There is a downtown local one train approaching the station. Please stand clear.
Why don’t you sit?
We've been sitting all day.
But we’ll be walking all night.
No one is ever trying to get hit by the train, she was wondering to herself. She always had this intruding thought on the platform, being told to stand clear, (maybe she wanted to not listen), of having a seizure suddenly (she was not epileptic) and falling into the tracks, her convulsing body magnified by the electric rails in a wild storm of color, light, and movement, a time lapse of her body’s whole life. Maybe she would stumble drunk, or somehow be running and trip, but the momentum of the trip would catapult her, and then boom. What would it feel like being down there? Knowing her fate is sealed, waiting? What unsettled her most was the idea that the voice announcing the arrival in a few minutes, like 2 or 3, and the moment where everyone freezes, unsure whether thats enough time to save her, if it’s worth it to crawl down there too or if that’s just shooting yourself in the foot. Is there a ladder to throw down? Did anyone think to put stairs on the side of the tracks for this occasion? Or would the city avoid that potential liability as “encouragement” to public suicide? Looking up at the people, them looking down at you, the announcer counting down the train's approach. Time would mean different things to you than them. Both parties would hear "in one minute" and it would be more horrific for them. More fearful for them. You would look up and shrug your shoulders.
The light had started flashing orange, 0 MIN 0 MIN 0 MIN.
She motioned forwards with her hips, rocking towards the empty shadow.
They started to feel the shake of the walls, which had started almost a minute before.
“I wonder if this is an express or a local?”
“Did it say?”
“I’m not sure.”
“We could always transfer to the 2” They said as the poor train approached, already unwanted.
“True. We could if it’s running express at Time Square”
“True.”
“Do you know what intercom means?”
The train approached heaving its lumbering form, heavy, voluptuous-less, a fucking rectangular tank roaring into their life. (She hates sex with him.) It would have felt so good to get slammed by it. (She feels like she is fucking her younger self somehow.)
“What?”
He made a little noise. A short, forced exhale, like a pencil was lodged where his nasal cavity connects to the esophagus. It was admonishing, but not a laugh.
“Is it interlocutor-communicator?” '
' why am i answering you?' she worried she had said aloud.
Stations were flashing by. (They had been in a class in college together with an old projector. The movie flashed through in slides. They had talked in the hall outside about this. Then, when it was romantic for things to flash by quickly.
"Can you imagine having kids like that?"
Two little boys were hanging like monkeys on their mother, screaming.
"What would you do?"
"Teach them ASL"
"What?"
"I would teach them ASL. That's how we would communicate"
"Do you think just because you teach someone a language that's the one they will choose to communicate with you in?"
"It's worth trying."
"You always say that."
The moment when the platform holds its breath. The doors have opened enough for anyone to tumble out, not wide enough for anyone. They all wait, like frozen glass objects.
"Are there things that aren't worth trying to you?"
The threshold is short, mindless, easy to cross over once part of the crowd. She thought about the fact she’d never caught anyone’s eyes. A second later, once she had passed through them, she couldn’t remember a single one of their eyes. She tried to reconstruct the line of apprehensive bodies at the threshold ass eh faced them — faces, colors, shapes, fabrics, metal rims — but she couldn’t for the life of her reconstruct a single pair of eyes.
They are sitting in the isolate two-person seater at the end of the car. There's a poem printed above this loveseat in every train car, part of a long-standing MTA public project called 'Poetry in Motion'. This one is something about taking a nap and hearing rain trickling down the window.
"It's 7 already."
"Sometimes we take the A and it’s faster."
"Yes, but then you can’t transfer to the Q."
Time passes.
Ladies and gentleman, I'm sorry to bother you. I'm trying to get something to eat tonight. If anybody has a dollar--
A man and woman holding Trader Joes bags look to each other. The man stands, waiting, looking above their heads, holding a heavy and filthy blanket over his small frame. Eventually, reluctantly, the seated man hands over a bag of chips. He seems upset. The standing man continues walking down the cars.
"I had a dollar," she says.
Time passes.
There was a poster for depression pills. It read “SEHHES” in big letters over three sets of legs, each a different size and skin color, some with minimalist tattoos with private meanings.
She had the sudden urge to grab his hand, hard, and squeeze until he understood what she thought about.
"When did polygamy become so fashionable?" he asked.
"Are you bored?"
"No, thanks." he smiles at her.
She smiles.
There is a southbound local 1 train approaching the station. Stand clear of the closing doors please.
“Do you know what ‘bound’ means?” A man asks his son. “It means ‘headed towards"
We could get off and go to Joe's? I'm kind of hungry.
I'm late now.
Yes, but you didn't want to be early.
We should get off here.
It’s 7:43 already
The doors opened. They exited just as the train across the platform left.
"Asshole!" She yelled at the conductor. She turned to him in a rage. "Can you believe that!!"
"Well, if we take the Q, we could --"
"Fuck him."
"He's just doing his job."
"You are always on everybody else's side."
"You are always angry! You're angry at everything! It makes me feel like I'm shriveling inside."
They stood there in silence, her looking at him.
"We're going to be too late now."
"The Q is coming in 5 minutes."
She looked to him.
"This isn’t going to work, is it?"
"We could transfer to the A..." he started, out of guilt, out of old love, and they both knew, quietly.
"When someone tells you who they are, listen."
The train roared into the platform.
"What did you say?"
"I said, when someone tells you —""No, what did you say when you told me who you were?"
"I don’t remember."
It was not the unknowing of who she is, but the unknowing of who she was, which she realized had been bothering her, as she stepped across the crevice.
I don't think we're happy.
Maybe not. I don't think...we're what makes each other unhappy, though. Do you?
Sometimes...I feel like you are taking something from me. Taking the best years of my life.
He paused.
"Damn." he said to himself. This isn't fair, he thought. That's all he could think. When he looked at her, he saw this seesaw of moral questions, of dilemmas and futures and her answers, which were easier. Her answers were good and warm and so was she, except lately, if he really thought about it, maybe she hadn't been. It felt like he was just now catching up to her.
She didn't remember ever affecting him before. But now he was scowling. It was actually nice, actually invigorating, this small proof that she might actually be of consequence to him.
The announcer relieved himself of the tension.
Please let passengers off the train before --
"I think I should get off here."
She stood, pausing when he asked;
"Should we try again?"
"Maybe one day, but not soon."
"If we see each other, will you say hi?"
"If we see each other."
"Hi then."
"Hi," he said with a wave.
She walked off the train and into the night. He rode more stops, she didn't know how many. The air was warm aboveground. She walked until something soft and animal inside her was talking, and listened when it said it was time to go home.