I Stole a Book

I stole the book from a man on the train. I&;#65533;d been
watching him for an hour and I wanted to know what he had been writing
in it. What was it that made him occasionally scribble so frantically,
to stare out of the window with a face full of agony. And what was it
he needed that yellow wax crayon for?

I had been sat on my tea stained horribly patterned chair looking at
the view of flat muddy farmland and endless rows of hedges, reading a
cheap paperback which was so full of adjectives there was no room for a
storyline. My mind was in need of being distracted from all the bad
things I have to put up with on trains everyday of my life. My bacon,
lettuce and tomato sandwich should have been called a lettuce, lettuce
and tomato sandwich and Kit Kats on the trolley were 45p. This man and
his book was the remedy. I don't know what first attracted me to the
writing commuter. Nobody else seemed particularly taken with him, they
just read their books and ate their Kit Kats contentedly. Maybe it was
the fact that he looked the same age as me -about 30, maybe it's
because I remembered him from the platform, we were stood next to each
other for 45 minutes listening to the announcer on the loud speaker
putting the time of arrival back bit by bit. But most probably I was
taken with him because I was sat next to him and every time he loudly
opened his tin pencil case, it made my already aching head throb. I
thought about telling him that it would still work if he just closed it
gently. I thought about asking him what it was he was writing, but I
guessed he wouldn't tell me. I tried to sneak a look in the same way
that you read someone else's newspaper, but I couldn't do it subtly
enough. So I decided to get on with reading the book I bought, at least
so that I could get my 25p worth of it, but with every sentence I read
I could see him writing one. Every time I turned over to a new page so
did he. Although I didn't have a clue what he was writing I was sure it
was better than what I was reading.

Maybe I was fascinated by what could be going on in his mind so much
that he had it get it out of his system and onto paper. Maybe I was
jealous, there's not enough going on in my life or imagination to fill
a page, never mind a nicely bound leather book like his.

I blame Monday mornings. The day I stole the book was a Monday morning
and they are always hard for me. When the train leaves the platform I
always sit staring at it until it disappears completely, knowing that I
will not see it again until Friday evening. I do not have a particular
attachment to the concrete of the platform, it is what it represents. I
am leaving my wife and new born baby behind just so that we can earn
enough money to keep her in jars of Rusks. Sometimes seeing the sun
rise can be a very emotional experience. And watching it rise sat
amongst strangers on a smelly, dirty, lonely train can make me feel
pretty rotten. I sit thinking about not being able to see them for so
long and it is a sadness which is only paralleled when I get into my
lonely hotel room every evening and go through the whole process again,
this time to the backdrop of the sun setting. I could describe
perfectly every single thing we pass on the entire journey with my eyes
shut, although there has been a lot of wallets stolen recently so we're
being advised to be on our guard. It is not always sadness and
loneliness, sometimes on a Monday morning after a particularly good
weekend I'll watch the sun rise and think about my beautiful family
with a smile twice the size of anybody else's on the train. Although
that isn't difficult. And sometimes on a Monday I'll steal a book from
the man I'm sitting next to.

It was when he went to the toilet, I took advantage of the couple of
minutes he foolishly left the mysterious book unguarded. I knew I had
at least three minutes because it takes that long to try and force the
door open and to try to get rid of the toilet paper that refuses to go
down the U bend before you can even start proceedings yourself.

I opened his book while being careful no-one noticed what I was doing,
not in fear of being caught, I was more worried about looking like a
bit of a loser. I carefully manoeuvred my hands so I did not leave
fingerprints, and held my breath. His book was full of stories with
titles like MISTRUST, HATE, IT'S OVER. It was full of poems about
pretty girls and lust, about lying and betraying people's trust, about
his boring life and boring wife. There were pictures he'd drawn of
people -mainly pretty girls in underwear. I flicked through the book
and thought of my wife and baby and how our world is a million miles
away from his dirty, pornographic, hate filled world. He's a cheat, sad
and pathetic while I'm in love, happy and optimistic. And I never fully
realised that until I stole his book. so I opened it up at a clean page
and wrote 'Good Luck.'
And before I had chance to decorate my words of wisdom with his
tempting yellow wax crayon he came back down the corridor. So I closed
the book and moved down to the next carriage, in fear of having some
explaining to do. And I thought about maybe starting a book of my own
so I can write in it in my lonely hotel and on my lonely train
journeys. It will be more cheerful than his, more uplifting and full of
love. And probably less pictures of girls in underwear.