Red

Red has always been the color of love, seduction and danger. But for him red had only been the color of her nails. Its been almost an year of him traveling on that train, which incidentally was red  too. He had seen her, well her fingers really, most days of the week every morning for about the same time. Her nails, were always painted immaculately in the the shiniest of red and both the color and her fingers did justice  to each other. For months he had noticed the reds rise,to adjust vents of the AC duct right above her seat, or running through her hair, or when she just stretched after a long time sitting in those faded train seats. And each time the same reaction. as he looked at them intently and with appreciation. He was never obsessed with nails, nor  did he have any freakish fetish for them. He lived his life, plain  simple and mostly in shades of light brown and pale blue. Those reds where his daily dose of color and a symbol of the frolic that life is supposed to be, of being confident and in love with one self. By the time this became a part of his daily routine, he had thought of and  dismissed the idea of  walking over to see how she looked about a 100 times in his head, He no more cared to see how she looked. When he got on the train , she would already be at her seat.that day was no different.  She had been animated like always , but he felt a little different though he could not say  why. That night he stayed awake  in his bed trying to figure out what was different  that morning, when it finally stuck him. That glittering platinum band around her ring finger. Oh yeah he exclaimed as he figured out what was different  today. His liking for the reds was unchanged the next day too. A few weeks later she stopped coming on that train and a few years later  he woke up in  his bed with some lady he had met at a singles club last night.
It was a Monday and he needed to get to his train, yeah the red train he had still been taking  for all those year. As he moved  her hand off from over him he noticed the hands, and then the fingers,and the nails. Red,shining, but a little jaded. And the untanned skim  on the finger where it seems , used to be a ring not too long ago clearly visible on the  ring finger.He hurried of to work, but he never took the train after that day.