I chose her because she slept with both hands open.
People who expect to lose things usually keep a hand through a strap, or rest a heel against their case. She had put her wooden box on the next seat and fallen asleep with her palms facing up. There was a little crease of dirt beside one thumbnail. I remember that better than her face.
The train was delayed. The loudspeaker had stopped giving reasons. I sat beside the box with my empty holdall and waited for the people opposite to look at the departure board.
When I stood, I had it.
I did not leave the station immediately. Two men were waiting outside for me to produce money I had already promised them twice. I needed to know what I had before I chose an exit.
In the washroom I opened the lid. The box contained a sealed container wrapped in a scarf. A brass plate on the container bore a man's name and two years, one much earlier than the other. I put it down carefully, as though careful handling now could change how I had acquired it.
Something rattled beneath the scarf.
Inside a small transparent pouch were several yellow metal pieces. They were irregular and surprisingly light. I thought they had broken off a bracelet. There was no clasp, but I had sold things in pieces before. The buyer near the station cared about weight, not provenance, provided I did not volunteer the provenance.
I could have left the box by the basins. Someone would have found it quickly. The woman's name might be inside; the attendant could ask her questions until the answers matched. I considered this while rolling a metal piece between my fingers.
Then I heard her outside.
"A wooden box. About this big."
She was speaking to the station attendant. He asked whether it had a handle. She said no, and her voice broke on that ordinary word.
I put the pouch in my pocket.
The box itself would identify me if I carried it out. I could return it to a bench, but then they would notice the pouch was gone and start looking before I had left. I wanted the thing she sought to look empty enough that she would stay with it, trying to understand.
There was a large waste sack in the open cleaning cupboard. I lifted the inner container, removed its cap and emptied it into the sack. Most of the ash fell without a sound. Some caught on the fold of a paper towel. I shook the container to make the last part come out, then hated the impatience of that motion for perhaps three seconds.
I replaced everything else. The scarf still looked carefully folded.
When the voices moved away, I carried the box to a bench near the original one. I left it beneath a poster advertising places you could go for a fresh start. I did not choose the poster for that reason. It was simply where there was space.
The buyer weighed the metal twice. He turned one piece over with a thumbnail.
"Dental," he said.
"Gold?"
"Some. Not all this."
He named an amount that would not even postpone the meeting outside the station. I asked him to check. He showed me the scale as though I had challenged the numbers rather than the distance between them and what I needed.
I took the money. Refusing it would not put anything back.
At the station, the woman sat beside her open box. The attendant had brought a second man, who was taking notes. I heard enough as I passed to understand the pouch.
"He kept them," she said. "Whenever they took something out. Teeth, screws from his ankle. He said he'd paid for them."
She gave a small laugh that neither man answered.
"I thought they should go with him. I don't know why."
I went back to the washroom. The cleaning cupboard was shut. A new sack stood in the bin. I looked behind it, then beneath the trolley, trying to remember whether the old sack had a knot or a red tie. I could not remember something I had touched less than twenty minutes earlier.
The cleaner asked what I wanted.
"I threw something away. By mistake."
She said the sacks had gone down with the other waste. There were people waiting to use the room, and she needed me to move.
I went outside and stood near the woman until the attendant asked whether I knew her. She looked up. Her hands were closed now, one around each edge of the box.
"No," I said.
My train was announced. To reach it I had to pass the bench again. She was pressing the scarf into the empty space, arranging it so the container would not knock against the sides on the journey. I walked past while she was occupied, carrying the money in the same pocket as the small transparent pouch. At the platform I took the pouch out to throw it away, then kept it because there might still be a piece inside.
