Parallel Lives

Life had not been kind to Warren. He was not always sure where things had started to go wrong. He was 37, with a boyish frame, but looked older, his face sallow from years of alcohol abuse. His hair, once sandy, was starting to thin and turn grey, and hung limply around his pockmarked face. He had a taciturn disposition, which was not at all helpful for today’s activity, begging outside the train station. Other regulars tried to play on the sympathies of passers-by. “Spare any change, I’m trying to get enough for a bed tonight”, wishing good night to commuters who passed without a second look, trying to sell small drawings, using humor. Others took a more aggressive tact, approaching directly or boarding trains. He took neither, and sat silently in his usual spot, somewhat morose, waiting to see what came his way. He didn’t like to beg, and he wasn’t good at it. But his check was not due for another five days or so, and he could make $30 sitting here in a couple of hours on a good day, without too much effort.

The others usually left him alone, and this spot had been his in the afternoons for the past few years now, some continuity among the changing faces of the ecosystem of the street. Order was enforced by an unwritten code, with each player or group having their place, or their time of day for their place. The Ukrainians sat in a small group, drinking cans of ultra - strength lager by the stairs. Prince, a lanky black man with a limp and matted dreads, wandered the rotary without crossing the road, asking for change, and receiving a small stipend from local drug dealers to watch for police as he did so. A pallid woman with a dog who was probably young but looked old sat in his spot outside the station entrance in the morning. In the afternoon it was Warren’s, and his earned place in the parallel society just below the city’s surface.

He passed the time by reading. Free newspapers and magazines, books provided by bleeding heart church charities, book swaps in stations. Public libraries provided a warm place to sit away from the room where he lived, a spot to fill in online forms as required by the unemployment office. A convenient nook to slyly drink in peace, away from others on the street, and without having to sneak them into his room at the shelter, against the constant backdrop of noise, a revolving door of troubled men.

As a child he had been bookish, and he still voraciously read when he was sober enough, developing a dilettante knowledge of various topics; Victorian history, coins, antiques, collectibles, zip codes. Then, as now, he preferred the company of the written word to other people, and always had been somewhat of a loner. He could probably only have counted one or two others as friends over the course of his life, and even then, he’d always had relatively little to say to them. He found interacting with others exhausting, a never-ending tango he couldn’t keep up with, trying to catch up in a game where you didn’t know the rules. He found it hard to apply himself. He had gone to work previously, here and there. That was probably where the drinking came in. It was just inherently stressful, being in the same space as other people, other people who changed from time to time. Thinking of things to say. Handling the noise. Knowing how to respond. Warren had tried a few things, but nothing had ever stuck, except perhaps the alcohol he drank to manage it.

Before he came to the train station he had been living with Mom, who like him, didn’t like to get out so much. Mom had been very large, and she had been very sick, slow moving and breathless on stairs. For the last few years of her life she seldom left the apartment, and they lived on a quiet equilibrium. Mom handled the phone calls and the paperwork from her chair. Warren handled Mom when she had difficulty walking and the errands that required leaving the house, at set times on set days.

It had been a peaceful co-existence. If Mom had been happy, Warren had never known, not that he would have ever asked. They shared few words, but a mutual understanding. The apartment had been a safe space in which to retreat into his interests, and a safe place for Mom to hide from the judgement of the world.

The evening was drawing in; it would soon be time to head back to the shelter. Warren gathered the coins he had in his possession from the afternoon; $15.24 in small change, plus a couple of pesos and one Romanian Leu. He eyed the foreign coin, mentally pledging to add it to his collection at the shelter. He placed them in the pocket of his worn puffer and pulled it tight around him as he pottered into the station, in the direction of the book swap. The commuters were thinning out and the terminus had a sterile peace; he hoped someone had left behind an interesting book.

Warren crouched down and studied the shelf, clumsily thumbing the titles as he went. There were some new additions since the last time he visited, some dusty romance paper backs with yellowing pages and a couple of travel guides that looked to be decades old, their covers faded from the sun. He gave one final rummage, mentally sighing that there appeared to be nothing of interest. Readying himself to begin the short walk to his favored convenience store, he jerkily pulled his hand from the rack, a small black notebook falling from behind as he did so.

Warren examined the book, fingering its smooth, leather-bound cover and flipping through the first few pages, which seemed to have a barely legible handwritten scrawl. It looked expensive. He often found beauty or meaning in objects others would characterize as clutter – coins in small denominations, odd trinkets, buttons or pebbles he liked the texture of, and this notebook was no exception. He shoved it into his pocket and made his way to the store.

Back in his room, at the time he always was, Warren was a couple of drinks deep, enough to relax somewhat into the unpredictability and hubbub of the shelter. He tried to keep the room to some sort of order but struggled. The small space was a jumble of the few clothes he owned, empty chip packets, assorted knickknacks, poorly organised books and some remnants of his former life – an antique lamp of Mom’s, since broken, and other curiosities he had been able to hang onto. He retrieved the Romanian coin from his jacket pocket, shoving it into a cranny with his haphazard collection, and turned once again to the notebook, craning his face at its pages.

The writing inside was faded, its swirly scribble illegible in places. Warren strained to read it and piece together any narrative, which seemed to be some parts journal, some parts list, with short sentences of events in an unknown person’s day (“Back from Edinburgh. Iris came over for lunch – said James wasn’t well” and errands to run ("Wednesday – must go to the bank, bring report for 4pm meeting”). These were snippets of sonder. An awareness that strangers unknown, with their own inner lives, were living the same city, at the same time, on unrelated paths, provided an odd sense of comfort to Warren. The further he flipped through the book, it became apparent to him that the author was stretched. Lists crossed out and rewritten. More meetings, more commitments, more reminders. The notebook seemed an effort to impose order on an itinerant world. He knew the feeling.

Warren reached for a can, discarding the book on the floor among the detritus, when an envelope fell from the book’s cover. As he turned it over, his eye was drawn to a square in the top right-hand corner, where he spotted something unmistakable. Something he knew, from his days in the library, and nights in the shelter taking refuge in niche interests, to be exceedingly rare.

A Victorian Penny Red stamp, British issued, circa 1840s. The second adhesive postage stamp in the world. And it was affixed to an envelope on his muddled floor.

Warren silently pondered. How could someone have no comprehension of its value? Even accounting for the damage done attaching it to paper, the stamp was in an admirable condition. There were four wide, even margins, and it was likely an early edition. He estimated its value at $20,000, at least.

His heart pounded as he took out the card, inscribed with a half-finished message in a now familiar scrawl. “Dear Patrick – missing you and thinking of you in these uncertain times. I know things have been distant, and I wanted to tell you…” The message trailed off, as though the author had been searching for the right combination of words, before becoming distracted.

The writer hadn’t got around to filling the address. Warren’s hands shook as he gingerly browsed the pages of the notebook once more, looking for clues as to whom it could belong, who he could deliver it to. There were multiple names, dates, errands and obligations – but no addresses, and no identification.

Warren picked up the envelope, taking in the print of Queen Victoria’s silhouette, and looking into her faded eye, he knew his luck was about to change, forever.