The Couple In Economy

Short character study written on the train home

1972

The affair had begun in late summer, as most seem to do, the leaves flooding the grasses and the sun dimming in heat and hours. She was young and unextraordinary, he was wealthy and bored of his wife. And so it has been, is, and will be in the lives of thousands of lovers yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

And yet, that morning, something felt strange to Boston’s commuters about this particular extramarital liaison.

June Carmick was curiously plain, in that way which makes one peer closer over the folded pages of a morning newspaper.

She had an unusually prominent jaw, an ugly, bulbous quality to her nose and a hairline that seemed to start too far up on her head. Still, her complexion was good, one supposed, unspoilt by cosmetics or scrubbing, and her eyes had a greenish light to them that could almost be attractive when she spoke with vigour about her latest paperback or purse.

A dull creature, but not quite ugly enough or stupid enough to be worthy of comment. Perhaps that made it worse. In the…