Character Study
Flash Fiction | 500 | Characters at Roma Street Station
Swimming amidst the stream of tied and cuffed office workers are the occasional odd debris, sticking out in their anti-rhythm.
In the half-construction site, half-thoroughfare of Roma Street terminal, a couple in mismatched attire hold hands. They part at the escalators between platforms one and two – the woman in a professional black skirt and floral blouse trailing her hand behind her as she shouts her goodbye. Her paramore is in long black pants and a dark shirt. It’s the kind that’s good for hiding stains. One look at his scuffed shoes tells me he’s off to a hospo job. He, too, lingers in their departure. His head twists twice to check behind him, like Orpheus if he were seeing Eurydice off and not securing her demise. He forgets to get his Go Card out of his wallet until he’s at the gates, a grumbly line of fast-paced schmucks checking their watches behind him. I can’t fault him. The middle stage of love is conditioning your heart to view distance as fondness.
On the other side of the barriers, two youths bob along to their bass-blasted speaker. One has bleached hair like the yellow of straw, and his whole appearance sags with his baggy clothes. On his back, he has a sack tied around him with a string, like the kind I used to bring to swim practice. His friend is baggy but in a more refined way – camo pants instead of denim jeans, a slightly oversized flannel instead of a shirt boasting a long-dead rapper. His friend wears a beanie, colour-matched to his red sneakers. At odds with the rest of his crafted appearance, he also has a swim-bag. Who influenced whom – did Baggy buy that pack for his friend? Or did they both start in the same style, and then one of them succumbed to other trends? Are all relationships a form of chrysalis until we outgrow the other?
Two boys with backpacks half their size zigzag using their knobbly knees and the awkward, angled limbs of wobbly newborn foals. Their shirts – ironed by their mothers, no doubt – are shoved unceremoniously into charcoal pants with crisp pleats. Wrapping around their slender waists is a rich leather belt, extra holes pierced through to fit it to their miniscule frames. The belt marks them as private school boys. Without matching hats and ties, though, it’s not anywhere too prestigious. Still, they hurry, and I imagine that the penalty for being late is just as strict regardless of how much you pay in private school fees. Having made the strenuous effort to not know any privately-educated folks myself, I don’t have any qualifications to speak on the matter. But, the boys, they look freshly plucked from their primaries, so the fastidiousness hasn’t quite yet corrupted them.
Is someone studying me as I study others? I dismiss it quickly as I jaywalk with my brethren. Among this field, with our blouses and button-ups, I am a blade of grass.
Unremarked. Unremarkable.