The Tram Conductor – Part 1: Number Three

The tram came grinding round the corner in the dark, its lights glowing yellow in the falling snow, and Karin ran.

She was fifty-nine, in a heavy coat and a wool hat, with a library book in one pocket and a flask of tea in the other. She hadn't run for a tram in thirty years. She reached the stop at the last second, gasping, as the doors began to close.

They opened again.

"I saw you coming," said the driver, through the glass. "I thought I might wait."

"Thank you," said Karin. "That's very kind."

"It is a very cold morning."

She took her usual seat behind his cabin. Lars, sixty-three, the driver, had thick grey hair, glasses and an old blue uniform jacket with a button missing, and he had driven the number three for twenty-six years. He nodded to her every morning through the little window. She had been taking the tram for a year, since she retired from the city library and her husband's illness ended.

"Cold again tomorrow," he said, at the end of the line.

"I expect so."

"I will wait again."

She smiled. He did.

By March he had begun leaving a small paper cup of coffee on her seat. By April she had begun leaving him a cinnamon bun. They talked at the end of the line during his ten-minute break, about books, winters, the slow quiet of being alone in a large flat.

"I should say," said Lars, one grey Friday, "that I have been looking forward to the number three for a long time. For a reason other than the route."

"Lars."

"I would like to invite you to dinner. At my flat. I make very good fish soup."

"I would like that," said Karin.

Continue the story: Part 2 – End of the Line.

Continue the story: Part 2 – End of the Line.