Not everyone could see the booth on the pier, nor indeed the man who operated it, but most people knew they were both there. For those who could see it, the booth was a dreary, lopsided old thing covered in grime with a few of its wooden planks pulled loose. The rusty nails that used to hold them back stuck out threateningly, bent and twisted. The man inside the booth had a sunken sort of face, worn and wrinkled after working this booth time and time again. His long black hair fell in matted strands covering his temples and neck. He had thin, cracked, crooked lips, and long, bony hands with greyish skin stretched across the joints. His veins bulged, and you could trace their river-like paths on his body but for the heavy black cloak that sat wrapped around his shoulders, pinned up with a tarnished silver skull ornament. Over all his form there was a thick layer of dust.

There were some who were drawn to him and his booth – heartbroken lovers, rejected children, desperate people with nowhere left to go and nothing left to do. They would come to his window, some sobbing, some down and dejected, and the man would give them a ticket. A boat would come by later that day and take them away, and when they took the boat they could never come back. It was sometimes a tragedy when it happened, but sometimes, if nobody cared about them, it wasn’t.

But it was a quiet surrender to death nonetheless. The man had been there for as long as there had been fear, hatred, and grief in the world, and he had grown seemingly old – old enough to become deaf to the sounds of the pier that he had grown accustomed to.

A strange thing happened once when the man was still working there. A young woman was wandering alone along the dock, lost in some melancholy daze, her steps halting now and then. One could believe she only happened to stumble upon the man’s booth. She was pale, and her face was reddened and tear-stained, but she was dressed neatly in light colors. Her hair was just barely disheveled. It was cut all around her neck. The girl stood tall, and if she felt any fear at all, she carried it well. But her hands shook, and she had a habit of walking on her toes. She was by no means pretty, nor was she particularly ugly. She had trembling, full lips and a very plain, ordinary-looking face, but she had wide eyes full of understanding and care for the world.

The girl approached his booth, her hands clasped tightly around something, and she held them close to her chest. She must have been lost, the man thought, but he knew by the look of her that there was nowhere left for her to go. She gave the man a broken smile, and tried to look past the strings of matted black hair that concealed his sunken grey eyes.

The girl cleared her throat. “Good afternoon.”

The man lifted his chin at the sound of her polite, clear voice. He said nothing, but he gave her what he hoped was an encouraging, comforting smile. She seemed nervous nonetheless, but she had her eyes focused on the counter. She spoke with a quaver in her voice, but it was strong and determined.

“A ticket, please. No need to hurry.”

She waited as the man stood up slowly. He had a habit of walking glumly, with his back bent over, and he knew he wasn’t as tall as most people thought he would be. The darkness inside his booth swallowed him up, but in a moment he was back, his cloak dragging across the floor. The man handed the girl her ticket with both hands, and she took it, giving him the money that she had been holding.

“Thank you, sir.”

The man nodded. The girl left. The boat came, but there was no sign of the girl, and so it left without her.

The next day came, and the man was already at the booth before anyone had awoken, as he always was. He was there all the time, through the garish light of day, and through the long, pressing night. He watched the sun rise and fill the grey sky with pale orange flames. Not long after, the girl was back with two cups of tea. She set one down in front of the man.

“What’s this?” he asked. His voice was gravelly, but it was unusually sorrowful. He couldn’t remember the last time he had used it.

“Well, it’s tea,” answered the girl. “It’s for you.”

The man paused, unsure. He took the cup and swirled it in his bony old hand. No one had ever done this for him before. He didn’t know if he should accept the favor. But he took a sip anyway.

“Thank you.”

The girl nodded. She pulled out her ticket, which she had neatly folded in half. She placed it on the counter and looked long and hard at it, her eyes burning into the man’s spidery handwriting scrawled on its surface. She faltered, and her hands moved towards the ticket, but then she slid it across the counter over to the man. He stared at it.

“I’m sorry for bothering you,” the girl whispered. “Could you keep this safe for me? I don’t need it yet.”

The man took it and it disappeared under his cloak. “Alright. You haven’t bothered me at all.” He didn’t add “It was my pleasure”, but instead told her the tea was nice. With that, the girl was gone once again.

She didn’t return until a week later.

Upon her return, she put another cup of tea on the counter, and by the dull light in her eyes, the man knew she was there for the ticket.

“How was your morning?” the man inquired, trying his very best at courtesy.

The girl looked down at the tea. They had grown colder than they should, but perhaps she supposed the man wouldn’t be able to tell. He hadn’t had much tea before. But the girl held her cup and took a long drink before swallowing. The man tasted his as well. It was bitter.

