2:40 p.m.
—Number 431, please step forward.

The hall is vast, reminds me of a train station or one of those huge German squares under a leaden sky. The air is cool, but not in a pleasant way.

These are the places I like best—crowded enough, but not too crowded. If it’s too noisy, I can’t follow the conversations, or worse, I only catch disjointed scraps.

A couple: she’s beautiful, youthful-looking, but older than him. She gazes at him like she’s in the presence of someone more intelligent than herself. She seems on the verge of asking him something, then hesitates, looks away, smiles.

I edge closer — they’re so absorbed in each other they won’t notice me. They step up to the counter. The clerk on duty looks annoyed, itching to call 432. They hand her a blue card.

– I got a notice to come to this counter, she says.
– Wait here.

The woman with the headscarf steps down from her perch and disappears behind a glass door. An unmissable opportunity for her to chat with the man who intrigues her so much.

– So, what was Monica like?
– Irritable, frivolous, and stubborn.
– and why did you leave her?
– she was too frivolous.
– the fact that she was irritable and stubborn didn’t bother you?
– sharp deduction.
– So if I were irritable and stubborn, you wouldn’t mind.
– You’re irritable and stubborn.
– And you like that.
– yes.
– And I’m not frivolous.
– yes you are.
– then you’ll leave me!
– no.
– why?
– I adore your frivolity.

She wants to marry him, as soon as possible.

– And what was David like?

Now she’s the prey in the game she started; the headscarf doesn’t reappear. She takes a deep breath.

– He was, obviously, the embodiment of my father. Distant, completely consumed by work, depressed. He loved me very much, in his own way.
– and why did you leave him?

the scarf does not reappear on the horizon.

– Because – she pauses, her face dulling — because suddenly I realized this is what happens when you wish for a simple life: you end up in a deck chair on the Titanic, in an empty living room in a big house in some improbable little town in the province of somewhere, waiting for the oven to get hot enough to bake bread. And the man you rashly decided to spend your life with is light-years away, lost in himself, turned into a playmate in a game that’s not much fun—and too old to be playing it anyway.

– In a deck chair on the Titanic.

And there it is—like the Seventh Cavalry’s flag—the headscarf, back in triumph with a large envelope.

Time to let go. But I have enough material to imagine the rest of her thoughts.

The first time they had sex, he seemed to take for granted that things would go that way. She was both annoyed and attracted by all that confidence.
She thought, “you can’t just fuck me like I’m anyone“, then she said, “fuck me like I’m anyone“. That convinced the paranoid part of her that they’d never fall into routine, that she could be a different woman each time—that she’d be able to pull it off.

But he wanted the same woman every time. And that silenced the voices in her head—including the little tunes that played at night when she struggled to sleep. And once her mind fell silent, her body began to speak. From then on, every time she was with him, it went that way.

A couple still in their happy phase. I got lucky today.

They pass by me on their way out.

– I’ve never seen you so tired as last night. I went out for a walk and you didn’t even notice.
– Yeah, yeah. He smiles, looking down

All right then.
Time to head back to base.

This need I have to eavesdrop—maybe it’s a little obsessive? Every time I do it deliberately—choosing the place and the target, dressing as anonymously as possible so no one notices—I feel like a vampire: full and guilty. I’ve stolen a tiny slice of someone else’s life. I’ll keep speculating on their faces and the infinite multiverses they might wander into; they’ll even show up in my dreams.

I decide to take the metro home—it’s one of my favorite places, a tangle of short conversations.