Tom’s first lover was a linguist from Oslo: Dr. Janet Slowo. She was fluent in every dead language known to man. And she often created knew words for old ideas: putraction – the uncanny vomity feeling that dragged itself out over several months every time Tom left her for Lupita. Eighteen months to be exact. Lupita was from Santiago and wasn’t good for anything (but Tom could never bring himself to say she was good for nothing). Like some tiny, distanty planet caught in the gravitational pull of a binary star, Tom orbited between the two women (and Oslo and Santiago) on a regular 18-month cycle: on again, off again. The binary coding in endless, unrepeatable patterns: 01100010011011000110010101110101. Switching on again, off again. Tom is standing on the platform wearing a torn red sweater given to him by his 69-year-old mother; he’s humming some catchy French tune, feeling bleu, bleu, bleu as the train arrives at the station.