Broken Line

The train rattled out of the station, that life was behind her now. Her shoulder pressed against the cold window, the condensation blurring the view of the city. A hastily filled handbag filled with whatever she could grab sat on her lap. At the bottom lay a notebook, lost long ago. In the panic of her leaving she didn’t have time to go back to it, but with the hours that lay ahead she needed something to do.

Sitting next to her was a portly gentleman, his belly had spread into the space outside his seat and was constricting her movement. He had fallen asleep long before the train departed and was breathing heavily, not quite a snore but enough to inconvenience the other passengers. She pushed her hand into her handbag through the layers of clothes, she could feel the bristles of her toothbrush, the cold steel of her jewelry box, but none of these were needed right now. She brought her arm out and tried again on the other side, this time being very careful not to poke her elbow into the stomach of the passenger next to her. Once again in she went, and a feeling of relief spread through her as she felt the familiar feeling of the small leather notebook she had lost long ago.

She snatched the notebook out in joy, bringing her hairbrush with it whilst tossing it to the feet of the passenger opposite. Her cheeks felt hot. The young man sitting opposite her closed his book on his thumb and smiled whilst slowly leaning forward to pick up the hairbrush. She smiled back and mouthed ‘thank-you’ to him. He responded with a curt nod and went back to his book. The sleeping man next to her none the wiser of the events happening around him.

Settled in her seat she opened the beaten leather cover to find an old To-Do list, the groceries and laundry had long been completed. Dinner with Jack. Which one was Jack she wondered, there had been many dates and introductions. Had it only been a couple of years since? Jack, she wondered, well yes Jack was Peggy’s friend. The one who had taken her ice skating. What a waste of a night that had been. They’d met at a friend’s party, where he’d insisted on taking her out later that week. He was a nice man, and even her type, but there was no spark there. They’d gone to the ice rink on a cold January night and she had made sure to get home as soon as she could without offending him. She paused a moment, wondering what life would be if she had felt something for Jack. With what was left of her world in her lap it didn’t seem too bad a thought but still, she wouldn’t have been happy there either.

She flipped the pages; a coffee stain had smudged some writing: “Don’t forget t……” it read. Well too bad now, I’ve definitely forgotten. She smirked at her own humor and read on through the early musings of a former life. M&Co, 10 am Thursday, Anthony and Salome. Now that was a lifetime ago, it had been her entrance into the finance world. Salome’s assistant, which happened to be Tony’s too. How naive she had been, thinking you needed a head for numbers to make money in finance. Then she remembered she had nothing left and doubted her strong headedness.

The position had started as she’d imagined, long hours, tedious repetitive work but before long she knew what was happening. By the end of her probation, she had made the drinking scene and the likes of Jack and the ice rink were a distant memory. The bar tab was always open, and the clients, well the men, loved a new girl to chase and the women, well they hated it. The attention had won them lots of business and no longer being the flavor of the month bruised their egos and their bank balances.

She thought back to the Christmas party, everyone had been handed their bonus cheques before they went out. One of her co-workers took it directly to a pawn shop. From there he gifted his drug dealer a Christmas bonus and proceeded to strip naked whilst pronouncing his love for the owner’s wife. Needless to say, come January he was seen with his box of belonging’s sneaking out the tradesman entry. The worst part was, she had never cashed her Christmas bonus. In the festivities, she’d misplaced it. With the other guy being fired for being irresponsible with his money, as the owner put it, she didn’t want to tell him she too had lost. …however much it had been for.

What she would give to have even part of that now, the three-hundred and eleven dollars in her chequing account wouldn’t take her very far, although she hoped at her destination it would at least allow her to eat, wash and sleep until she found a job.

It was not long after this she met Mark, also in finance, brought in from a rival firm. Having brought many of his clients with him everybody loved him, not for who he was but for what he could make them. She wondered if that was why she had fallen for him, not that that mattered now. He couldn’t be further away if she tried. Mark had a long-term girlfriend, not that he told her. She had been working abroad and working on his long-distance relationship whilst working on their very close relationship. In this moment the signs were clear, the late-night calls, never meeting his family, why even the flowers he was surprised she had received all made sense now.

Mark had introduced her to day trading, they had all of the experience to trade. Why they were constantly getting tips from clients, co-workers, even their rivals’ bragging gave them ways to make money. She had started to funnel extra money into the day trading app when she could, and the getting while it lasted was very good. It was how she had come to buy the designer bag and shoes she was wearing. It was also how she came to lose everything.

The app allowed you to borrow up to 50 times what you put in, you made more money and paid the interest on your profits. It was a win, win. That was until the stock market collapsed. Every client called simultaneously, the whole office broken both financially and motivationally. As they salvaged what was left of their clients’ investments, the day trading app made the same losses, amplified by the debt they had granted. It was lucky she had caught it during a loo break, otherwise, there might not have been enough to cover what she owed.

She had gone to Mark, who had also lost and was no longer the charismatic hero, in her hope he would help her pay the rent, as he was basically living at her place by now, and he snapped. In calling her his side whore, she too snapped, picking up the stapler, the tape dispenser, well whatever she could grab and throwing it at him. Security had carried her away, but it was an all too easy decision in the moment to fire her and cut his losses too.

It was at this point she knew she needed to leave the life she knew and start again, having been fooled for months by the man she had given her heart to. Thus, she was pressed against the window next to the bulky, snoring, and now definitely smelly man.

The train pulled into the stop and she gathered her things, tripping over the man next to her on the way out. She picked herself up and hastily made her exit.

On the floor of the train lay a beaten black notebook and falling from its pages was

a clean cheque for $20,000.00. The Christmas bonus had been put there for safekeeping and now lay on a dirty train floor. The young man sitting across to her realized what had happened, picked up the notebook and the cheque, and ran after her. By which time she was halfway down the platform.

“Excuse me,” he shouted, running to catch her before the train left. He stopped in front of her, thrust the cheque sitting on top of the notebook into her hands as the door started to bleep close. He jumped into the nearest opening, shouting as the train disembarked, “I think you dropped this!”

She looked down at the cheque made out for $20,000.00, resting on the tattered old book, slid them both safely into her inside pocket, and walked on in disbelief to start her new life.