Linus entered the city train station and slapped down five dimes and four quarters onto the black counter in front of Gerald, an unshaven, middle-aged attendant, who rested his head on his left hand and stared vacantly in front of him.

“What's goin' on, Gerry?” asked Linus.

“Oh,” Gerald sighed, “not too much. I hear we might get replaced with a change slot and a coin-sorting machine.”

“Why do you say that?” Linus asked.

“Think about it, it makes sense. The city’s struggling for money, and I just sit here all day dropping coins into the register. There’s no credit, no debit, no checks, nothing complicated. It’s only a matter of time before they replace me,” said Gerald.

“Yeah, but you’re more than just a coin counter, right? I mean, you can see and stop somebody if they jump the turnstile or whatnot.”

“Oh no. I’d never chase anybody if they jumped the turnstile. They don’t pay me enough. I’d just sit here, motionless, and stare straight ahead like I saw nothing. Nothing.” Gerald popped open the register and dropped the coins in. “See you.”

Linus stepped through the turnstile towards the last car of the train headed towards Newton. He plopped himself down on the third row from the back and sat in the window seat on the left side. The train was usually pretty empty at that time in the morning, yet he always pulled off his ski cap and set it in the seat next to him – Boston Red Sox logo up - to make sure there was no question about the seat being saved for Marie. Occasionally, strangers would stand next to the seat staring down at the hat, waiting for Linus to pick it up. Linus would wave both hands over the seat like he was waving off an airbus and say, “Saved. This seat’s saved.”

The train traveled north along the edge of the city. To the left of the train were the aging brick buildings alongside steel structures, the manufacturing sector. Smoke plumed above the structures as the buildings fought against the cold spring morning. Men in cheap white shirts, blue ties and gray slacks walked down the streets together with unwashed men dressed in gray, brown, or navy uniforms. To the right of the tracks, the city quickly faded into forest. A white fog hung over the trees; the grass looked bright and green in the morning dew.

Marie’s stop was next. He was nervous she wouldn’t be on the train. It was Friday, and she hadn’t been on all week. Linus wondered if she’d been sick, and, to be honest, he was starting to worry whether she’d ever come back. She’d never been off the train this much. "Would she have told me if she was going to go on vacation?" He asked himself. What If she’d been fired? For the first time, Linus realized how meaningless he was to her. He must be nothing more than something familiar, like a comfortable pair of pants, something easy to take on and off, nothing more. He pulled out his phone and looked at the only picture he had of her; he didn’t even have her number.

The train jostled and screeched to a stop at the next station. Linus saw her immediately. She looked great that morning, even better than usual. Though it was only March and the weather was brisk, she wore a pink dress that ended a few inches above her knees, revealing her soft, white thighs. She looked sweet standing there waiting. Her light, brown hair matched her brown jacket, purse, and boots. A small book stuck out of her purse; it was her journal. She took it everywhere with her to write down the things she did and experienced. Linus loved that about her; he envied her. He wished he lived a life worth chronicling. Marie slowly made her way onto the train and stepped towards the empty seat next to Linus'.

“Hey!” Marie said as she sat down, falling against him, leaning on him, their arms touching shoulder to elbow.

The train clunked and rocked back and forth as it started again down the tracks.

“How you been? I mean, where’ve you been?” Linus asked.

Marie’s face turned mischievous. “Why?”

“I don’t know.” Linus pulled his hat back on. “I guess the train isn’t the same without you.”

“Did you miss me?” she laughed, her hand covering her rounded teeth.

Linus hesitated.

“I’m just teasing,” she said. “I just had some things I had to take care of, family things.”

“Oh. Well, would you do me a favor?” he asked. “Would you tell me when you know you aren’t goin’ to be on the train for a while? I mean, ‘cause then I guess I’d bring a magazine to read or somethin'.”

Marie looked down and began to speak, but the train passed under a short tunnel. The thunder of metal wheels on a steel track echoed harshly against the stained concrete walls.

