Commute

I could hear them talking happily to each other. Their voices were worn and they were probably younger than they looked. Two of them, a man and a woman, in a careless protected bubble of their own. The woman leaned into the man, as if looking for succour, avoiding every part of the world that wasn't him. She was shorter, reaching only up to his thin chest. Their feet were steady on the hard pavement. The man's eyes met the the world ahead with an open, assured friendliness. They wore faded sports wear from about eight years ago.

He teased her about rats in kebab meat, calling over the road to me, to bring me into the conversation. It was late and I was alone. I didn't have a problem with either of those facts. I judged his level of intoxication and guessed at the fastest way to disentangle myself from the pair. A quick calculation told me that if I simply ignored him, his resolve to engage would heighten. So, I thought the best policy was to respond, contribute, and then shut down, before moving on.

I felt the glimmers of the beginning of embarrassment on someone's behalf from the woman. She turned her head more into his jacket, gently avoiding eye contact with me. I was an unknown quantity that the man had brought into their bubble and I could ruin the peace that they had in there. I was friendlier than I'm naturally inclined to be and passed myself off with disingenuous good cheer.

This was off the main road, but not by much. It was in one of the circular sides of the city where everything is quiet next to a main drag that never stops. On that main drag, there was a chain supermarket with shelf stackers counting the minutes before they could close up. Most of these places can close at about eleven, but this store can't turn away the profits that arise from being next to a major international train station and pushes through to midnight.

People get stranger the closer you get to midnight. Under the fluorescent lights, with the chill that comes off of the freezers, the bleary, late night sense of unreality is crushed in with the banal and too-familiar for the people who work in there. In their ugly burgundy uniforms, they put items into their proper places. They might as well do it then, get a head start before morning. No one worthwhile is ever in there at ten minutes to twelve at night, buying four cans of the most generic alcohol. Everyone's eyes looked tired, askance. I carried myself into the short queue in with a manner that I thought offered no chance for the unwanted unpredictability that the workers would have to deal with three or four times a night. Unpredictable meant trouble and I had no wish to get anyone's guard up. There was no sound but the goods going into their place, no conversation but what covered the commerce.

Away from the cold of the supermarket, back in the cold of the night, I stood at the bus stop and watched the red double deckers hiss as they lumbered by. I'd be home in an hour.