He had been handsome when younger; he remained handsome, but had reached an age where people gazed at him like his days were numbered. He shuffled down the narrow hallway with a small green pepper and two tomatoes in his hand.  He could see the Hungarian woman’s legs through the glass door of her train compartment. During his double-take, he ran into the door at the end of the hallway like something out of a slapstick film.

On his return from washing the produce, he passed slowly, aiming to catch a glance at her face, but she remained cloaked behind a newspaper. He paused right outside the door. Waiting a bit with his eyes on the statesman gracing the front page, just above the fold, just where her eyes moved across an article on the other side. He considered the occupants surrounding the woman’s legs: an antique Japanese man tearing…