“It’s just,” he yelled as they passed through. “I guess we don’t know each other that well, but I don’t know if you’d tell me if you were sick or if you were going on vacation or got fired or something. I don’t even have your phone number.”

She pulled at her hair and looked away, thinking.

“I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be creepy or anything. I guess I’m just curious if you’d tell me if you were goin’ to be gone for a while, that’s all.”

Marie turned to him. Her lips tightened, uncomfortable. “I have something I need to tell you, I guess.” She took a deep breath. “Today is my last day at my job. I’m quitting, no two weeks, nothing.”

Linus was stunned. The boyish grin he’d tried so hard to hide whenever she was around vanished and fell away into a pained grimace. He felt a great void, a panic.

Marie continued, “My mom’s boyfriend is going to be moving into the apartment, and she wants me out, so she’s sending me to live with my uncle on his farm in Vermont.”

“Vermont?” Linus asked.

“Yeah, I’m not sure where it is. It’s some backwoods place. I went there a bunch of times when I was a kid, but it’s been forever.”

“You like your uncle? You want to live there?”

“I like him alright, I mean, he is my uncle. He’s a real quiet guy, and he’s sort of religious, I think.”

“So, you want to live there?”

Marie laughed and nodded her head with a surety. “Yes. Yes. It’ll be nice to get away from the city. I’m sick to death of working at a register and plastering on a fake smile for a bunch of stupid people who expect nothing but cheeriness. You know, it’s funny. I swear the people who will go complain about how unfriendly I am to the manager are the most unfriendly people I see.”

“Maybe they see that in themselves and don’t like it.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Marie responded, then unwrapped and inserted a stick of green gum into her mouth. “Wanna piece?” She offered a stick to Linus.

“No thanks.”

As his stop approached, Linus’s knew he needed to talk to her, about what she meant to him every day, that he didn’t want her to go. Suddenly the shallow nature of their relationship struck him, that she was unfazed at the idea of never seeing him again.

“Come have lunch with me!” he blurted. Marie was taken aback by the volume of his command. “Please? We can celebrate your last day and just say goodbye and all that.”

Marie slapped the sandwich in Linus’s hoodie pocket. “Haven’t you brought a lunch?”

Linus pulled out the sandwich, dropped it on the floor, and stomped on it with his yellow work boot. “There, now I don’t have one. We can meet at that place on Fourth Street; it’s called Frank’s, I think. It’s a diner.”

“It’s Fran’s Diner you’re thinking of.”

“Yeah, that’s it,” he pointed in the air. “Meet me there at 12:45, I’m buying.”

The train’s brakes began to set, they could see the station.

Marie thought for a moment. “I don’t know if I can get off then.”

“Oh come on, it’s your last day. What you gonna do, piss them off so much they fire you?”

Marie smiled. He was speaking her language. “Okay, Mr. Man. I’ll be there at 12:45.”

The train stopped. Linus stood up and turned towards Marie. “You promise you’ll be there?”

“I will, I promise, now go! You’re going to miss your stop!”

Linus sprinted out of the train and waved once at Marie as the train passed him by.

After the wave, Linus continued his sprinting all the way into Jack & Son’s Print shop. He couldn’t help running and leaping with all the adrenaline pulsing through his system.

“Today!” he kept saying to himself as he ran. “I gotta do it today!”

Linus swung open the back door to the shop. He was early. His Heidelberg press was dark and quiet in front of him, but Maggie’s was roaring as usual for that time in the morning.

“Hi Maggie!” Linus yelled over the machine, his hands cupped around his mouth, but old Maggie didn’t hear him. She hunched over, focused on the machine. She was pretty hard of hearing in her old age, but Linus had noticed over the last few years of working with her and learning from her, that she could hear any minor malfunction or paper issue within the machine.

Linus tapped Maggie on the shoulder. “Hi Mags!” he yelled again. She turned slowly, mindful of the press, and smiled with her thin, crooked lips.

