Late Service: Book Seven game

Two flights under the colander dome, the Salt Street platform runs the whole length of the block and smells like a pot nobody washed. The tiles are rust and amber and older than anything up on the street. The mosaic on the wall still says SALT STREET, though the first S has split down the middle.

A speaker grille watches the tracks with one red light, grime and all. Down at the tunnel end, steam comes and goes in slow breaths. Nobody else is here.

Two in the morning, the one hour the station stops pretending. The fluorescents have given up flickering and just hum. The bench is empty in the way benches only manage after midnight.

On the departures board, between the two DELAYEDs, a third line lights up, LATE TRAIN, and slides past without stopping: one long bright car with nobody in it. Then the board goes back to saying DELAYED.

You wait. Waiting is free, which makes it the only thing down here that is. The board says DELAYED in both directions, which is at least consistent.

A pigeon walks the yellow line as if it has somewhere to be. It doesn’t. Neither do you. Then, deep in the tunnel, a light.

You walk toward the tunnel. The tiles go by in rust and amber: one cracked, one missing, one that somebody has signed. A car card for the Machattan School for Pasta Arts promises a career in four to six weeks. It does not say a career in what.

A fluorescent tube flickers on as you reach it and off as you leave, like it’s interested but has been hurt before. The steam at the end of the platform has not got any closer. Neither have you.

Another car card: FIRMAZOL. FIRM BY MORNING. Under it, in smaller type: SIDE EFFECTS MAY INCLUDE MORNING. You count the tiles left to the tunnel mouth and get a bigger number than last time.

The far end is exactly as far away as it was when you started, which is not a thing platforms do. Behind you, the stairs are where you left them. Ahead, the tunnel breathes, and on the tile beside it hangs an old torn poster with two words left on it: ALWAYS HIRING.

You take the stairs. Up to the mezzanine, through the turnstiles, past a ticket window nobody has sat behind in years. Up the second flight. At the top of it is the platform, facing the tracks, as if you had asked for it.

Everything is where it was. Except the car card by the bench, which used to sell the School for Pasta Arts and now sells nothing: a blank card, square and very clean.

Same stairs. Same turnstiles. Same platform at the top, which is not where the top of a staircase goes. The blank card has company now: a second one, where the Firmazol ad was, just as clean. You are fairly sure you are being redecorated.

The platform is waiting for you the way a waiter waits once he has brought the bill. Three blank cards in a row now, at exactly the same height, every one of them perfectly straight. Nobody down here has ever hung anything straight.

The late train pulls in, its light slightly too bright. Every door opens at the same moment and stays open, as if it has all night.

The car is empty. It is always empty.

You step on. The doors stay open for one long second, as if they’re giving you time to be sure. The seats are all the same seat.