The next night looked like the last one with slightly different weather. The city couldn't decide between snow and rain, so it wore both for a while. Heather closed the café, folded the rag one more time than necessary, and let the bell's final chime fade into the hallway air. Down the stairs, into the tiled throat of the station, she joined the small migration of people who had already used up their day's words.
The platform had its usual grammar: a busker trying to coax a love song out of the cold, the overhead screens making promises they couldn't keep, a draft that belonged to no season. Heather stood near the column with the old sticker that read YOU ARE HERE in a way that felt slightly threatening. She opened her notebook, then closed it again.
The wind came first, then the smell, then the brakes—wanting to be heard over even the best noise-canceling headphones. A long metallic vowel held the station in its mouth. The doors opened with their familiar, patient annoyance.
She found a standing spot by the pole and wrapped her hand around it. The car wore the smell of wet wool and carried the clatter of tired shoes. She saw him then—same seat, same face—near the door that didn't always open, a half-step turned away from the aisle as if he could become part of the wall on request.
He had a sketchbook on his knee. Not new. The corners softened like a favorite shirt; a strip of tape held the spine where the cardboard had given up, its edge lifting at one corner. He drew without being precious about it: small, quick marks; a hush of graphite; a kneaded eraser traveling like a little cloud. The inside of his thumb was shadowed gray. His coat tried to be serious; his scarf had lost the argument with the weather.
Heather looked for three seconds, then two, then broke it into deniable fragments. She watched his hand more than his face. Hands tell the truth faster. His moved like he was stirring water, testing the temperature.
Across from him, a man in a hard hat slept with an ease Heather envied. Beside him, a woman read a paperback with the intensity of someone building a bridge by hand. The car reorganized itself each stop: bodies in, bodies out, the page turning.
Heather felt for her pencil without taking her eyes off an ad for a miracle mattress. On the top corner of her paper, small enough to be mistaken for nothing, she wrote: He draws so he doesn't have to say hello.
The train hooked around a bend, her shoulder brushed a stranger's coat, and the car steadied. She let out a breath she hadn't committed to. She told herself she was noting a person, not a person pointed at her. That was the deal with observation: she could look without being there.
At 8th Street, two tourists clung to a map like it had betrayed them. At Prince Street, a guitarist got on and got off, hopeful in another car. At Canal, a woman boarded cradling a plant whose leaves quivered each time the doors shut. The man with the sketchbook turned a page. Heather caught a quick ghost of what he'd been drawing: hands cupped around a paper cup, steam suggested in three spare lines.
She wondered if he drew faces or if faces looked back too hard. He seemed like someone who saved the hardest shapes for later.
The nights arranged themselves in a row after that, beads on a string.
On Tuesday the car was crowded enough that strangers turned into furniture. Heather took the spot by the route map, where the announcement was louder and still not clear: "Downtown service is… sorry about everything." He was there again, same seat, sketchbook balanced, pencil making a rhythm she could find even through the noise. He drew shoes this time—scuffed boots, careful laces, a heel lifted mid-step. He looked up only when the train lurched, keeping a finger on the place he'd made, like a person who didn't trust the world not to move when he wasn't looking.
Where you sit tells on you, she wrote. He sits where leaving is easy.
On Wednesday the station was warm in the way basements are warm. The busker had traded love songs for scales. Heather's hair kept the day's coffee smell like stubborn perfume. She spotted him before she found the pole—coat, scarf, the slight fold of his posture as if protecting the page from weather that could happen inside a train. A kid nearby watched him with the reverence reserved for magicians and snack vendors. When the kid leaned too close, his hand hovered, then moved again, slower. Not hiding—just not offering.
Heather tried a sentence about herself and failed, then wrote one about him and felt relief ring in her chest: He doesn't trace outlines; he negotiates with them.
On Thursday the train was late enough to make strangers allies. The platform angled toward the edge with a shared impatience, and when the car shrieked into view, everyone pretended not to rush. Heather ended up standing near his seat. She could see the paper clearly now—thick, toothy; a nick on the cover where a sticker had been and then hadn't. He was drawing the reflection in the window—the second, paler car made from everyone inside it. He sketched a woman with a soft hat cradling a plant. He sketched a man nodding off without embarrassment. He sketched, quickly, the curve of a cheekbone and the flare of a nostril belonging to someone who looked like him if he were braver or more tired.
The train jerked. His pencil slid, rolled. Heather's shoe stopped it. She nudged it back. They both reached; both retreated—the polite wrong. The pencil found his palm anyway. He glanced up—just a breath of a glance—eyes gray in the car's indifferent light. A nod: thanks, or nothing. Heather answered with the city's thin smile: you are seen, and you are safe.
Friday tried to snow and gave up. The car was emptier than usual. He sat where he always sat. Heather took the seat across, the one you choose when you're tired of standing for your life. Parallel lines, pulled a little closer. He'd changed pencils; this one made a softer sound. He drew the corner of the advertisement by the door, but not the face on it—as if refusing to sell anyone anything even on paper.
Chamomile would be cooling by the tip jar whether she was there or not. The thought arrived like a small, familiar weight and then left her alone.
She let the train's sway move her and, against her better rules, imagined the inside of his head the way he knew the inside of his sketchbook. Not the drama—just the inventory: tins of graphite with dented lids, pages torn and folded once, the tape on the spine lifting at one corner, the way he carried the whole thing like a small animal that needed warmth.
She wrote, and the line startled her with how easy it was: There's a man who draws like he's remembering someone he hasn't met yet.
On a Sunday night that had borrowed weather from March, the busker found the melody he'd been missing all week. The station gathered itself to listen without pretending not to. Heather waited at the yellow line. The train rolled in, impatient and relieved. She stepped into the car, and there he was: same seat, same face, sketchbook open to a blank page.
For a second, his pencil didn't move.
He looked up to confirm the world was still the world. His eyes passed, paused, returned. Heather didn't smile. She let herself exist inside his field of vision and not just as a passenger in his drawing. She counted to three. She broke the stare first and wrote, small enough to be deniable:
[Last Train, #1] Being seen is not the same as being known. But it is more than disappearing.
She closed the notebook on that. The sentence carried the shape of a beginning. Somewhere under the street, the last train for someone else rattled by, moving a few faces closer to the places they pretended to be heading. Heather watched the reflection assemble and unassemble in the window. Beyond it, the tunnel made a soft, endless mouth.
He turned his page. His pencil began again. The sound was small, like rain deciding to fall.