Mind the Gap
A short story
Only an idiot stands with their feet over the yellow line. Yeah, that’s what she’d always thought but here she is, pressed further forward than ever before. Her dirty Converse trainers had turned the ‘G’ into a ‘C’ so her wandering thoughts were pondering what ‘Cap’ she should mind. Boredom does that to a person. Six years of this shit and no end in sight. A dead-end job at the end of a crappy commute where she is routinely touched up by an entitled tosser of a boss who thinks she is there for his amusement. Six years and all her life choices have disappeared quicker than a wrong train arriving as she finally wrestled her way to the front.
Was it her? The dirty bastard standing way too close behind her was taking advantage of the overcrowded space to invade hers. Maybe it was. She gave up on men years ago but still, they press themselves against her. Dirty grubby lowlifes thinking she owed them something. Fuckers. Her landlord was the worst; every time she was struggling with the rent, there he was, an ugly foot in desperate need of nail clippers jammed in the door, his soiled tracksuit bottoms filthier than his mind. The worst of it was she always struggled with the rent. Last night’s bowl of pasta cooked with half a tin of own-brand tomatoes, the fourth night in a row she had ‘treated herself’, was the only way of saving the pennies and guaranteeing she wouldn’t need the landlord’s handout … or, what he called ‘putting her hand out’ for him. She gagged at the thought. Eat cheaply, cover the rent, that was her mantra.
There she was, on the opposite platform. Her friendly smile was the only bright spot in this long run of shitty days. The young woman was smart and coordinated. She wondered what the woman thought when she looked over at her. She tried to bring a ‘look’ together but there was no spare money. Her wardrobe was a sorry reflection of the frantic packing when she’d escaped six years ago. Six years of wear and tear, on her and her meagre possessions. She liked the woman’s smile. There was a gentle warmth to it, the sort of smile that made you feel safe, made you feel like you had been noticed. When you see someone almost every day, you can’t help but wonder about them. What they read. Do they cook? What does their voice sound like when it whispers … it was easy to drift.
But there it is again, the insistent nudging behind her, way too close for comfort, much too intrusive to ignore. With an embarrassed smile at the young woman, she whirls, eyes blazing. “Fuck off out of my space, you sad, dirty bastard”. In the silence of the morning commute, broken only by the disappointing excuses of apologetic announcements, her voice spoke of a confidence she thought had been crushed. Pushing past him into the claustrophobic press of bodies, she cast a disdainful “and do your flies up” over her shoulder.
From the tiled corridor where she allowed her exhausted body to slide to the floor, she could hear the busker, his music way more upbeat than her mood. Thoughts raced. She was late now for the job she hated. If she turned up he would call her in, standing way too close as he talked about discipline and punishment in that vile lascivious way that she had tried to describe for the Complaint. The tribunal had been made up of men just like him, the case dismissed after they drew out the humiliation of her evidence. No, she decided, going back to her shitty no-hope job was not the answer.
As the shadow fell over her, her resolve was on the brink of crumbling.
But an unfamiliar voice cut through the doubt. Her voice pierced the uncertainty and her heart. “Fuck the lot of them”. The smart young woman smiled at her, pretty green eyes boring into her thoughts. “Let’s get the hell out of here”. The feel of the cool fingers entwined in hers opened up a world of dizzying possibilities.