A man screaming in a train car

"What are you saying? What are you saying? You keep repeating the same thing!" the man shouts at the top of his lungs. He has intense blue eyes and a blond mustache straight out of the eighties. The other passengers in the carriage (it's morning, and not many people travel to Barcelona by train) look up from their phones. The man doesn't notice; he acts as if he's alone and shouts even louder. "How can you be so stupid? Can't you see you're telling me the same thing over and over?"

You can tell he's talking to his wife, and in fact, her voice, an elderly woman's voice, can be heard a little through the earpiece. "What present? What present, for God's sake? Why should I have to buy it?" she exclaims now. A mother, hearing what's happening, tells her young son that they're leaving, that the man is shouting too much. "The Three Kings are a nice little thing, and you, you stupid idiot, spend all day fussing over your sister, just as stupid as you! I'm not buying her anything!" Mom and the boy, thankfully, are already outside.

The other passengers stare at the floor or close their eyes as if some part of their body aches. An inevitable, sharp pain. Why does he call so much? Why does buying gifts make him so angry? At what point, for this blue-eyed man, who must have fallen in love long ago with that woman he now calls "stupid," did Christmas become such a horrible chore? He has to go buy a bottle of cologne or a cheap ham hock, politely ask them to put it in a bag—no, no need to wrap it, that stupid girl doesn't deserve it—and do it. Do it while shouting; he doesn't know how to do it any other way anymore. He hangs up the phone and says, to everyone and to no one: "She's silly, poor thing..." And he laughs sarcastically, because that laugh, no other, is the only one he has; he has no other. He doesn't know how to smile like he used to.