Waiting for the Hum That Never Comes.

The platform was a lonely island, adrift in a boundless fog. As if bowing to some unseen force, the crooked lampposts leaned toward the ground, their dim yellow haloes dissolving in the damp haze, barely grazing the rain-polished cobblestones. On a bench, long since soaked through with the night's dampness, sat a man. He did not look at his watch—an inner mechanism had long been counting the minutes somewhere beneath his ribs, ticking in time with his own anticipation. Somewhere out there, beyond this soundless curtain, a dull hum should have stirred, and the blades of headlights should have trembled and sliced through the darkness. But the world held its breath, submerged in a silence—thick, viscous, almost tangible. And all that remained was this solitary vigil, this agonizing premonition of a meeting that, he was beginning to understand, might forever remain just a shadow in the fog.