He & She

He was a slim, adroitly dressed man of middle age. Perhaps fifty, perhaps a few years older. His shortly cut gray hair didn't fit well with the smooth, unwrinkled expression that he now interrupted with a pair of somewhat square-edged, darkly-framed reading glasses. From his sporty backpack - actually a leather attaché case would have gone better with the gray suit - he extracted a book rich in pages, enclosed in a black leather case. James Joyce. Ulysses. But she didn't know that yet. All she saw were the well-groomed and tender hands holding the book leather, thinking about her own short and chewed-up fingernails always bearing the brunt when she became nervous or hectic, something that happened all too often, as her hands, which she tried now to hide beneath her threadbare carrying bag, revealed.

He hadn't yet turned to his book. To avoid looking immediately at the girl sitting across from him, he glanced out the window. Slowly his glance shifted from the dirty and scratched window glass to the chin-length, somewhat unruly hair of the girl, or was it perhaps a young woman? Out of the depths of her chestnut-brown hair shone two, perhaps three gray hairs. She might be twenty or even thirty. Read the book, read the book, his thoughts repeated. He stared at the letters that somehow wouldn't form themselves into comprehensible words or coherent sentences. They represented black forms endeavoring to hide the whiteness of the pages, but without success. The brightness of the paper's surface dominated the foreground as the black, dissolving forms lost themselves ever more. He removed his reading glasses and glanced up - without the glasses he could see her face clearly and distinctly, the somewhat roundish form hidden partly by the strains of inconsistently falling hair. The clearly denoted mouth, full but somewhat pale, as if the red that had surely been there once had been sucked out by someone's kiss. Had he just thought about kissing? The book, the book, hurry, read…

She wondered what kind of a book he would read with such distraction and inattention. The leather case hid the cover - the bookmark, a small publisher's brochure depicting James Joyce. No, it couldn't be that easy. That would be banal. Or was it that easy? Could he really be reading that book? If he actually were reading Ulysses then he wouldn't read it that way, in the train, looking up every two minutes. She tried to tear her attention from the book and his hands which cradled it, and turn her attention to his person as a whole. But she couldn't. The thought of those hands touching her, the way they touched that book in this moment, would not let her go. Look out the window!

Why did she turn around? Now he could only see her lips from the side, their fullness no longer visible, his eyes no longer able to follow their contour. He turned back to his book and succeeded in reading another page, turned to the next page.

He moved his hand! Why did I have to look away? Now it will be two whole pages before he turns the page again, and by that time I'll surely have to get off. I hope he doesn't leave before me. I couldn't stand the empty seat.

The new page could not compete with her lips. She turned again and is looking at - the floor? Or is she maybe looking at him? The book slid to the empty seat next to him and fell from the leather case. So it was Ulysses. As he groped for the fallen book, returned it to its case, placed the case back on his lap, and searched for the missing page, she stared at him as if to impress for all time the light, flowing and simultaneously subdued motion in her memory, and satiate herself on it. Yes, she did look at me! Her lips parted slightly, as if she wanted to say something, but had lost the power to speak. He sensed a strong desire to touch those lips with his index finger, to slowly and carefully glide it across the rosy surface. Unconsciously he raised the index finger.

He's looking at me! Does he know I've been staring at his hands this entire time? So what if he does! She raised her glance. For one moment they looked in each other's eyes. The next stop was announced.

He closed the leather case and packed it into his backpack, she allowed her bag to slide from her lap and stood up. It was obvious that they would both leave at the same time. The train stopped, both arose and came to the exit. The door opened, the people - he and she among them - streamed out. Without looking back he went along the platform to the left. She stepped off to the right side. The doors closed noisily and the train rolled away past the people, he and she among them, both moving ever further away from each other.