Because of the rain the train was two hours late, and by ten in the evening only two of us were left at the station.
The board said the train was arriving, then that it was delayed, then that it was arriving again. At first there were a lot of people in the waiting room, then fewer and fewer. Those who could left by bus, by taxi, or went home.
I could not. I had nowhere to go.
The other person was a woman, about my age, with a suitcase bigger than a weekend needs.
We did not speak. Not for an hour. That is the custom at a station: a person behaves as if the other were not there, because they are afraid that if they speak, it will turn out that they are both in the same situation.
Then at half past ten it turned out that the buffet was closing, and that there was no more coffee.
“That’s the worst part,” she said. “Not the delay. That there’s no coffee.”
“I agree.”
That was our first sentence. The second came half an hour later, when the board postponed the train again.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Home. Or not home. To the city where I work.”
“I’m going to my mother’s. That’s why the suitcase is this big. I took her things.”
I looked at the suitcase.
“So you’re going back tonight?”
“I’m working tomorrow morning. There’s no other train.”
We sat down on the bench outside, because it was cold in the waiting room, and on the platform at least the wind was not blowing. The rain was only drizzling by then, and under the lamps you could see the drops falling through the light.
We talked. Not about big things. About how much a person hates stations, how the train is always late when you are in a hurry and never when you are not. About what her mother had said about the suitcase.
“She said I’d brought too much,” she said. “She always says that. Then she eats all of it.”
“Then you did it right.”
“Yes. I think so.”
At midnight the train came.
We got on, and since the carriage was empty we sat facing each other. That is the worst seating arrangement if you do not want to talk — and the best if you do.
We did not want to. Or rather, we did, but we did not know how to stop.
“I have a rule,” she said, “that I don’t talk to strangers on trains.”
“And?”
“And now I’ve broken it.”
“Why?”
“Because we waited two hours together, and that is no longer a stranger.”
I liked that sentence. Not because it was clever. Because it was exact.
At two in the morning we reached the city. In front of the station we parted, because we were going different ways.
“Well,” she said. “Thank you for the delay.”
“Thank you too.”
I did not ask for her number. I did not ask her name. At the time I did not know that this was a mistake.
Two weeks later I was on the same train, at the same time, waiting on the same platform. Not because I had planned it. But because a person who has met somebody in a place goes back to that place.
She did not come.
On the third week she did. She ran up two minutes before the train, soaked, and when she saw me she stopped.
“You’re here,” she said.
“I am.”
“Every week?”
“Every week.”
She looked at me for a long time. Then she said:
“Then there are two of us waiting now.”
Since then the train has never been late again. At least, not once when we travelled together.
