(The Secret Double Lives of) Strangers on Trains

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"Are you alright?"

I instantly jolted, spilling the paper cup of now-cold coffee over the table in front of me. Bursting into a stream of apologies, I began to scramble frantically through my handbag for tissues to mop up the mess.

I squinted. The white-bright springtime sun had burst out from behind the racing trees to cast a search spotlight over the train's dull interior.

"No, no, no," the stranger apologised hastily. "It's fine, it's fine. I shouldn't have startled you. I have a packet of tissues in my bag somewhere if that'd help?" he asked, casting a glance at the briefcase on the seat next to him.

"Don't worry," I muttered, now holding a wad of soaked tissues. Stuck on a moving train, I had no idea what to do with it, so I just put it down quietly on the table and we stared at it for a few silent seconds.

I sighed, and we listened to the background chatter for a while. The silence was weighted with static tension. I was determined to break it.

"So, I'm sorry, what did you want?"

The man gave an uncomfortable little shuffle. "Well, I mean, you looked kind of sad? I guess I felt the need to say something."

"Sad?" I was on the way back from work, ready to greet last night's Countdown taped and waiting for me in my flat. I honestly had nothing to be sad about.

"Slightly melancholy," he elaborated. "Almost like you were in a trance."

It was very possible that this man had just witnessed me staring gormlessly out of a window and mistook it for some form of philosophical musing.

I had taken a moment to gaze out at the city dashing by. I'll admit, I found it far too easy to get lost in the passing comfort of those elusive yellow windows. By the time I'd torn my eyes away, there had been a young man in a second-hand suit sat opposite me, gawking at me like a lab scientist.

"Well, I'm not trying to be rude or intrusive or anything," he went on, making an animated hand motion with every word, "but was that meditation right there? I'm hoping to complete a study on ancient meditation versus modern. Whether consumerism has severed its roots and whatnot. Like yoga."

"Like yoga," I repeated cautiously.

I had no idea where he was going with this, and I truthfully felt a little uncomfortable that a stranger had been watching me stare stupidly out of a window for this long.

Scooting a little closer to the edge of his seat, the man said, "So, what kind of meditation was that? Ancient Buddhist or a more modern variant?"

"I wasn't meditating," I explained quickly, watching his face fall. "I was just...you know. Watching windows."

After a second spent looking thoroughly disappointed, the stranger instantly perked up and straightened his dejected slouch. "So you were curtain twitching?"

"Well no, obviously not, we're on a high-speed train," I defended, crossing my arms tight.

"Yeah, that just adds an element of excitement. Extreme Curtain-Twitching," he mused, smirking as the words left his mouth.

"For god's sake..."

I had every intention of shoving some headphones on and avidly ignore the man. What made me stop, however, was that I could see him staring out of the train window as I had been. His eyes dashed left to right as he tried to catch each rare yellow frame against the pale city silhouettes.

"I don't know how you do this," he confessed. "I swear to god I'll end up with a migraine at this rate."

He stopped window watching to blink hard a few times, trying to relax his eyes.

Shrugging, I gazed out at the city rushing by. "I don't know," I said, "I mean, you're not supposed to try and see everything at once. Just focus on one window I guess?" I heaved a sigh. "I can't believe I'm giving you curtain twitching tips right now."

"You admitted it!" he beamed, his eyes lighting up.

Then, noticing my scowl he did everything in his power to cram that grin back into a straight expression, and he looked out of the window again. "I don't see how this is therapeutic."

The train had hurtled past a cluster of buildings. Admittedly, the conditions weren't as ideal as they had been a few months ago when I'd first began making this commute. Spring had crept up on us, and with it came the whitewashed morning skies and the pastel blue afternoons that followed.

"It's better in the winter," I admitted, "when the sky's dark and everyone's lights are on."

The man slumped back into his seat, his face fatigued with the effort of concentration. Instead of pointing out what a strange pastime this was, he groaned, "Should've told me."

