THAT CREAKING, rocking, squeaking, Elron (Hubbard?) Train, lurching south, all the way through Saku, Rapla, Türi. At Tallinn-Väike, the girl got on. But who was she? Me, overtired, my hands still stained with dirt from when the wind blew my hat into a city gutter in the morning, and from pulling it from all of that avenue street mud, and eating something starchy and disgusting from the Baltic Station, and blowing my nose in the meantime, and just nothing that could ever be cleaned up and made presentable. A werewolf. Even if bathed, my soul is dirty.
Her, blonde, clean, tidy, and well-organized, with pink full lips, typing away on a laptop with some homespun manicure. But look how she types, and how absorbed she is in her deep work. Why, she just seems like the most pragmatic, industrious chick there is! I briefly ask her if she can hear me, because I think she might have headphones on, or ear pods or whatever they are called nowadays, and she says that she can, but that’s all that she says. Her look at me is as blank as school wallpaper. There’s nothing coquettish here. This girl is from Rapla. She is a shock worker. Her hair is so light. She should be out marketing muesli with creamy yellow curls like those. She has a head like soup noodles. A golden yumminess like warm sun rays.
A day later in the deep tech lounge of the conference, I am dodging robots and weaving in between the Swedbank People in their orange shirts. People from the past drift through my mind. I think of Linnéa and accept her death from my life. I’ve turned passive. I’ve stopped trying. I’ve stopped caring. Nothing. And all of these startup investment people are boring as fuck. But who was the girl on the train who disembarked at Rapla? Does she always ride the last train? If I keep riding the trains south to Rapla, will our paths cross again? Will she once again sit across from me, oblivious, tapping away? Is it even romantic to think such thoughts, or somehow against the rules? That’s how his lifetime obsession started, riding the Rapla-bound train. Waiting for the tubli girl with the laptop and no-nonsense demeanor. The lonesome bachelor, scribbling mad in his notebook. That was how the whole affair started.
north! 