feel his nose and ears tingle somewhat. Nursing a cold beer, and waiting for chips, he is alone at one of the umbrella-covered standing height tables. The cold has kept most people in the café, except for a few smokers and a gang of elderly gentlemen nursing several jugs of ale. They looked to be here out of routine, and this crush of aimless commuters was an intrusion. Xan sipped at his coke. The far door through which entered this space, leaving the café interior, squeaked loudly and slammed shut under the encouragement of ancient auto-closing hardware. With each squeak he hoped for the heroic appearance of a slightly-frazzled staff member with a bowl of fries, and when this was not the case, his disappointment was punctuated by the slam of the door.
Anxious that he was about to drink all his drink before his food came, he tries to distract himself with surreptitious people watching. The gang of elderly gentlemen were in varieties of polo shirts and sleeveless puffers, a couple of them in shorts. They have not felt the cold since whichever winter on whichever farm, probably. The two men in snug suits with their compact laptop bags hanging off their shoulder were, he muses, maybe accountants, or miscellaneous office staff at some solicitors. They stood two meters apart, lest they be confused as colleagues, and puffed vape clouds into the fading evening light. Probably cheating on their wives, he thought. His deep suspicion was justified by nothing, as Xan has been through nothing – or so he thought. An unjustified suspicion was exactly what prejudice meant, Xan felt, and so he called himself a misanthrope and moved-on.
A squeak – no, not staff with a bowl of fries – damn, he thought. The slam was delayed. The woman held the door open with her booted foot, scanning the available seats. Xan was cautious not to meet her gaze. He kept facing straight ahead when he heard the slam of the door, and felt it safe to look back in that general direction. But – oh. The woman, with her long dark hair, a gray wool coat that came to her knees, and a black scarf that fell about her front in cascades of tight knitted acrylic, is heading toward his table, boot-stomp by deliberate boot-stomp.
“You don’t mind, do you?” she asks, already reaching toward the ashtray in the middle of the table. “No, go ahead.” Xan affects a polite but distant tone, which lands more like he was caught unaware and less like he was aloof.
“It’s such a mess, isn’t it?” exhales the woman with a cloud of smoke.
“What’s a mess, sorry?” asks Xan, who’s been pretending to be politely watching the wall.
“Oh, y’know, three or so hundred people stranded with either a cramped bus or nothing to look forward to. I think the last two lines running have been cancelled. I don’t know if there’s enough buses to bus everyone home or wherever.”
“Damn, that is a mess. I was meaning to get the seven thirty – not my usual, but the next one from it – but I guess that’s not happening.”
“Poor thing.”
Xan smiles with a squint in his eye, unsure of how much of this was friendly or mocking or just some weird social performance art that he’d been left out of. All he could observe was that the woman sounded friendly enough when saying it, and is smiling back at him, with properly smiling eyes.
“Well, I suppose I’ll just have to find a place to stay the night. I have a friend out in jville, or maybe an old uni friend of mine is still holed up in that shoebox near Ghuznee, and can spare a bit of floor for me,” said Xan, deciding that he’ll just speak normally and not think too much of it.
“What about you, are you stranded as well?” he asks the woman.
“Oh, no, I just came in off the train, probably the last one on the Hutt line. So, I’ve actually gotten where I wanted to go, unlike you and the rest of this crowd.”
“Must be nice.”
“Yeah.”
A silence resumes, and Xan, not having anything to say, reaches for his drink. The woman stubs out her cigarette, and prepares to light another.
“Y’know, for what it’s worth I hope you do have a bus replacement at least – even if it means you have to be married from shoulder to knee to whomever is squashed in next to you,” the woman said, pushing the ashtray more towards the middle of the table. Xan takes this cue and reaches into his pocket for a packet of cigarettes. “Thanks, I appreciate that. It’s no big deal, I wasn’t needing to be anywhere in a hurry.” Xan now finds that he is all out of smokes. “Damn,” he says, at the forlorn cardboard box. “Oh, you really are shit out of luck tonight, aren’t you?” Xan turns to her voice and sees her hand is about three inches from his face, fingers pinching her lit cigarette with its lipstick-marked butt towards him. “Go on, have something good happen to you for a change.” Smiling and with jerky, halting movements, he tries to pinch the cigarette from above her hand. Their fingers brush slightly against each other. “That was nice. Thank you,” Xan now the one exhaling words with smoke.
With the silence coming over them again, Xan catches his mind wandering. He didn’t smoke as often as he used to, unless, say, something stressful like being stranded in Wellington on a mid-winter night with not enough money for a room happened to him. Finding other smokers always brought him a relief, like finding another speaker of your dying language. He never did go halves on cigarettes or take drags of another’s dart. Not that it was icky, but it was intimate. The slight damp of the filter, the transfer from mouth to another mouth and hand to another hand. Actually, it was kind of icky, now that he was thinking about it. But it could also be intimate, between people who could give it that context, he thinks. The stranger is probably just being kind though, he thinks further.
The reverie is now interrupted by the long-awaited arrival of a bowl of fries. “Yes, that’s me, thank you.” Xan offers smiling at the waiter, who smiles while turning on her heel to get out of the cold. “Please, have some,” offers Xan to the woman. The woman, he thinks. Have I been rude? I didn’t introduce myself. Does anyone do that? Whatever.
“Thanks. I’m Emmy, by the way,” says the woman, now Emmy, answering his thoughts.
“Xan. Alexander, but Xan, please” says Xan.
“Ah, and I’m Emmanuelle, but definitely just Emmy.”
“So we’re both shortened forms, cool. I thought I needed to claim which way Alexander gets shortened. Probably someone would go ‘Alex’ which is fine, but I didn’t want to be Alex, and Xander’s even more slappable.” Xan feels he’s being far too chatty, but it’s too late.
“I’m not sure how you reckon ‘Xan’ is not slappable, but I like it anyhow.”
“Thanks, Emmy.” Xan stubs out his cigarette, and begins to eat.
The silence takes over as fries slowly disappear between them, and Xan slowly disappears what’s left of his drinks. The coke is watery from the long-since melted ice. A friendly insistence that the other takes the last chip ensues, and is settled by Emmy – “fine, if you insist.” She bites the single chip in an exaggerated teeth-baring fashion.
“Well,” begins Xan, “… that’s me I guess, thanks for the smoke. I should probably see what my fate is out there.”
“Oh, no, the fates are pretty sealed on that one there. The trains are definitely all bus-replaced. You may need to remind your old classmate that you’re a very polite floor-sleeper.” Emmy delivers this with a deadpan tone and a bright smile.
“Hah, damn, is that so?”
“Yah, actually,” Emmy holds up her phone, which shows the many pink banners on the Metlink app typical of unhappy news. “However,” she continues, leaning over the ashtray where her forgotten smoke is still bogarting away, “I may be able to help you out, for the second time this evening.”
End of Part One.
One Day in The Crescent. Part One of Two.
