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Oliver's Mobile
Oliver checked the time on his mobile. Work was done for the day but he was still tied to another position. A different shift with a different boss--with different tasks to complete.
He knew she'd call soon. It was always around this time, when he was riding the tube. This knowledge disturbed the remainders of his nights--this knowing that she could reach him, down here even. Made him a little less comfortable entering pubs, or bringing a lady back to his high-priced flat in the Southwest of London. He wasn't safe anywhere, carrying this mobile around. The satellites could reach him, here--on a padded blue seat in the Underground, slouching his way with thousands of strangers towards home, tired, beneath the streets. The cars rattle past each other, in all these tunnels connected by wires.
When they had agreed that he would take the job in London, that he would leave them during the weekdays, that they - she and the kids--would stay back in Brighton--it was for the money mostly. The pay was too good to pass - and soon (maybe), they could find a place that would fit them all. But she didn't want the kids on those streets. Breathing city air. (And he understood that, blowing his nose in the bathroom at night, dirt in his snot--grime even under his groomed fingernails. Understood she wanted those children to be--simple, undisrupted by the noisy life in London--hers.) She wanted to stay in that neighborhood and knew that Oliver's offer was the only acceptable one. So, they compromised. They settled for living between phone numbers--him on the train and her in the house. She had expected this, he thought. She had expected and accepted this.
The only time he was free from his mobile was on the weekends, when he came home on the Brighton Express. The tiny phone was always turned off and pushed to the bottom of his briefcase just as he reached the train station. Even then, home and with the kids and eating her meals--he felt tied. These two occupations.
Oliver told his wife, explained to his kids that this job would not be for too long--that soon he would grab an even better position and soon be able to work from home, with them. He knew this was not true, but told them anyway.
He wanted to stay in London because he loves riding the tube. The tube is anonymous comfort. It is, for him: crowding into a narrow space, brushing against bodies, sticking briefcases between your legs for more available room, to let one more person press in and cram their way aboard. It was a modern dance -- everyone simultaneously shifting their weight in order to center themselves, to steel against the shaking of the tunnels' curves, finding the perfect stance that combats gravity and inertia.
For Oliver, there was nothing sexier than a jam-packed tube car. The fingers dwelling (too long?) over metal and skin and sweaters. Sometimes, he would get to his flat and find a long strand of a woman's hair on his jacket. He would pull it off slowly, would hold it in his hands, savoring the brief contact, culmination of the journey of a tiny piece of some woman's body (he probably never even saw her face) into his cold apartment.
This is what the tube offered him. All of these people, in the dark together. Packed inside the loud clatter of these machines--all controlled by unknown workers, looming in glass control rooms over the platforms and ticket entries, punching computer keys and pressing buttons to initiate the recordings. Forcing disembodied out of the numerous speakers, always carefully guiding the commuters:
"Mind the gap."
"Please be careful of the closing doors."
"Change here for the District and Circle lines."
He loved the mundane efficiency. The direct emptiness.
***
Oliver's phone rings.
The screen is flashing her name.
His wife's name:
MARISSA.
It flashes five times. Black capital letters. Each flash grows more urgent, more nervous. He feels her tense through the connections of phone lines and satellites and microchips.
He is staring down at his phone, not seeing the strangers stare at him, at his hand holding the ringing phone. A man across from Oliver glares the hardest of anyone.
The man wants Oliver to look up at his scowl, his scorn--to recognize that no one in this train wants to hear that phone. Wants him to see that after the long day, this ringing phone is unbearable. The man thinks that Oliver just has to look up and realize that they cannot bear it. Not today.
But Oliver is working out in his head this small private misery that is talking to his wife after work.
***
Oliver answers his phone. "Hi love."
"Oliver - you on the train?"
She always asked this. He always answered it, sitting on the train.
"Yeah... how was the day?"
"Ehh..." She sounded tired. "You know--the kids--Everything is good. They..."
