In the Hoboken train station, a man and a woman wait on a bench for the train home. The woman is doing something small and private in her lap, hands behind her purse; she fingers red rosary beads and pushes back her cuticles with the crucifix. The man is trying to recapture what they have lost in thirty years of marriage and four children.
His voice carries as he tells her about a program he watched on television while she was at a church meeting last night. He wished she was with him. The program was about whales, how they communicate with other whales, how they swim so far from one place only to return each year to that same place and start over.
The woman takes out her needlework and crochets as he tells her about scientists learning how to get close to whales without scaring them. He tells her about taking care with diving equipment, not to make air bubbles because even such little things will scare whales.
A train whistle blows and other people get up, but this is not their train. The man and the woman sit in silence near the Lost and Found, as if oceans apart.
She looks for a tissue as he goes on, excited; he tells her about the feeding patterns of whales and the songs. He begins to sing, imitating the sound of whales, trying to reach her but she isn't listening. His voice trails off into little parts of nothing, like the air bubbles that come between scientists and whales and frighten the whales away.