Excerpt: Parallel

As soon as his few personal effects were taken off of the luggage wagon and his jacket dusted of the crumbs of the light breakfast he had eaten a few hours ago in the cramped but well-lit restaurant car, Antoni sat down on the nearest bench still unoccupied and took in as much fresh air as he could. 'This sure beats the leg room i've had for the past three days' he thought, stretching his legs as far as he could without disturbing the waiting travelers around him.

A quick glance as he retracted his feet under his seat and he noticed the waiting area of the station felt more crowded than it actually was, the traveler's movements were impatient, a sight Antoni was unacustomed to, having spent most of his youth in a rural area of Poland, where most people had a laissez-faire attitude toward most things, especially displacement, even for business.

Around him we're most noticably a pudgy middle aged man with the slightest hint of discoloration brought by time to his hair, a finely combed mustache but otherwise no facial hair. A chain hanged from his coat pocket, suggesting a watch, althought as pressed as the man seemed to be, the timepiece remained unseen. Rather, the man kept looking left and right, as if waiting for an acquaintance before departure. As an announcement came from the loud speakers indicating most trains inbound from Germany would have considerable delays due to particularily vigorous bad weather in the east, the mustached fellow walked back to the station house at a fast pace.

Sitting on the next bench to his right were a mother and daughter, the woman was in her late twenties, early thirties tops, had the enticing figure still of girls just coming into adulthood, the kind of healthy build that quickly return to it's former self after the first born child. She wore a blue dress with pale imprints of yellow flowers Antoni could not quite identify. she had the dress loosely buttoned at the top, understandable as the last couple of week had seen a heat wave the likes of which had not been recorded in the region for quite some time, coupled with the heat emanating from all the machinery nearby, it made Antoni soon put his jacket away, as well. The little girl did not seem to take a toll from the heat at all; she kept jumping around, laughing at passing travelers much to the dismay of her mother, who continually had to get up to keep her daughter from running away from view around the ticket office not far behind them. The third time the woman brought her daughter back to their seat, she took the child onto her lap and straightened the black locks on her head that got messed around from all the running, hoping to get a break from the scampering girl. As the blue dress mother then proceeded to fix one of the tiny shoe that came undone halfway on her daughters foot, Antoni overheard a segment of the conversation they were having:

'Mom, mom ! Daddy is gonna be here soon, isnt he ? He won't going to be late again ?
'He'd better not be this time, We certainly don't want him to miss little Rosalia's birthday now, do we.
'Nuh-hunh ! He has to be there for sure, I will be turning four again !
'Sweetie, you'll be five this year. Stop fussing about! You're losing your other shoe !
'But mom, my birthday is September fourth, so I will be four !

The mother replied only with a gentle smile, which seemed to puzzle the little girl. She held her tight, kissed both her cheeks and put her down. Rosalia then smiled back and returned to looking at the other people and running around them, taking little care into avoiding who she bumped into.