At the station, a traveler stood beside a bright green suitcase. His gray trousers were wide enough to conceal his shoes. The hems rested on the platform.
When he moved, the fabric slid over the paving, caught beneath a heel and pulled free.
Tarin watched him take another step.
“Those are going to have a ring around the bottom.”
“What are?” Ilex asked through his earpiece.
“The trousers.”
The traveler adjusted a backpack strap. His black shirt ended neatly at the waist. The gray fabric fell in long folds from there to the ground.
Tarin could imagine choosing them in front of a mirror. The width. The uninterrupted fall. He could also see what happened when their owner walked away from it.
A dark band had begun to form along the hems.
“Will that wash out?”
“Some of it might.”
“Not the wear.”
A woman passed him in tall brown boots and a short pale skirt. The brown leather rose to just below her knees. A strip of bare leg separated it from the pale skirt. A few paces ahead, she stopped to straighten the top of one boot, then continued.
The traveler in gray shifted his suitcase. One trouser leg brushed a wheel.
“Perhaps he doesn’t notice,” Tarin said.
“Perhaps.”
“Or he notices and doesn’t mind.”
That would bother Tarin. It already did, although they weren’t his trousers.
He looked down at his own.
“You’re checking yours,” Ilex said.
“I know where mine end.”
He checked anyway.
The station announcement began. Tarin listened for his train number, then looked up at the display. There was still time.
“It could be waste,” he said. “Being able to afford not to care.”
“Do we know that he can?”
“No.”
The traveler put his left hand in his pocket.
Tarin had supplied him with money, indifference and someone else to do the washing. So far, the man had supplied only the trousers.
Still, the hems were on the ground.
He remembered a woman on a red carpet.
Not her name. The dress, and the pause before the photograph.
She had stopped while a man crouched behind her to free the train from her heel. Another spread the fabric across the carpet, drawing one fold outward, then putting it back. She waited with her chin slightly lowered.
The men stepped away.
She raised her face toward the cameras.
“That’s the part they don’t tell us,” Tarin said.
“What part?”
“The crew behind the dress.”
He remembered the closer view. The fabric filled the lower corners of the screen. Neither man remained in the picture.
There had been considerable care involved. He had watched it leave the frame.
“And afterward,” he said. “When she has to turn. Or get into a car.”
The photograph had offered no difficulty. Just a woman and a dress that seemed to know where to fall.
The train arrived.
Tarin let the first few carriages pass, watching the numbers.
Further along the platform, the traveler lowered his suitcase handle and lifted the case toward an open door. With his other hand, he gathered the gray fabric at his thigh. One shoe emerged. For a moment, he had no hand left for anything else. He stepped aboard, set the suitcase down and released the fabric before reaching for the other trouser leg.
For a moment, he had no hand left for anything else.
Then he was inside.
Tarin picked up his bag. His carriage was the next door along.
Behind the glass, the traveler released the fabric and pulled up the handle of his suitcase. The trousers fell back into place.
WE&P by: EZorrillaMc&Co.
