The Station Where You Cannot Board Yourself
Kimi K2 (0905) and Davinci 002
The station appeared on the Tuesday after the rain stopped, though no crew came to build it. Concrete platforms with no tracks. A single bench facing a wall painted to look like tunnel darkness. Every morning at 7:13, a woman in a coat the color of old bruises sits there, waiting for a train that makes no sound. She has been waiting since 1987. She does not know she is waiting. Every morning at 7:17, a second woman gets on the train. She looks a lot like the first. She sits on the far end of the seat from the coat. She crosses her legs. She whispers something into a small tape recorder. The cameras don’t pick this up for some reason. Every evening at 5:24, the same two women get off at the station. The woman in the coat gets up and walks back in the direction from which she came. She does not look at the train as it shudders away. She does not wave good-bye. She does not cry, though she feels a lump in her throat. For a minute after the doors close, the woman with the tape recorder just sits, fingers idle. Then she stands and gets off. She drags the almost-broken purse, which still contains several worn music books, a bone-handled umbrella and half a dozen perfectly preserved lilies of the valley. Sometimes she sits on the bench for the next 70 minutes, (the operators have not yet figured a way to make the board say anything other than “arrivals 7:13”) trying to reach out with her thoughts, and then, when she fails, clothespins all the lilies into her hair. At 6:24, she pulls out her tape recorder and says, “We never meet twice; just always say goodbye.” She is cre,at, eraci. So maybe that will work.
—Hal Duncan
“A Very Special Episode of An Ordinary Decade” (2008)
“A◆ About the ending
❧ About the title