Clickety-Click

'I used to find the old 126es erotic.' A strange statement indeed.  The woman had not introduced herself or taken her cue from anything more than a chance meeting of their eyes

‘…right,’ the bloke replied.  He was a shambles of a man.  Perhaps a young academic, a seminarian or a poet.  These professions might make a description sound effete but this man was, however, distinctly blokeish, despite his air of studiousness.

‘I don’t get that with these smoother rides,’ she continued, her eyebrows arching over purple spectacles.  She put away her lip-gloss and smoothed her magazine.  So far as the Bloke was aware, they had boarded together at Dundee and now this.  Why wait two hours only to start so queerly now?

As if sensing his confusion, she waved the pages in her manicured hand.  ‘The article here is discussing men’s habitual obsessions over trains and cars and bikes as if they are of no interest to women.  I just wanted you to know: I am interested.’

‘…in trains?’

‘Precisely.’

Blokey though he was, this was a new one on him.  Was it a chat-up line or was it to be taken at face value?

‘…erm, why, may I ask?’

‘I think it’s the rhythm.  Are you a musician?’  She’d sensed his somewhat artistic vein. ‘No? Well, for me, it was like a bossa nova, the sort of rhythm that starts in your feet but gets into your hips till your arms are swinging along.  Do you ever get like that?’

He closed his laptop and laid his hands palm-up upon it.  She paused a moment looking at them, strong hands more like a joiner’s than a priest’s.  raising her pupils to meet his own, she placed her hands down flat upon his wrists.

‘Yes, your pulse ha an intriguing rhythm,’ she said after a minute or so.  ‘I don’t suppose you’re staying on till the end of the line, are you?’

He did, though he had not boarded with that intention.