He knows that he is trying too hard to make the pieces fit, but he keeps forcing it anyway. He stands there, feet planted, hands in his pockets, and he surfs the waves of the Red Line. And, while he does, he looks across the way, and he tries to imagine how they could be anyone other than who he thinks they are.

It's the keys that the girl twirls around her finger that get him started. That, and her knee pressed against the dentist's thigh. The dentist wiggles a tooth in his mouth as he explains a dream he's had, and she listens to him. She sits still, still but for the gentle movement of her chewing mouth, and she listens.

He can see the two of them in bed together, the girl's pale body wrapped around the dentist's dark one. And he can see the moment she fell in love with him, the moment he ended her week-long pain by uprooting a rotten tooth in one determined yank.

And he can see himself, in sweats, reflected in the darkened window of the train's closed doors. He bares his teeth and feigns a scream to complete the image, and then he draws the words from the dentist's mind:

Mentally emaciated...

...mentally emaciated...

...mentally emaciated.

The train stops, and he follows an elderly couple out onto the platform, all the while daydreaming of fingers plugged into the holes where teeth should be, of a village without pavement, and of the tunnels he used to dream of, back when he had dreams of his own, dreams that weren't just karaoke covers of other's greatest hits.

He watches the train leave. It's empty, and he wonders where the two of them went. He wonders, suddenly, if they were ever there at all.