it's always the same, you're jumping someone else's train.

The train did laps around its infinite circuit, but each time the teriyaki eel passed him he couldn’t decide whether or not to take it.

He asked for another glass of sake and tried to follow the dish and its path all the way around the restaurant without losing sight of it, but a waitress got in his way and when he lurched to the side in order to get track of it again he caught the eye of another patron. He busied himself with straightening the chopsticks and placemats on the table before him in an awkward attempt to look as un-awkward as possible.

I still look fucking awkward, he thought.

He would take the eel when she got here. And if she didn’t arrive, then he’d know he wasn’t meant to eat it.

The restaurant turned over its clientele and was now serving a new batch when she walked in: “Can we swap seats? I don’t like my back facing towards the door.”

Her expression was strange, her voice was strange, everything was being filtered as if through water, but maybe that was just all the alcohol. So he nodded and now he found himself facing her across the table and he could see how she’d aged and how she’d changed within her own skin. He imagined in that moment that her face was like an empty bag that the stuffing had shifted in slightly- so subtly that one would only know if you had studied that face for years.

Is that what I look like? he wondered. Am I nothing but an over-used couch cushion?

She looked away first, reaching for a dish of something and enthusiastically cracking her chopsticks. He did the same, selecting blindly, thinking that the eel didn’t matter, he had no idea where the eel was, it only mattered that she was here.

When he looked up, mouth full, her eyes were fixed before her on the untouched meal.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s not what I wanted.”

She put the plastic lid back on it, looked around then put the plate back on a spare space on the carriage.

“You can’t just put it back.”

“Why not? I don’t want it.”

“It’s contaminated once you touch it.”

She didn’t respond, so he kept talking, just to keep his jaw moving, to make this whole thing seem real.

“It’s like in glass-ware stores. If you break it, you buy it.”

She was still staring.

“Wouldn’t it have been nice if that rule had applied to me?”

He didn’t know if he wanted to kiss her or twist her paper-skinned wrist until it broke. Or even just leave.

He didn’t need to know. The sushi train derailed, and the eel landed in his lap.