“Hi-ya Linus.” She responded and turned back to her machine.

Maggie was in her seventies. She’d worked on Heidelberg paper presses for most of her adult life, and was an expert despite her advanced age. She stood about 5’ 2” with blue-gray, shoulder length hair. She had an awful arch in her back. Her eyes were steely and dark, but her skin was pale white, almost translucent.

Linus had learned the Heidelberg press from Maggie, and she was his only real friend at the shop. Every day she’d come in early and start before everybody else to keep “movin’ papers” as she said, and she was the first to volunteer to stay late if it was an option.

Back by the lunch room, Linus swiped his time card and opened the fridge to drop his sandwich inside, as he did most days. He reached for his sandwich. As he felt inside the empty cotton pocket, he thought of Marie again and couldn’t hold back a grin.

He stepped back into the shop and started to clean out his Heidelberg for another day’s work. That Heidelberg was an ancient machine, pre-computer, that Jack & Son’s modified to perforate, score, or die-cut paper as the job needed. It was an enormous chunk of black steel, with a tray at the top for paper stock, and a tray the bottom for catching the finished product. The paper rolled down the front of the machine onto a heavy stainless steel roller. There, the paper would be crushed where the die and the roller met, leaving a cut, a score, or a perforation. If the paper stock was too thin or cheap, it would often fall apart and unravel inside the machine and be tossed out as waste. His job was to count every sheet of paper that went into the feeder, listen for catches, and slide a card between every hundred sheets.

Linus rocked to the rhythm of his machine, considering what he would say to Marie. The Heidelbergs reminded him of her. They sounded a lot like the train they rode every morning. They’d hum and grind as the large steel press spun on its bearings, and every second the press would make a ‘clunk’ sound as it hit the paper. It was the type of sound that didn’t let him talk or listen to music, but allowed Linus to get lost in thought. As most days, his mind was on Marie.

About eleven o’clock, old Jack began to look out of his office window into the shop. The shop was a large steel building painted completely white except for the stained gray concrete floor. The only window out of the shop was into Jack’s office. Typically the old man kept the shades closed, but once or twice a day, he’d pull open the shades, cross his arms, and watch, eagle-eyed, for any ne’er-do-welling.

Jack’s face always had an unkempt beard, turned mostly gray over the years. He looked rough and bestial most days, and this was no exception. There were a number of rumors that circled around the shop about him, since he was enemy number one. He’d had a few wives, though none of the workers were exactly sure of the number, and they all suspected that he had issues with “the drink”. No one had seen him take a sip at work, but it wouldn’t be hard to conceal it in that office of his, and many of the workers swore they’d smelled it on his breath. Maggie once told him in secret that he’d once brought a revolver into the lunchroom, waving it, smelling of whisky, pushing her around, screaming. Linus had asked her what she had done about it, and old Maggie had just shrugged and said “Nothin’.”

Scanning around the room, Jack’s head pointed forward like a bird of prey, the old man finally found his target. He jerked open the door of his office and started towards the opposite side of the shop. He had a carnivorous look on his face, and he swung his arms hard as he walked quickly through the shop. Linus pulled Maggie towards him and spoke into her ear.

“Like a roaring lion seeking who he can devour, eh Mags?”

Maggie leaned over, all the while watching Jack, her mouth open as she processed what Linus said.

“More like an ornery old Grizzly B’ar if yer askin’ me!” she replied.

Jack tapped a worker’s shoulder on the far side of the room and began to chew him out. Linus couldn’t exactly hear what he was saying, but he heard the screaming over the Heidelberg. Linus shook his head in frustration; so many times that had been him, and he never had the guts to stand up to the old man. Over the few years he’d worked there, he’d only seen a few people stand up to Jack, and every time, they were fired on the spot.

He looked at the clock. It was getting close to noon. Linus pulled Maggie’s arm and she followed him out the side door.

“Maggie, I got a question for you.”

