Telling Stories

They actually worked together, although sometimes they would forget that. Every day they would head in together, then head their separate ways to check in with their respective bosses and coworkers. They would usually end up somewhere physically close together. She would be checking documents, asking quick questions about travel and return plans to tourists coming in, while he would greet the exhausted returning travelers, checking documents and asking how long they were gone.

Each day, after their hours had run out they would meet back again and slowly, almost as slowly as the lines they had spent all day managing, make their way back to the car that they had driven there in that morning. As they rode back, they would turn off the radio and instead tell each other stories. Stories of people that they had seen throughout the day and the stories that those people held. They would of course change the names of the people, and any “pertinent yet confidential travel details” but they would attempt to keep the details as true to life as possible.

Then, after they made it home, they would fall into a comfortable silence, music playing over them eating and them eventually falling into bed. The next morning they would turn on the radio on the way to work. On days they weren’t working, when they both weren’t working, the stories would start to run dry, and so the conversation would trickle away like a dried up riverbed.