“My morning was busy,” replied the girl at last. “I try to do so many things, but I never do any of them well enough.”

The man’s hand went into his pocket under his cloak. He could feel the ticket, but he didn’t take it out. The girl sat down on the chair by the window.

“I try my best. I really do. But at the end of the day, it’s the end of the day, and I haven’t really gotten better. That last part’s all that matters anyway,” she told the man.

“Maybe you will get better. You never know,” the man answered. “Only time can tell.”

What did he know, anyway? To him, there was always plenty of time.

The girl took a gulp of the tea and swallowed, hard, not tasting it. Her hands were calloused and cut in several places, and they were stained with ink. The man noticed she had this odd habit of tapping her index finger on the side of the cup, sometimes slow and steady, sometimes faster and faster. But she was careful to keep the tapping silent.

The man tried again. “Look at me. I don’t know how long I’ve been here, but I can’t see myself anywhere else.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” She meant it. She must know it was a dreary place, even for him.

“It’s not your fault.”

The girl crossed her legs and uncrossed them, and she touched her thumb to each of her fingers on each hand. “Is it, though?”

She slowly stood up. The man couldn’t think of anything to say, because his job was to stand there in the rotting booth and sell tickets to people who wanted them. The girl couldn’t think of anything to say either, and she left without another word.

The man realized after she was out of sight that she had forgotten her ticket. He considered stepping out of his booth and seeing if he could possibly find her and give it back, but after all, he couldn’t really leave, and the girl would come back if she ever wanted the ticket again.

Several days passed before she returned. Once again, she held two cups of tea and gave one to the man. They were as bitter as ever. But the man liked it. The girl hadn’t said a word as she walked up and put the cup down in front of his hand, so the man felt for the neatly folded ticket in his pocket. That was when she finally spoke, and her voice was small and wilted, as if she really hadn’t used it in a while and had forgotten how.

“I really do hope I’m not bothering you.”

The man shook his head slowly, but he gave no smile. He wondered if he still could, now that things were as they were and people came up to his booth all the time. Sometimes people forgot how sorrowful it made him feel, knowing that hope was gone for so many people, and still having to let them sail away forever.

The girl didn’t sit down. She would sip a little bit of the tea, and then pause, as if she was about to say something, but then she’d decide against it and sip the tea again. The man simply watched her. He wished that he knew what to say to her and to anyone who ever came to him. He didn’t have to say anything before. He never really knew exactly what made those people want to leave so much, but it hadn’t bothered him in the past. But he had figured that when they were ready to come to him, they were long past being talked out of it, and he had no business knowing.

“Don’t you have friends? Family?” the man inquired. The question was really about why the girl would bother talking to him, of all people.

“I do,” replied the girl. “But you see, sir, they’re great people, but they don’t always talk to me. And besides, I believe that I burden them.”

“What do you mean?” asked the man.

The girl took a deep breath and set down her cup of tea. She fiddled with the hem of her shirt, rubbing the stitches with her thumb. “Well, it’s hard to believe I’m as interesting as them. They have so many glorious things to talk about, and I have nothing.”

“They could still enjoy your company,” the man pointed out. His words sounded out of place in his deep, gloomy voice.

“They don’t,” the girl insisted. “I’m sure of it. It’s just the little things, you know. Like how it seems just a bit quieter after I speak. Or how they say these things to each other that I don’t really understand. Or how there’s always someone else they’d rather talk to than me. I know they’re good people, because they’ve been good to me, but I’m afraid I’m simply too ordinary.”

It was a shame that the man had a job. He could just drop the subject and ask no more of this girl. Then he could give her the ticket and it would be another job done, another person gone. It was all that was needed of him, and all that he was ever good for. He didn’t know if he could do anything else.

So he said nothing, and waited for the girl to ask for her ticket, and she just stood there, waiting for him to find something to say. When neither of them did what the other thought they would do, the girl left.

Day after day passed. The girl would come quite often, and she always brought the bitter tea and drank half of it in silence before speaking to the man. It was clear that life made her upset; so upset that the man could see that she was dying inside. He had seen it before in those who had bought his tickets. Their smile kind of withered before it could reach their eyes, and they either walked past all the sights he could not see on the dock, or their eyes darted to and fro, searching wildly for any remnant of beauty that was left.

The girl? The girl smiled often, and it was fleeting even though she looked pretty when she smiled. Her eyes saw everything, and understood the little things the man couldn’t know, but he began to see that in her heart, the girl felt undeserving of them. She would pause sometimes when she saw something in the waves past the railing, or when a flock of gulls came by. She would stare at the sky. But every time, she would look away sadly, almost guiltily.

