They held the tickets up like opposing flags. The print was the same. The seat was the same. Somewhere in the fluorescent belly of the reservation office, a clerk with a tired stamp and a long line of Christmas travelers had made a human mistake, and that mistake was now sitting across from itself in a wood-paneled box while the platform's amber lamps slid backward into the past.
A conductor appeared in the corridor—portly, red-cheeked, wearing the expression of a man who had already mediated three arguments about luggage and one about a crying spaniel. He examined both tickets under the corridor light, sighed the sigh of institutional infallibility meeting institutional error, and explained that the train was full, that Christmas made everyone a little denser than usual, and that if two adults of sound mind could share a compartment like civilized people for the run up toward Vermont, the railroad would be eternally grateful and also unable to offer a refund. He punched both tickets with a flourish that suggested blessing rather than bureaucracy, tipped his cap at Claire's coat as if acknowledging a visiting dignitary, and moved on to the next crisis.
Claire looked at Samuel. Samuel looked at Claire. The snow thickened against the window, erasing the last of the station into a soft white anonymity.
"I don't bite," she said. "Unless provoked by further linguistic disasters."
"I'll keep my greetings to a minimum," he said, and stepped fully inside, closing the door with a soft latch that somehow felt like the first chapter of something neither of them had agreed to write.