The Train From Gatwick...

 I boarded the train from Gatwick to London Victoria Station this morning and across from me sat a beautiful woman combing her hair, preparing herself for the day. She put on makeup, then meticulously her lipstick, all the while taking phone calls and receiving texts. In her eyes I could see she was anticipating something or someone and those thoughts occasionally made her smile betraying her obliviousness to her surroundings.

As I glanced at her, words that Hemingway wrote a long time ago came to mind, “A girl came in the café and sat by herself at a table near the window. She was very pretty with her face fresh as a newly minted coin if they minted coins in smooth flesh with rain-freshened skin, and her hair black as a crow’s wing and cut sharply and diagonally across her cheek. I looked at her and she disturbed me and made me very excited. I wished I could put her in the story, or anywhere, but she had placed herself so she could watch the street and the entry and I knew she was waiting for someone. So I went on writing.” 

I went on writing as well, the train speeding to Victoria Station, the sun rising, the world waking and my anonymous friend and I traveling in time and space sharing brief fleeting moments of evaporating proximity.