Below the Station Clock

The station clock was accurate, which made the rest of the building feel like a disagreement. On the lowest bench, under the arrivals board, the air was always a degree colder. People who sat there missed trains they could see.

A cleaner named Petr found a ticket stub dated for a service discontinued in 1976, still warm. He put it in his pocket and later found the pocket empty, as if the stub had been borrowed back.

The announcement voice was the same as everywhere else in the network, except on that bench it used names. Not stations — passenger names, read without urgency, the way a clerk reads a list he has already checked twice.

Petr does not sit there. He sweeps around it. Once, at closing, he heard his own name spoken from the speaker directly above the bench, followed by a platform number that does not exist. He went home by the road.