“I have nothing to offer to anyone,” the girl would tell him. “Sometimes, my family quarrels, and it all comes back to something I did. I can apologize as many times as I can, and I can try harder in the future, but nothing will change all the things I’ve done.”

Sometimes, she spoke about the people she loved. She had a lot of love, the man learned, and she gave it away generously. Yet, she was still alone.

She would say, “I’m lonely, though I love. Day after day, it seems more so that I am lonely because I love.”

The man listened to her. He enjoyed her company, despite everything that he was and despite the ticket that he kept in his pocket. He sold several more of his tickets as the seasons changed and the bright summer gave way to a golden fall, which turned into a frosty winter, but hers stayed right in his pocket every day that she came and spoke to him.

Sometimes she was distraught and disheveled, stubbornly slapping away tears before she approached his booth and stifled her distress. Other days, she was simply sorrowful, her face set in a deep, melancholy frown. At times, she would come up to the booth, put the man’s cup on the counter, sit down, and drink her whole cup in silence, and neither of them would say a word, although each was acutely aware of the other. The girl, here at the ticket booth, and the man, who made work selling tickets. But then she would finish her tea and leave.

When she did talk to him, she spoke like she hated the sound of her own voice, brought barely above a whisper, crumpling and fading away. The man could almost imagine her voice curling at the edges like a fragile autumn leaf.

The man himself was a miserable soul. He once thought that what he did was honorable. A favor to society. His old coat from a lifetime ago still hung on a hook near an exit he had long since forgotten how to see. He had left it there the day he stepped in here, and every day the girl came he glanced at the old coat. And he thought of the ticket in his pocket.

The girl always left with only her own cup, and when the man finished his, he placed it on one of the shelves in the back of the room. He figured no one could see through the darkness in there anyway. The empty cups piled up against the wall, collecting dust and becoming grounds for the webs of spiders.

It was nearing the end of another spring and summer would soon be coming again. The year had passed by, and the man would live many more to come. He was still the same, and the girl was still the same, and she still came to his booth every day.

One day, she came and left the tea on his counter, but for once, he didn’t touch it.

“Why do you bring me tea?” he asked her. He felt like he should know by now. But he didn’t. The more he thought about it, the less he understood.

The girl shrugged. “It’s payment for the ticket.”

“Why don’t you take the ticket?” the man continued. “With all the tea you’ve brought me, I could give you hundreds of tickets.”

The girl stood up and set her cup on the counter. “Lean out the window,” she told him.

The man did his best to comply. The old bones in his body rebelled against him sometimes, and refused to let him move. The unused muscles in his body had grown tight and sore. But he slowly tilted his head out the booth window. The light breeze felt raw on his skin, and the uncovered sun was harsh and burning in his eyes.

“Look at the ocean,” the girl said. “See? The sun is sparkling on the waves. Just sparkling. When those waves reach the shore, they grow into these blue arches before tumbling onto the sand.” She pointed to the sky. “And the clouds. They’re soft today. You can see birds flying past them.”

The man nodded, because he didn’t want the girl to know that he couldn’t see them, no matter how much he wanted to. Instead, he just watched her look up into the sky, her curious eyes following what must be a flock of birds. Then she turned back to the man, and she stood up straight with her head right in front of the booth window, and the darkness inside the booth cast long shadows over her face.

“Every day, it’s everything I can do not to ask for the ticket,” the girl explained. She didn’t tremble. She didn’t stutter. But she spoke like she was counting the words she was allowed to use. “I’ve wanted it, the ticket. Almost every night, I think of holding it in my hand until the boat comes, and it’s still crumpling in my hand when I’m sailing away far into the sea. The people I’ve burdened, they will be free of me. I think of how the clouds here are different every morning, and the marigolds will be blooming soon. I don’t deserve them. I’ve done nothing to deserve them. Some things are so beautiful, and my life is going nowhere. I have dreams, but I’ve already chased them out. I have friends, but none of them know me.”

It was the feeling of not belonging, and the man knew it well. “Didn’t you tell them about coming here?”

“I did,” the girl replied. “They know. Anyways, sometimes, it feels like it’s only a bad thing if I really do take the ticket.”

“Didn’t you tell them how you felt?” the man asked.

“I did,” answered the girl. She paused. “Well? Aren’t you going to say it isn’t real? That I’m just making it up?”

“What isn’t real?”

