Notes from the Underground...a glimpse

On the metro, midday. I was riding homeward. Not quite five minutes on I pulled myself from reflections on the place I'd been to the place I was. The car was full - it was lunch hour - of every sort of folk. Having left the barrio Salamanca there were townhouse ladies aplenty. Teenagers with notebooks and playing on their phones. And pink faced seniors saying things like "trousers" and "simply lovely".

   I stood my back up to the window, just inside the door. On the railing where I leaned a woman put her arm. Dark hair, still wearing sunglasses, and dressed appropriately for spring- layering her blouses and wearing loosefit chinos. My eyes passed along her arm once before going back to verify the make of a shiny silver watch. I imagined her grand flat - on Goya, Serrano, or Principe de Vergara. As I imagined the lives of such a woman's children my gaze fell upon a young boy by himself. A little roly poly specimen in sportswear sitting across from where I stood, fiddling funnily with his mobile phone. So young, and with a mobile. Pff thought I. But it was a funny fiddle indeed. Strange angle, holding the device so its back faced me direct. Its back with a camera.
   He looked up at me looking down, I shifted my gaze to his shoes. Not too far - give one's self away. Then I leaned. To the left a bit, nothing. A bit more, still nada. Shuffled my feet and moved still more and then I saw, reflected in the glass behind him, on his phone's screen the image of the woman standing to my right - a plain, preoccupied middle-aged thing with her arms crossed in front of her and her mind adrift. Spy games, I figured. Boy thinks he's slick. But too easily sussed out. Much to learn, young'n.

   In my new position I faced the slim man sitting to the boy's right. Tan skin, short white hair, soft. Iberian for sure, I could tell by the way he held his pen, but with moorish descent somewhere down the line. Fifty perhaps. The first thing I noticed beyond his slightly hunched-over, cross-legged pose, was his old leather briefcase placed across his lap like a desk. Camel brown and polished, you could tell it was genuine and nice. Once a showpiece, to be sure.
   Anyway, the hunch, and the pen. His right hand held down a small piece of paper while his clean and slender left (no more so than the right, by the way) scribed numbers for a moment. Then, using the penpoint held above he in rapid movements worked out the arithmetic he'd set up. A second or two no more as one number spread to two or three more before being circled and left. He regarded the final figure and quickly folded the slip. His head was tilted down, hunched as he was over his lap, but I could see his shaven face. His lips pursed and I knew he'd closed his eyes. He remained still.
   I looked at the man. He was clean and neat, lean, modest, and soft skinned. He drank and smoked little or not at all, and I got the impression that he smelled nice up close and away from public transport. I looked again at his bag - once a showpiece but now edges were frayed and strings stuck out here and there. His shoes, too, were nice and matched the leather case, but wrinkles and creases showed their age. I imagined him shining them with care over several years, slowly and in silence. He wore light framed glasses with thick lenses. They were also nice and understated. They would rarely make a sound when he put them down.
   All this time I observed he remained still, one leg resting across the other, hands resting on his briefcase, head down with eyes closed. Once, he folded the paper again, this time slowly into his palm with his thumb. I thought about the faces flashing through his mind - wife, son, daughter, maybe mother or father. Then that figure, written so swiftly and lightly like he half-hoped he could rub it out.

   Then the train stopped. Doors slid apart, I turned and stepped off, leaving him there with his head down, among the Samsung, Bvlgari, and Dickies trousers. I imagine he never saw any of us.