From Marginal to Statiun Centrala

I know. a door closing behind her I am at the bottom of your stair.

Take your time.

standing by the bicycle racks with her hands in her jacket pockets That I am coming to the station with you. I swapped the first two hours of my shift on Friday, so they will not be waiting for me at eight.

Yes, I stay here. I put you on the train and then I go to the docks.

taking the strap of his bag off his shoulder and putting it over her own Then we walk.

sitting down next to him with the bag on her knees Tell me the first three things you do at Haneda.

Change money later, Nozaki will do it with you. Immigration, your bag off the belt, customs, and then out into the hall where she will be reading the arrivals screen.

the harbour still in the window behind them And at the house, do not stand in the doorway explaining who you are. Say my name first.

No, none. Nozaki will interpret, so everything you say goes through her, and everything he says comes back the same way.

Then talk casually, I have no more logistics in me either.

Yes, most of the years at home. I was much more closed than I am now, I said nothing at work beyond what the work needed. On my birthday I sat in my flat with a cake I had bought myself.

The ninth of November.

July is easier than November, you get nice weather for it. Mine falls when it is already dark by five at home.

I would take them, all of them, even from people who read the date off a screen.

Because somebody had to open the message and type it. It costs almost nothing, and almost nothing is more than the silence I had.

the bag shifting on her knees as she turns to him Then I will be waiting for it.

On time as well. the doors closing and the four notes for the next stop playing You have the whole line to think about what you will say at that door.

There is the Toden line in the north, one car at a time, thirty stops from Minowabashi to Waseda, and the Setagaya line in the west, which is private. Everything else was pulled up in the sixties for the roads and the subway.

We had two weeks of it and I said most of what I had. What is left now is the door in Kami, and I have gone through that with you three times already.

She never did that at the company. What you do there is go out after work and drink until the thing comes out sideways, and the next morning it counts as nothing said, and neither of us drank, so we simply went home with it.

You get good at it, that is the whole trick. I would come home, put the light on, eat standing up, and by the time I sat down there was nothing left that wanted saying.

I was the other kind of child. My mother would send me out to play with the girls in the building and I would go, and by four I had come back up on my own to read on the floor of the corridor where it was cool, and she thought something was wrong with me for a while.

My mother warned me about nothing, because I never gave her anything to warn me about. the tram slowing for a stop There is a cost to that as well, and I paid it later than you would have.

I arrived here at twenty-five with almost no practice at any of it. A woman on the tram asked me something in my second week and I gave her an answer you would give a supervisor, and I could hear myself doing it and could not stop.

She asked if I was new and where I had come from, and I told her the month I arrived, the name of the cooperative, and what my hours were. She only wanted to know whether I liked it here.

the tram running past the yard with the tool library in it Impulsive how?

Then leave it there, I am not going to open that on a tram half an hour before you get on a train.

I noticed it on the first day, in the empty car. You were doing the impression with your whole arm and I was sitting there with my hands down.

There is a difference, though. A quiet person can still move, and my grandmother used to say I sat like furniture.

If the door does not open, or if it opens and he sends you away, what do you do then?

a short laugh Soak in it and see how long you last. It is still close to thirty there at the end of September, and wet.

Mamonaku, ichibansen ni. (Shortly, at platform 1.) turning to look at him Where did you get that?

Mamonaku, ichibansen ni, Shibuya, Shinjuku houmen yuki ga mairimasu. Abunai desu kara, kiiroi sen no uchigawa made osagari kudasai. (Shortly, at platform 1, the service bound for Shibuya and Shinjuku will arrive. It is dangerous, so please stand back behind the yellow line.) facing forward again That is the whole of it.

That is how it works, the verb waits until the end. You will hear it many times before Kochi and stop noticing the order.

I have no idea what any of that was. Say it in something I can follow.

We had nothing like that in Chiba. Who is saying it, and where from?

We have the same van, but slightly different. Kochira wa haihin kaishuusha desu, gokatei de fuyou ni narimashita, terebi, reizouko, sentakuki, jitensha, kowarete ite mo kamaimasen. This is a scrap collection vehicle, televisions, fridges, washing machines, bicycles, broken is fine. The difference is that ours does not pay you.

Four more stops. checking the front of the car, where the strip shows the next name

The tram, and I mean this line specifically. On a train you sit for hours with the same view, and here you get the harbour, then the yards, then the middle of the town in twenty minutes.

At every circle, yes. In Chiba I waited for cars at crossings on foot, and here the cars wait for us.

standing with the bag already on her shoulder

stepping down onto the platform after him and stopping to look at the departure board over the hall doors You have fifty minutes.

Because you would have got on that train without saying goodbye to you.

Yes, at the train. A door in a stairwell is nothing.

Gojuppun go ni, sanbansen ni, Torvena yuki no sanjuugo-gou ga mairimasu. In fifty minutes, at platform three, number 35 bound for Torvena will arrive. On a real board they would never say the fifty minutes, they only announce when it is coming in.

Then we wait. walking beside him with the bag still on her shoulder There is a bench at the far end where the roof stops.

setting the bag down between her feet and sitting beside him