The Metro

Vuitton palmed the crystal in his pocket.  It was wrapped in a black velvet sheath, yet he could still feel its sharp angles, its pointed sides where his fingertips pressed into them.  He walked into the catacomb-like metro feeling nothing except perhaps pride in his exchange.  

A train passed before him in a cacophony of sound and rush of wind.  The train passed and he saw his face reflected in one of the windows.  It stopped.  He entered the train and sat down still palming the rare crystal in his right palm.  He looked at no one.  Stopped.  Looked only at the reflections of faces in the train windows.  The reflections didn't look back at him.  He tried not to look.  Not to look.  The train pulled out of the station again. 

Again the train.  Again the reflections in the windows of tired passengers on their way home in the late hours of the night.  Caught him looking at her--the girl in the scarlet trench coat.  Impossible not to look now.  Her face was turned toward the window and she was watching his reflection in her window.  The window that had gone black in the tunnel.  The tunnel of the great catacombs.  Stopped.  Stopped looking, turned away from her.

The train rattled through the tunnels.  The on and off electric blue lights like the pale blue of the veins in his right wrist.  Wrist of the hand that held the crystal.  Crystal from the exchange.  Her face.  Impossible.  He knew her from long ago when they'd lived in the same building.  Had passed her in the hall.  No.  Impossible.  He didn't know her. 

The tired passengers nodded in their seats.  Advertisements inside the train visible every time the lights blinked on.  He would ride the train until she got off.  He would watch her leave, catch the scent of perfume coming off her coat.  He watched her leave.  She left. 

He could rest now.  No one knew him and he knew no one.  He considered the multiple angles of the crystal in his pocket.  The secret traveling at great speeds through the catacombs.  The crystal no one knew he had.  Could barely believe it himself.  After all those years of nothing.  Suddenly there it was and it was as if he had had it all along.