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A huge hulking human gets onto the tube. He walks over with his girlfriend to an empty end of the carriage. He is wearing a t-shirt which has the speed camera logo on it and has the text “Government cash machine”.

He spots a whole load of discarded nut shells on the floor and suddenly goes bright red in the face and says something quite fierce which I can’t quite discern. His girlfriend tells him to “shhh…”

She sits down and he stands in front of her. Facing her. Holding with both hands the rail above his head. And then he asks her to punch him. At first she resists but in the end she relents. It looks like she’s really hurt her hand. But he has a huge grin on his face.

Her left leg is itching. Not the kind of itch you can scratch. It’s just slightly vibrating. A nervous twitch. As though that one part of her body was more ready to go than the others. Her head wanted to stay. She knew that but her foot had other ideas. And now it had spread up the length of her entire leg.

It must, she reasoned, have been the left hand side of her brain that wanted to stay. Something to do with cross lateralness or something. Each side of the brain controlling the other half of the body.

But slowly the adrenalin was building up in her limbs, her brain was the last to succumb. Just a fraction of a second before she ran the liquid in her brain felt like it had been turned into a fizzy drink.

She sits there screaming nothing. No sound. No articulation. Just a mouth stretched open and every muscle in her neck taut. No more words. No way to articulate the problem anymore just pain unending.

But something was starting to feel different. Previously when she had thought that. The last time, the time before that perhaps and every other occasion for the last six month when she had got to the part about “pain unending” she had thought it. And meant it. But this time it was different. She had begun to see an end to it. “The human mind” she thought, “has an amazing ability to heal itself”.

She closed her mouth, her neck muscles relaxed. She chided herself for thinking in clichés. And she started crying. But differently. Before she had cried for him. Or rather for his absence. But this time she cried for herself. The tears came out warm and soft and settled around her neck. Before they were hard and painful and they usually seemed to land a few feet away.

“A definite improvement,” she thought. And she almost smiled.

It suddenly becomes very cold.

All those things happen when it gets cold.

The clichés.

The hair raising up off of the skin.

The goose bumps.

And the less clichéd.

The hardened nipples.

The retracting penis.

“It’s getting cold.”
“Yes”, he lies, “I hadn’t noticed.”

Why lie?

They both think this at the same time.

She pities his faux-macho.

And he pities something worse. Not the label, but himself.

The flash is blinding but it has nothing to do with you.

The people at the next table are taking a picture.

I wonder if they, like me, look at pictures years from now and think about the lives of the people in the background.

“I love you. You do know that.”
“Well.”
“No?”
“Yes.”
“Ah.”
“It’s just… I don’t know how to deal with you. I mean, what do I do?”
“I don’t know?”
“You see if you don’t know…”
“I don’t think I’m supposed to know. If I know how to fall in love with myself then I would probably be a horrible arrogant bastard.”
“Well…”
“Look. I’m not that. I don’t think.”
“No. No! I don’t think you are. The ‘well’ was about better knowing how to deal with the whole business. I’ve never had to before I’m not ready. I don’t know how.”
“Surely you must.”
“No. I really don’t. See the thing that confuses me more than anything is that I don’t think I’m doing anything different now than at the beginning of our relationship. But you are reacting to me differently.”
“You know I can’t tell you what it is.”
“You could.”
“I could. But it wouldn’t be working properly if I had to. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
“Well I better had.”
“Why?”
“Why?”
“Yes. Why do you want to bother?”
“Because I love you.”
“Well there you go. That wasn’t so hard was it.”

“Good night.”
“Goodnight.”

There’s a pause. A second where there isn’t enough movement to constitute the actual business of going to bed. The business is key, and everyone different. The turn over. The eyes closed pretend blissful smile. The over ridiculous stretch.

They know each other’s patterns. They know what would happen if the words “goodnight” had been said in the way that those who originally used the word had originally framed it. And this wasn’t that small it. It was IT. IT with a capital I and a capital T.

IT didn’t stand for anything. IT was something.

He sits alone. Not that there aren’t people there. He just can’t connect to them. They are other. Different.

A young lad turns to him after hours of looking in the opposite direction.

“Are you having a good evening?”
“Yes it’s good. Right enough.”

Satisfied the boy turns back to the others.

And he wonders whether saying the truth would have helped.

There is a man. He’s asleep. Out there.

A black waterproof.

A dark birthmark where an enlightenment spot might go.

From the distance I am from him I can’t see him breathe.

To me he is dead.

How would I tell the difference?

His arms folded on the yellow table. His head rests in the corner of one arm.

I bet he has a mark on that arm when he wakes up.

If he wakes up.

I hope he wakes up.

I’ve spent half my life staring back at this river. And now this brittle bitch is sitting in the way.

Over time I’ve realised that the nicest tables aren’t by the window but one back. That way the tables are of equal value. The better the view the worse the table, it all evens out.

But it doesn’t matter if you sit one row back because you can look between the people. Look through them.

But now her. I know the type she’s cold, and she knows it, so she pretends – with people she thinks she can use – to care by faking empathy. I bet she uses earnest question with wide open eyes. On the outside it looks like she cares. But only if you look for a moment. Any longer and it’s obvious what a trick it is.

The slightest thing upsets her completely. She goes crazy in a controlled way. Barking at everyone. Later she’ll cry. Alone. Her tears adding salt to a bitter Chardonnay. But for now she demeans a waitress for an imagined slight. The guilt of which will haunt her forever.