The girl frowned. “The feeling that you’re alone. That there’s nothing left that needs you to stay. The feeling that there’s a ticket waiting for you.”

The man shook his head slowly. He wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do, but he couldn’t think of anything else. “No. I have your ticket. It’s real. To you, and to me. And so is everything else.”

The young woman furrowed her eyebrows. She was standing remarkably still.

“It’s just a feeling,” the man told her. “And feelings are real.”

She thought about it for a moment. Her skin over the past year had become more and more translucent, and she looked thinner. The man supposed she might look pretty now, but he didn’t think so.

“I suppose that’s true,” the girl concluded finally. “But I don’t know. I keep hearing I ought not to talk to you.”

They were right. Nobody should ever have to feel like they had to talk to the man while they lived, he thought. But some people did, anyway.

“They told me it was a waste of my time, and I have so much to stay for. No one like me should be here, they said,” the girl continued. “Even if I wasn’t going to get a ticket. But I can’t stop coming back.”

The man thought about the shelves all piled up with empty cups of tea in the back of the room, and he thought about the young woman’s sad, bright smile, and the sound of her polite, careful voice. It was in that moment that he knew what he had been needing himself to say.

“I wish you wouldn’t come back,” the man told the girl. “I enjoy your company. It’s my pleasure to talk to you. But sometimes, the sun rises, and I hope more than anything that I won’t see you that day, and I’ll know that you’ll never see me again. That you’ve moved on and started living.”

He had said it, and the girl knew now. He didn’t really expect her to think anything of it, though. Who was he to teach her anything about the world?

“Would you like your ticket?” the man asked again, but only because he felt like he had to. He started reaching for it in his pocket.

The young woman watched him rummage through the pockets under his cloak. “I don’t know. I want to stay, but there’s no reason to. I don’t believe in myself anymore.”

“I believe in you,” the man told her simply.

It probably didn’t make a difference, anyway, whether he believed in anything. But to him, there was always plenty of time, and he often watched people on the pier pass by fleetingly, and sometimes he wondered what it would be like if he hadn’t given away all those tickets.

“No one else does,” the young woman said.

The man thought for a second. “You haven’t met everyone who will ever love you yet. And you know the people you’ve already met do. Believe in that.”

He found the ticket in his pocket. He placed it on the counter. It had been folded over and over again on the same crease – the crease that the young woman had made when she had first returned it to him. But other than that, the ticket remained remarkably intact. It hadn’t yellowed at all, and the writing on it was still printed darkly. The man slid the ticket over to the young woman.

She didn’t move. The ticket sat there, in between her two hands, and she looked at it. She looked at the small, folded thing. All she had to do was take it. She knitted her eyebrows slightly, and her old habit of tapping started up again. But against the decaying wood counter, the man could faintly hear her tapping. Finally, the young woman made a motion towards the ticket. She slid it over to the man.

“I’m sorry. Could you keep it for now?” she requested.

“Alright.”

“Thank you.” The young woman took her untouched tea and gave him a sincere smile. The man didn’t think much of it. She left and the man took the ticket and slipped it into one of the empty cups in the back.

The man went back to the counter where his own cup of tea was waiting. He had forgotten about it, and it was still full. He raised it to his lips and took a sip. It was sweet.

He waited for the young woman the next day, but she didn’t come.

And she didn’t come the day after that, and indeed, for two weeks the man didn’t see her. Spring was blending into summer now, slowly but surely, and one day the sun broke into the sky and he knew in his heart it really was summertime now. That morning, he took his coat off the hook and put it on, even though it was warm outside.

The man saw the door next to the coat hook. He put his hand on the doorknob, and he could still see his greenish veins through his eerily pale skin. He twisted the doorknob and stepped out of the booth, closing the door behind him.

All around him people were walking up and down the pier, talking or eating ham and lettuce sandwiches. Children skipped ahead. There were little boys in striped shirts, running around and pointing at the small fish weaving through the water.

The man stepped slowly up to the railing, and indeed, the sea was sparkling. Dancing, almost. He could see the little fish, darting in and out of the rocks. And the water was a deep, striking shade of blue – the kind of blue that made him forget there was ever rain or storm. He saw that it was reflecting the sky, which was powdered with the wisps of clouds and illuminated by the rays of a gentle sun. It was bright and everything had a sort of golden glow around it. The breeze was in his face and tangled in his hair, and when he breathed in he could smell the salty ocean spray.

The man started walking down the pier, his hand running along the railing so he could feel each groove in the wood.

He could even hear the seagulls calling.