Maggie smiled, folded her hands behind her, and tilted her head towards him, as she was quite severely bent over.

“You see, I need to go talk to this girl and see if I can convince her to stay. She’s leaving town and I really like her.”

Maggie nodded.

“Well, anyway, I’m going to need to get the afternoon off to be able to meet with her and all that, but I’m not sure old Jack’ll give it to me. What do you think I should do?” he asked.

Maggie scratched her chin. Linus looked away. Old Mags was missing the first two knuckles on the index and middle fingers of her right hand, claimed by the Heidelberg, and it always disturbed Linus. “Well, I think you should just do what you got to do.” She said. “Ain’t no use wasting your life around here. If I were you and Jackie won’t give you the afternoon off, I’d just go anyway. It’s not every day you meet a girl you really like.”

“That’s true.”

“Plus, you’re only young once.” She said, pointing her half-index finger into the air.

“Thanks, Mags. I really appreciate it.” Linus said and ran to Jack’s office.

“Yeah!” Jack yelled, sounding irritated as ever.

Linus slowly pushed open the door. “Hi Jack.”

“Yeah, what do you need?” Jack asked. Linus sat down.

“Listen, I don’t know why this slipped my mind, but I have a doctor’s appointment this afternoon. I totally forgot about it until I got a call on my phone, and…”

“You ain’t supposed to have a phone during work!” Jack roared.

“Ugh, oh yeah. I’ll make sure and leave that home on Monday.”

Jack squinted his eyes focusing on Linus, as though he were having trouble seeing. “So what d’ya want?” he asked again.

Linus cleared his throat. “Well, sir, I was wondering if I could have the afternoon off to go to the doctor’s office.”

“All afternoon? Why don’t you just go at lunch?”

“My doctor’s across town, and I’ve gotta ride the T, so it’ll be slower.”

Jack itched his scruffy beard and looked out on the shop floor, watching for any mischief. “We’ve got the A&P jobs to do, and they’re due like a week ago. When you gonna do those?”

“How about tomorrow. I could come in tomorrow.”

“Alright, come in the afternoon. You’re lucky you got a boss like me who puts up with this crap.”

Linus stood up and headed towards the door. “Yep. Thanks a lot Jack. I appreciate it.”

Jack motioned with his hand for Linus to get out. After he left the office and headed for the back door of the shop, Linus smacked himself on the forehead. He hated working Saturdays, or for that fact, any day at Jack’s, but having lunch with Marie was worth it. Again he reassured himself, "It’ll be worth it."

Linus began to sprint again as he headed towards Fran’s Diner, his straight brown hair bounced and jumped in the cool March air. He pictured her again as he had all morning. Her smile, her hair, that dress, it was all he could think about. Though they’d become friends on the T, this was the first time they’d met away from the train.

By the time he reached the diner, Linus was wheezing. He wasn’t used to running so much. He stepped inside and scanned across the shiny tables, but she wasn’t there yet.

“Table for two” he motioned to a waitress.

She put a hand on her hip. “Take your pick, hun.”

Linus sat down in the far booth on the left side, facing the window.

“I really wish you wouldn’t go. I’ve got something I want to tell you.” Linus began to rehearse to himself. He cleared his throat. “We’ve been riding the T for a while now, and I… ugh.” He put his head in his hand and thought hard. He’d never been one for confrontation, or even dating for that matter. He dated this girl, Sara, in high school. She asked him out to the turn-around dance – at which Linus refused to dance – and then she asked him out a couple times after that. Nothing happened. He was too shy and she was too homely for anything to have happened.

A few minutes of reflection went by, and Linus checked his cell phone. He’d been there ten minutes already. He stood up and watched out the window, looking hard towards where she’d be coming.

“What’cha looking at?” Marie asked from behind him.

Linus spun around quickly and shrugged. “Nothing.”

Marie sat down facing the window; Linus faced the diner.

“So… you been here before?” Linus asked.