"Yeah." Oliver is thinking about a recurring nightmare. In it, he is standing on the edge of a park, looking at a steel gray city stretched cartoonishly before him. The buildings appear cracked, and he can't help but stare up to them. Orange and red leaves fall from the cracks and he can't remember his name. It is lost under his wife's voice. His wife is a voice - a ghost that haunts the city's blank streets. The background noises: mini-cabs going by, people walking their dogs--they all sound like his kids. The noise increases and he goes down to his knees, where he thinks he can clear his head and remember his name. 'SNAP!' Something pops to the right of him. 'SNAP! SNAP!' He turns his head and sees a gaggle of Japanese tourists, all gawking at him, all obscured and blurred by a wall of flashes. They
are holding cameras out to him, snapping pictures as if they have never seen a white businessman have a nervous breakdown. He clamps his eyes shut, his fingers reach inside his ears--but the flashes still appear like balloons behind his eyelids. He usually wakes up then, still not totally sure of his name.
"How was work?" She asks with as much concern as one can convey through the tinny speaker of a cell phone. Oliver winces to answer.
"Bloody long.... but - just more work. So...."
"Right." For all he knew her eyes could be closed. She could be on the floor. Half asleep. "What are you--"
"Dinner. Then some papers to look over. Did you get the check for--"
"Yeah, oh yes, I did." This could be a taped recording. She might have recorded it this morning and is now sitting on the couch eating ice cream while he sits on the train talking to a tape recorder. Her voice continued its message. "Thanks for being so quick. I can't believe I forgot to send that in."
"It was no problem to get the money..."
"—and they called. It was so embarrassing. Just--with everything..."
"Yeah, well, like I was saying. Just dinner and some work and--I might head to the pub later on... to meet some mates. Later on, that is."
He didn't need to say this. She knew what this was. They had compromised. They had settled for this. He thought she had expected this. Expected and accepted this.
"Great, great." Her voice cracked. "It's good that you get away from work. Oh, I almost forgot--Jamie wanted to talk to you." He could hear that she was in the kitchen, the phone moving away from her mouth as she craned her neck to see if Jamie was around. He could her the tap running, could see her looking back out the window. "Oh, but he's at the neighbors watching a video..."
"Right." The train was stopped. In the dark of a tunnel. Oliver is nodding into his phone. To silence. He wants to pry the automatic sliding doors open and grab one of the thick cables running parallel to the car. Tear it from the walls of the tunnel with his teeth.
She spoke again, "I think that Spiderman rubbish or something..."
"Well, he can tell me tomorrow - oh yeah, Friday? I have to catch a later train. Just a few hours."
"Oh--OK?"
"Sorry, M. The fucking boss. No one else has families, really, and me leaving early every Friday--I guess it looks bad or--"
"Oh, you know. That's the..."
"Yeah, yeah. Oh. My stop is almost here." Oliver lies. The train is still stuck in the tunnel. The muffled voice of the conductor is talking, explaining problems. Oliver can't understand it.
"Right, OK. Well, I guess... have a good night and try not to stress about work."
The train is moving again. The secret controllers have unbent the kink. Fulham-Broadway is still three stops away.
"Great. Thanks, hon. I'll talk to you tomorrow."
His wife was a voice.
"I love you." His wife, the voice, said.
And Oliver thought of that woman. And her keyboard. He will see the woman and her keyboard today. She plays a Casio in one of the Underground's many passageways. The same spot - but her schedule is a mystery. He bought a paper today during lunch--ensuring he would have 40p to drop, clanging into her coffee can. The maroon one that sits next to her feet.
Surely, a thousand people her while she played, and she looked at all of them with the same blank regard. A void moved before her--as if she was imagining them all without their faces. He liked thinking of the woman and her keyboard this way, a lone pianist for the crowds of phantoms. All of them swaying to her music.
Oliver noticed her. Noticed the way she played, standing, staring out blankly. She never returned his stare, never pleaded with eyebrows for spare change. Why hadn't he caught her eyes?
"Yeah..." Oliver finally replied to his distant wife, to a voice. "I love you, too. Gotta run."
He thinks his wife can hear the gasp of the doors as they open, the beeps indicating a routine stop. She says "bye" away from his ear, nearly inside his suit coat, just before he clamps the phone shut. It rests quietly against his chest.
Oliver breathes once again and waits for his exit.
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