On the corner of 7th and Blake the sidewalk broke open, a wound dressed in steel railing, exposing a descension of concrete incisors that lay underneath a humid breath issued constant into the chill of the night air, as much a product of the incessant shuffling of trains as the hot crush of people beneath the streets.
The wind took the steam up and along with the snow, drawing it like a veil across the buildings along the street, obscuring them almost entirely. From inside The Station it was as though the street had erupted, and only the thin windows kept the ash and smoke from sweeping in and suffocating the quiet patronage as they sipped at their coffee and considered the pastries they had bought on a whim, absent of any real desire.
If The Station were famous, which it was not, it would be so for its comfortable size, its bitter but reasonably priced coffee, and perhaps as well for its lighting, which dwelt somewhere between dim and funereal. If it were infamous, which it was not, it would be only for the tendency to attract a crowd perhaps too interested in politics, and certainly convinced of their own relevance. It included, but was not limited to, the outspoken, the poetical and the romantic, and rarely but not unheard of, the perilous.
To restate: if infamy were to be The Station’s fate, then it would rest in its clientele. At the particular moment, that infamy, hypothetical or not, could be traced and attributed to the man dressed in black, with his frivolous gestures and frenzied writing. His name was Lucian Bugnon, and he had attributed to him exactly six bombings, all of which were considered to be of some significance- three statues, two memorials and one monument.
