Jamie always chose the seat facing the door.
She did this at restaurants, waiting rooms, and once at a wedding where it required moving a flower arrangement and offending an uncle.
At the railway-station café, she took the only chair with a clear view of the entrance.
“Of course,” said Sonali.
“What?”
“Nothing. The judge has taken the bench.”
Jamie set her tea down. “You say that as if you don’t want advance notice of disappointment.”
Jay returned from the platform carrying three paper cups and news that their train had moved from platform four to platform six, then from platform six to a platform described only as “the usual place.”
“When I was a boy,” he said, sitting down, “the signs were hand-painted. They were wrong more slowly.”
Sonali took a cup. “That is not better.”
“It gave the mistake dignity.”
The station was full of small alarms. Wheels struck cracks in the floor. Vendors shouted over announcements. Families counted bags, children, and one another. Every few minutes, a flock of passengers rose at once and hurried somewhere else.
Near the café entrance stood a woman in a green shawl. She held a folded ticket in one hand and a cloth bag in the other. She looked at the departure board, then at the stairs, then back at the board.
“She’s lost,” Sonali said.
“No,” said Jamie. “She knows exactly where she is.”
“Thank you, oracle.”
“She’s angry.”
The woman unfolded her ticket, smoothed it against her palm, and folded it again along the same crease.
“She looks worried,” Jay said.
“Worry moves faster,” said Jamie. “She’s standing still.”
Sonali watched the woman for a moment.
“You can tell us what everyone feels,” she said, “but you never tell us what to do about it.”
“She doesn’t want help.”
“No one wants help from someone who looks pleased to have noticed.”
Sonali stood.
She did not ask the woman whether she was lost. She did not call her auntie. She did not take the ticket from her hand.
She simply pointed toward the departure board and said, “Has platform six betrayed you too?”
The woman’s face changed.
“They printed six here,” she said, holding up the ticket. “That man says four. The board says nothing. And every announcement sounds like a saucepan falling down stairs.”
“Good,” Sonali said. “Then we are confused together.”
Jay joined them. He read the train number, disappeared into the crowd, and returned after asking two porters, one tea seller, and a boy who claimed to know every train because his cousin sold newspapers.
“Platform two,” he said. “Probably.”
“Probably?” said Sonali.
“Certainty costs extra.”
The woman’s shoulders lowered, but only slightly. “There are stairs.”
Jamie had come over without anyone noticing. She looked at the cloth bag, the polished shoes, the ticket folded into a hard little square.
“You’re not worried about the stairs,” she said.
The woman looked directly at her.
“My grandson is meeting me,” she said. “He said not to move. If I go to platform two and he comes here—”
“What did he say exactly?” Jamie asked.
“Wait by the café door.”
Jamie turned her chair around so it faced the platform instead of the entrance.
“Sit here,” she said. “You can see both stairways in the glass.”
The woman hesitated.
“I’m not tired.”
“Neither am I,” Jamie said. “I prefer standing when other people are making bad decisions.”
Sonali made a small sound that might have been a laugh.
The woman sat.
For ten minutes, the four of them watched the door, the reflected stairs, and the platform indicator as it changed from six to two and then briefly to nine.
Jay told a story about boarding the wrong train in college and refusing to admit it until the landscape became suspiciously coastal. Sonali said the story improved each time he told it. Jay thanked her.
Then a young man appeared at the café entrance, breathless and carrying a box tied with red string.
The woman stood so quickly that the chair scraped the floor.
“You said not to move,” she told him.
“The train moved,” he said.
“Trains do that.”
She took the box from him, then turned back to the table. From her cloth bag she removed a guava and placed it on Jamie’s empty saucer.
“For the chair,” she said.
After they left, Jamie sat down again. She turned the guava once in her hand.
“You were right,” she told Sonali.
Sonali nearly dropped her tea.
“About what?”
“She didn’t want help from me.”
“That is not what I said.”
Jamie moved her chair sideways, giving Sonali the better view of the door.
“Your turn,” she said. “Try not to improve everyone who walks in.”
Sonali sat.
“Impossible.”