Central Station

A man travels home from work one night, in a hurry.

One dark night in the middle of the city, a man is running to catch a train home. He clutches tightly onto his briefcase with one hand and his phone with the other as he hurries past all the little fast food stands in Central Station. He’s late today. The man imagines his wife and two young children waiting for him at home with the dinner table all set except for one empty chair, and he’s angry to have disappointed them yet again.

As the man weaves past all the other shivering bodies in the crowded station, he wraps his scarf around him tighter. Winter has just settled in, and there’s a stinging coldness which penetrates the city, despite all the people shuffling around and huddling like penguins in a snowstorm. The man dodges the people handing out free newspapers; harder than said than done because they seem to lock onto their target and corner you from all four sides. Those papers are full of junk and real estate advertisements. Finally he makes it through all the daily obstacles in the station, and his mood lifts when he sees the ticket gates with the neon lights in the distance. Home! The man speeds up with a burst of spirit; maybe he’ll even make an earlier train. He rustles in his breast pocket for his wallet and slams it down on top of the scanner.

Card invalid.

D****t, he curses. His gaze swings around to the station guard at the gates and he quickly moves towards him, pushing away all the bodies pressing in the opposite direction. At this rate, he’ll be home after the kids are asleep. His wife won’t be pleased. She’s been nagging him about getting a job closer to home for weeks already, but now that he’s been promoted, he can’t afford to quit. The ticket man has a dark beard and a heavy accent, and he can barely decipher his broken English. The man shakes his head and gives up, walking over to the ticket machine to buy another ticket. D****t, lousy public transport.

As the man fumbles with the ticket machine buttons with his frozen fingers, he’s startled by a wailing noise. There’s a homeless man with his back against the wall sitting a few metres from him, and he’s just started howling along to the agonizing dissonance of the guitar he’s strumming. He can barely pick out the tune. Is it ‘Twinkle Twinkle’? His kids went through the nursery song phase too long ago for him to remember. The man looks about fifty, although his straggly brown beard and greasy hair hide his features, so his guess could be a few decades off. He glances at the cardboard sign propped up against a bucket a metre in front of the homeless man, and his eyes skim over the scrawled writing. The usual story, he thinks. The man stops strumming the guitar, thank heavens for that, and he swigs down some liquid from a brown bottle. Some of it escapes his purplish lips and is caught in small droplets in his beard. Disgusting, thinks the man, shaking his head. He wonders why homeless people don’t save up to buy clothes or something more useful, food maybe, rather than wasting it on alcohol. He will never understand that. The man’s been staring for a while now, although he doesn’t realise until he hears a sharp cough from an office woman waiting for the machine behind him, with heels higher than any of the shoes his wife owns. She looks like she’s heading to a club, the way she’s dressed. He flushes and apologises before quickly paying for his ticket, and dashes through the ticket gates.

For many nights, this routine continues. It becomes a habit for the man, and even while he runs for the train and his heart is thinking of his family, his eyes are drawn to this homeless man and his off-pitch guitar. Of course he never stops to drop any coins in the bucket; he’s not about to pay for someone else’s drinking habits. People walk around the homeless man in a large arc, as if there’s a white chalk line marked on the ground warning them to keep away. He’s starting to smell like a urine-and-alcohol cocktail, and it’s almost enough to make you gag.

Tonight is the man’s tenth wedding anniversary. He knew he shouldn’t have agreed to sort through all those files for his boss, but it’s too late now. As soon as he finishes work, he runs from the office straight to the train station, picking up some roses and a card along the way. His wife dropped the kids off at their grandparents’ after school so that they could spend the night alone, and she’s probably prepared his favourite dishes. It’s eight already; he’ll probably find her moping in front of the television when he gets home. He bought a bottle of her favourite red wine in case she decides to cry and yell about his stupid work or worse yet, ignore him entirely.

So the man runs towards the station gates, his mind filled with thoughts about quitting his job and how he should apologise to his wife, and as he runs, he doesn’t notice that the homeless man and his screeching guitar have disappeared from Central Station. 

Author's Note

This was the beginning of an idea to develop a character.