The Doors Are Closing

"Please stand clear. The doors are closing." That's how every train ride started. Common folk traveling to common places alone, but together. People shuffled into compact seats with ugly patterns stapled onto them, and they pulled out whatever distraction was most suitable: books, phones, papers, toys if they were young. One could almost call train rides a form of meditation. All the passengers make it their goal to become invisible, silent, forgetful of the other invisibles sitting next to them. Every once in a while people stood out, but even if that happened it was treated as an unacknowledged anomaly. 

There was one particular homeless man who sat in the seat across from me on one of these trains. He looked like any stereotypical bum, disheveled and lugging a random assortment of objects behind him. He had a cellphone in his hand that didn't seem too old to make him outdated, nor too new to make him seem like a hypocrite. Every few minutes or so, he would raise the phone to his ear, somewhat excitedly, and say, "Hello?"
Of course, there was nobody on the other end of the line, but how could he know for sure? That was probably his reasoning for checking over and over again. In a way, I didn't see him as deranged or ill. In fact, he was more sane than any of the other passengers. At least he answers the phone. Most of us have become too impatient to do that.