The Snack Trolley

Perspectives from the train

Grace got on the train with the same face she always wore to it, she’d stern her brows, her eyes, and wipe off the shine to her eyes. With one motion, she swings her too-full black bag onto one shoulder, and avoids looking at the gap, the rocky in-between.

On the train, she begins the change, takes off her black puffer jacket, then straightens out the glittery sequins of her top, matching with the gems on her shoes, like the scales of a fish, they looked. You would wonder where she goes with such a shimmering outfit, perhaps to swim, towards the sea and towards the sun.

She gets out her phone, she wants to call a friend, but on the train with so many people, she struggles to decide whether she’d disturb someone, her fingers hover over her screen for a second, before gently tapping to a hidden rhythm along its side, until she settles on texting. Her fast moving fingers only interrupted by the immobility her laughter brings.

A group of teenage, tweenage, boys walk past, moving from carriage to carriage ( perhaps in search of themselves). They move and talk in loud rude voices, making comments on the women in the carriage.

Although, the youngest lags behind, and murmurs “sorry” in his high pitched voice.

The train starts moving with uncertainty, side to side, despite its straightforward track. Grace reaches her hand to steady her bag, placed on the counter of the snack trolley (there were no seats left, after the first train broke down.)

The pubescent boys make their way through again, serenading themselves like the pawns for a king (although, each thinks himself the king), each one moving with the words (coming through!). Grace lets out a small sigh, having to move so often for someone else, and wondering to herself how the kids grew up like this. She was never this loud herself. Maybe it’s the parents, she thinks to herself, before quickly replacing her face with a polite smile, at a girl who asks her if the train has changed stations (She nods yes.)

She starts to sing a song in a quiet voice, not quite aware of herself, small and smooth her voice seems, a mixture of hums and words, amidst the rumbling of the train, and the lasting echoes of the boys voices, although they have left by now.

Her stop is the next one, but she seems distant, scrolling through a something or other, reminiscing, yearning, or mourning, with each new picture that comes her way. The whole world is controlled by this finger, she thinks, as she swipes from picture to picture, the world at her hands.

She looks down at her feet, and notices the small red (orange, maybe?) lights at the rimming of the carriage, she starts to think what they’d be for, they don’t give off much light down there, against the white lights that bathe every carriage in their same hue.

She’s getting tired of standing, so she checks her phone’s maps, expecting them to be nearing her stop, but alas, they’re nowhere near it. She texts her friend, “Hey, sorry running late, might not be there in time, got all ready and for what”

She turns off her phone, not awaiting her friend’s reply, she couldn’t make it to the last one either. Her fingers dance along her phone case again, this time rapid movements, quick and jittery. She adjusts the smaller bag on her shoulder, and tries to make out the patterns on the train;s floor instead.

A woman walks past and tells her there’s some seats left on the carriage, so she picks up her stuff, puts on her coat, and leaves the snack trolley.

A person away, Liz sits on her makeshift train seat, her suitcase, and waits for her stop. She steadies herself now, as the train shakes and shakes, anchoring herself on the walls that surround her, after another person passes, she decides she’d rather sit on the floor, decides she’d rather wash her trenchcoat than try balancing for the whole ride back.

She’d gotten caught up in the mess after they were forced to get off the first train, so she made for the furthest, emptiest entrance to the train she could find, and ended up here, stuck in the snack trolley too, her too big suitcase beside her, now a seat, for there were none in the main carriages.

Liz looks straight ahead, at the too simple illustrations on the snack trolley’s, the white croissant on a mykonos blue background, she thinks to herself, how simple could you go and have people recognise the object?

She lightly closes her eyes, and thinks back to Greece instead, to distract her the rocking that might just make her sick, not long left now, she thinks to herself.

The same lady comes back, and tells Liz there’s a seat with space for a bag inside, so she gets up, and goes to the next carriage.

Now unguarded, the two women no longer on either side, Ezra stands in the middle, awaiting to see if the seat fairy will come and bless him too. He copies Liz’s strategy, balancing himself on his suitcase, trying to make himself comfortable, but he can also see why she gave up trying.

He rests his head on the walls of the trolley, (although rest is an exaggeration, it feels as if his head is pushing the wall with all its might, trying to derail the train.) He sits there on his phone, documenting, typing away.

The train makes more and more noise, (perhaps his derailing iis working?) Ezra checks the map, and finds there hasn’t been much progress, so he resorts to zooming out enough until he can discern that what’s left of the journey is just about less than what has passed of it, so only a bit more he had to endure.

The ticket checkers haven’t been, he thinks, down 30 pounds he could’ve saved instead, about a weeks food, he thinks to himself. The mention of food reminds him of the frozen meat in his bag, double wrapped, put in a plastic muffin box, then wrapped again. Could the train cancellation, the delay, have given it enough time to bleed over all his clothes and pots and pans? He tries not to think about it, only a little bit longer, and then a littler bit after that, and he’ll be at his new home. He looks at his phone’s charge, 36%, and tries to decide whether it’s worth using it, he can’t exactly get home without it, still unfamiliar with the area he’s launched himself into, he can sort of make his way back, he thinks, if he was desperate enough, but on second thought, he can’t, so he turns off his phone too, and awaits his station.