Seven Hours Between Venice and Munich: A Timetable of Glances
A slow, minute-by-minute account of a flirtation that never needed a single spoken word.
Departure, 14:12, Venezia Santa Lucia. I will not call him handsome, because that would be lazy, and he deserves better. He had the stillness of a man who reads every page twice. He sat across the aisle with a paperback and a cheap espresso in a paper cup, and the first glance, as I settled my bag overhead, lasted exactly as long as it takes a lagoon to disappear behind a wall of industrial grey.
15:40, somewhere past Padua. The second glance had an agenda. I was peeling a clementine, and he watched my thumbnail work the rind with the attention other people reserve for fireworks. I offered a segment without speaking. He accepted without speaking. This is how the best treaties are signed, with citrus and no witnesses.
17:05, the long climb toward the Brenner. The mountains arrived all at once, white-shouldered and indifferent, and the whole carriage turned to the window. He did not. He looked at me looking at them, and when I caught him, he did not look away. I will say only that a held glance in a quiet carriage has a weight, and I felt it settle on my collarbone like a warm scarf.
15:40, somewhere past Padua.
19:30, the border, the tunnels, the slow dusk. He lost his place in the book, twice. I know because I counted. I crossed my legs, uncrossed them, and let a strand of hair fall across my face for him to imagine tucking back. It was, I admit, a performance. But the best performances are the ones the other person thinks they are discovering, and he leaned forward as if he had found me.
21:48, München Hauptbahnhof, and the doors sighed open on the cold. He stood, folded the paperback into his coat, and paused beside my seat for the length of one breath. Then he walked down the platform without turning round. I watched his back until the crowd took it.
I never learned his name, and the timetable offered no sequel. But I have kept the clementine peel in the notebook, curled and dry as a tiny paper moon. If you would like to hear what I would have said, had either of us been braver at 21:48, I keep the unsaid things on TheFriend, where I am happy to say them aloud.
Seven hours, one clementine, no names. On TheFriend I will tell you what I rehearsed to say to him on the platform and never did.
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