“Mm-hm. It’s pretty good. I’ve always liked these old diner cars with the chrome and the fake leather booths. It’s like you’re in another time.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty sweet.” Linus said.

The waitress brought their drinks and took their orders, and soon the food came without anything interesting in the conversation. A great softball-like lump had built up in Linus’s throat. He was reasonably confident he wouldn’t say anything. He took a giant bite of his cheeseburger.

Marie sipped at her soup. “You know,” she said “it’s not going to be the same not seeing you every morning.”

Linus chewed quickly and worked at swallowing his big bite.

“How’s your job goin’?” She asked.

Linus swallowed hard. “Ugh, I hate my job. It sucks. It’s the most redundant task every day, and I’ve got this douche bag boss who just gets his jollies from reaming out his employees.” Linus realized he was complaining. “But, you know, it’s a job. And with this market, I’m happy to have it.”

Without looking up from her soup, Marie said “My uncle was saying something yesterday on the phone about maybe needing more help.”

Linus put down his hamburger. “You think he needs more help?”

“That’s what I said, but I know you probably got family, friends,” Marie looked up from her soup into Linus’s eyes “a girlfriend.”

“No! No, I don’t. I mean, I’ve got my cat Nomar, but what was left of my family here moved down to Georgia, and I mean concerning women, I play the field, but I don’t have anybody at the moment.”

“Oh.” Marie said calmly, restraining herself from revealing her hand, unlike Linus.

“But you don’t think he’d be interested in a city chump like me, do you?”

“You’d be interested in working on a farm?”

“I guess I don’t know. Maybe. I’ve never really thought about it before. I mean, moving and everything, that’s… wow.” Linus leaned on his elbow. His eyes grew wide with possibilities as though fate had finally dealt him a royal flush, and all he had to do was lay it down.

“Yeah, it’s a big change I guess. I like the change.” said Marie.

“Yeah. Change is good.” Linus scratched his forehead, wondering.

The table was silent for a minute. Marie looked thoughtful as she finished her soup and wiped her mouth delicately with the napkin she had placed in her lap.

“So, it’s something you’d like to do, huh?” she asked.

“Sure, I mean, how’s about you give me your number, and I’ll call you over the weekend. You can talk it over with your uncle, and we can talk about it.” Linus suggested. He was almost hovering in his seat from excitement.

Marie laughed. “Are you kidding? I’m turning off my cell phone today. The farm is surrounded by hills, in the middle of God knows where. I don’t think there’s a plan that exists that gets a bar of reception out there. Listen, why don’t you just get your stuff together, and we’ll drive up there tomorrow. I mean, why not, right? You hate your job, and it’d be nice to ride up there with somebody.”

Linus fell back into his seat, surprised. “Don’t you need to talk to your uncle?”

“Nah, it’ll be cool. He said he needs help, and you’re help. We could take off tomorrow morning. You think that’d give you enough time?”

Linus’s mind raced. He began to panic. “I just…” she listened intently, leaning over the table on her arms. “Well, that’s pretty fast, I mean, I’d have to get some things taken care of, get somebody to take my cat,”

“You can bring your cat with you.”

“It’s not just the cat, I just don’t…” Linus ran his hands through his hair. I don’t know.”

“Well what don’t you know? Seems like you haven’t got anything holding you here.”

"It's not that easy to break a lease, and I don't have a ton built up in savings."

"So what?"

"Well, it is a big deal if your uncle doesn't want me up there. Can't you just call him and see?"

"I told you he won't care."

“I just would need more time! Okay?” He cut her off. There was an awkward silence between them for a few seconds. He could see she was frustrated and he tried to rescue it. “Can’t I just call his house after you get up there and we could talk?”

Marie leaned back into her seat, pulled on her coat, and zipped up her purse. Getting up she said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be so forward.” She walked away from the booth, left, and walked down the street away from the diner. Linus watched her through the window, considering the possibilities.