The Man Who Walks the Long Way to Work

The short way is direct and perfectly usable. He has no objection to it and uses it on the way home.

The long way goes up, around and back down, and adds eleven minutes each morning. Over two years that is something like ninety hours, which is the kind of arithmetic that makes a habit sound like a decision.

Asked why, he first said the traffic, which is not true and which he did not seem to expect to be believed. Then he said it was better for his knees, going up rather than along, which is at least arguable. Then, some minutes later, he gave the actual answer.

On the long way, four people say good morning to him. On the short way, nobody does.

He listed them without hesitating: a man who opens a shutter at the same time every day, two women who are usually together, and a boy on a bicycle whose name he does not know and who has never stopped.

None of them are friends. He has never had a conversation with any of them longer than a sentence. He was firm on this point, as though we might be about to make the story into something warmer than it is.

What he was describing is not friendship. It is the daily confirmation, in a city where a great deal has moved, that he is a person who is recognised on a particular street at a particular time — which costs eleven minutes and is, on his account, obviously worth it.