For the first time today, a small smile began to worm its way onto my lips. "Sorry. It's an art."

"You know," he said seriously, "it must be. What else would be the appeal? Why go to all the effort?"

"Boredom," I shrugged.

The stranger just raised his eyebrows. He wasn't doubting it, said his look, but he was merely surprised.

"Fascination," I corrected myself. I may as well, I figured, be honest. There was a strange quality to this man that brought to mind a frumpy movie-screen psychiatrist - dressed in a drab brown suit and old oxfords, but with the kind of energy that only came with some well-hidden eccentricity.

Grinning keenly, he shuffled forwards and put his palms flat on the table. "Now we're talking."

I failed to stifle a smile. "You find that interesting?"

"Well," he grinned, "you never know when it comes to the secret double-lives of strangers on trains."

The man's eyes flickered briefly to the couple sitting just across the aisle from us. A woman staring passively at her phone, and a man with a relentless twitch bouncing his right leg.

"He's agitated because she had an affair," he whispered to me, eyes still fixed on the couple. "She's rereading the texts from her foreign lover, oblivious. He's suspected something for months, and it's caused him to develop a nervous twitch. It troubles him even more that she hasn't noticed."

Tearing my eyes from them, I let out the breath I didn't know I'd been holding. "You don't know that."

He turned his head, locking my gaze with his own. "Exactly. That's the beauty of it. And that's why you look into people's windows."

I frowned. "You've lost me."

A little smile tugging at his lips, he began, "On a winter's afternoon, a young lady begins a weekday commute."

I rolled my eyes. "For god's sake, a narrative? Really?"

Propping it up on two fingers, he made a puppet from his hand and walked it to the window. I watched it with equal parts fascination and scepticism.

"Outside the train she sees the rushing lights of the city."

He walked his hand to the window, making it hop over the mess of tissues from before. It just hit me how fast the pulse of the train on the tracks was. It was frantic, just like the frenzied pace his words were falling into.

"The afternoon is dark, and the yellow windows are strung up like polaroids against the sky. And in each frame is a story." His whole face lit up when he said it. "And she can pluck them from the sky, just for a second, and observe the picture without quite being part of it. The secret double-lives of strangers in yellow windows."

My lips thinned as I tried to find some smart comeback or shrewd protest. I should have figured that if anyone would be likely to start psycho-analysing strangers on public transport, it would be this guy.

"There's a story in each of those frames," he went on. Though his voice was hushed and frenetic, to my ears at least it drowned out the overhead announcement. "And with each story you steal, an opportunity is wasted for you to build your own."

His face shattering into a colossal victory grin, he slumped back in his seat again. He seemed exhausted. The look on his face was that of someone who had just annihilated some insurmountable mystery.

Then, in a fragile little second, I realised that he had.

"It's springtime," he said, this time more composed. "The view's not so good, is it? Maybe you should stop looking."

"Maybe so should you."

I had no idea where the words came from, and the strange man looked almost as surprised as I was.

"Excuse me?" he prompted.

I shrugged. "Well, yeah, it's springtime. The view out there is beautiful. Maybe you should look at it every once in a while instead of obsessing over strangers in trains." I cast a glance at the couple opposite us.

"Maybe it's good to 'obsess'," he bit back, his long fingers forming clumsy air-quotations, "over strangers on trains. Builds a healthy imagination."

"It's no healthier to obsess over the people inside trains than the people outside them."

Slowly, his face bent into the knowing smile of a man who enjoyed a good stalemate. "I'll tell you what," he proposed. "Maybe we're both at fault. Maybe we ought to snap out of it? Just for a day, at least?"

A stab of indignation hit me. What right did a stranger have to be making these claims? But then, oddly enough, I realised that he was no stranger than the phantom figures in those yellow windows.

"And you're right," he went on. "It's springtime. It's beautiful. Maybe it's time we started making our own stories? Maybe," he said, this time slower, "we should get off the train?"

The train ground to a halt.

end

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[A/N]

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