Bottoms Up

Episode 1: Another Day, Another Train...

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"Hey there."

"Ervmfgh."

"Huh. That's a way to greet a girl."

Opening an eye, the balding man drifted a side-ward pupil. Confirmed the presence of said girl. Nodded chin. "Nice to meet you," shutting both eyelids not a wasteful breath later.

Cozy, snug dream-land, here we com- "Ow!"

What the?

At his side, the girl was withdrawing her hand from it. A squint folded the man's eyes into scorching slits. "What was that for? What, are you crazy? I'm trying to sleep here!"

"No, I'm not."

"Well," he dryly catapulted back upon realizing she was decrying his accusation of her mental faculties, "in that case, I'm sure, being two civil adults, that we are fully capable of respecting each other as nothing less." With a smile as genuine as a desert oasis displaying a tad too much shimmer, he presented the proposition. "Can I sleep, while you, a fellow, clearly functional adult, get the grand privilege of acting the part?"

The girl scrunched a nose, looked straight ahead, then back at the man with a diffident shrug. "I didn't do anything."

His scoff at the hazel curls resting daintily along her shoulder could've ignited a torch. "You jabbed me. You jabbed me!" Just for good measure, he pointed at where the jab occurred. Maybe she was a visual learner, maybe she was just an idiot. Still, never hurt to hope for the best in people.

Alas. Though her eyes were looking, and though they did seem to convey something beyond a drugged street prowler riding the public transit smack dab in the waning twee of evening - she only looked back up with an unremarkable flatness before flashing, along with a white eyed flicker of her lips, a sandal.

A sandal?

The man coiled, quickly wondering with great, if subdued, trepidation what was to follow. "See this?" The slab of footwear was clasped tightly but casually in her delicate-looking hand, insoles facing him.

"Yes?"

"This is what I," finger quotes, "'jabbed' you with." The co-bus rider twirled the sandal around her finger by the strap, a small smile forming in the corner of her mouth. What exactly was her game here?

"Okay."

"Which means," curly-haired girl leaned in all conspiratorial like, "I'm barefoot on one-half of my two lower extremities." A shameless pulsation seemed to ripple through her face and eyes, and the man recognized it instantly. Impishness. Girly impishness, the kind that sparked between attractor and attractee. Lover and lover two. Seducted, and seductress.

For the first time that entire, seemingly longer-than-in-actuality exchange thus far, the crumpy suited man visually assessed her, this ingenue on the light rail bench. On her sat a frilly summer blouse, which showcased a shoulder or a fraction, smooth skinned and not stout. Below, a bag was settled onto her lap, and the blouse was apparently part dress. It went down to her knees, after which the rest of her was a thin, acceptably attractive and sporadically swinging sliver of leg.

Girl leg.

Limbs, woman limbs, woman meat, XX in the sunny flower scented flesh.

And inside him, a faint twitch.

How long it'd been. How long it had to continue to be...

"Not yet, Remus.

It's too early...

I had to take care of Olly's sheets again - you know how it is. Busy weekend... busy bee-ing...

...love you..."

"Hello? Hello? Earth to sleepy head on aisle four?"

Both eyes shot up, up to nowhere. The train suddenly screeched, coming to a ravenously momentous stop as Remus shook his head. He really was out of sorts. Ready to cut to black. Looking around him, thankfully, everything appeared still in place. Still in motion.

He needed to get home.

"Sorry," he mumbled as he stood, pulling himself up with some help from the silver bars above. Every bare finger, curled over, and then freed, as he tried to wedge into the shimmying crowd of others cramming the doorway. He caught himself looking back, but it was too late. The girl was there to meet him halfway. He had expected another eccentric smile, but she looked to be defusing a fragment or so more; he couldn't quite put his finger on the manner. It was something, something in the look she gave. The expression she'd so youthfully danced in front of him. As he left, it evoked a somewhat more puzzled flair than before. Like a swirl of new thoughts had begun, internally.

Caught as if in postmortem from a haze.

Who was that girl? What was wrong with her?

As he shuffled off the train, he felt something jiggle against him. Opening his coat, he frisked his inside pocket. Then his eyes briskly widened, fingers frozen. Hastily darting back up and to the closing doors of the train, he raised the palms of his hands sky-ward while the train lifted, purred, and began tumbling away in front of him. "Seriously?!" was all he could muster into the artifice of wind. Wayward glances be damned.

That girl. That weird, strange lil' girl.

Believe it; she, in all her completely functional wisdom, had left her worn sandal in his coat pocket! What did she expect him to do with it? What did she expect to do without it? Was it 1/2 Footwear day today? Did such a day exist? Remus shook his head, re-creased his dry cleaned top, and self-consciously scanned his surroundings, only to stop before an accommodating gaze. A frumpy, unshaven man stood before a nearby pillar. A little jittery, and noticeably fidgeting in place, but otherwise idle as he nodded rhythmically to the man in suit. "G-g-g'day to you. Sir, there."

Remus, lobbing a placid blink of an eye, swiveled on a heel and towards the stairs out of the station. Without so much as a word, he made his way back to his mid-town condo, hailing a taxi. The tired business man was keen to wash away the greyscale off his spirits, to pour himself a martini, maybe get a half hour of that game show in. Wrap this day up for good. The frumpy straggler, the one by the plaza pillar, with unshaven, bushy icicles, stared on after him. "G'day to you! I say, g-g-g'day, sir, there!

The scree of trains funneling to and fro through the careening tunnel rumbled in the distance, as so too did the bustle and podge of people, from the sidewalks outside to the benches and arbitrarily claimed spaces in the subway lobbies, to the dawning clubs and sports bars, welcoming the sun's slow turn of cheek. Evening never came early in this town. But when it did, it was like... well, sometimes, it was like the day never existed at all.