Tuesday, 18 November 2008

• I wrote this for ENG 110

  A bike messenger clattered across Canal Street as I headed down into the subway station.  The platform was sparsely populated at 11:30 on a Monday night.  The 6 was a light far down in the darkness of the tunnel, then a blur blowing my hair back as it rumbled by. 

       I got on.  It was one of the newer trains, with the nifty blue benches.  There was a bald man who looked thirtyish sitting across the car from me, reading something by Flannery O'Connor.  He wore a rumpled suit without a tie, and his socks didn’t match.  The seams of his weary messenger bag were stretched with books.  The handle of a coffee mug poked out from a zipper pocket on the side.  I wondered where he lived and how far he had to carry that bag every day. 

       At Bleecker Street, a girl in a green sweater got on and sat next to me.  The man looked up.  His eyes were saggy and chocolaty brown, like a spaniel's eyes.  He stared at the young woman, who was digging around in her Dolce and Gabbana knockoff bag.  She fished out her iPhone and began tapping impatiently at the screen.  Her nail polish was chipped.  I'd never seen anyone take out a phone in the subway.  Having left my iPod in an airplane two weeks before, I was hungry for shiny technology.  I slyly looked over her shoulder and saw that she was rearranging the icons on the startup menu. 

      The train pulled into the Astor Place station.  The man across the car was still staring at the girl.  She swayed and bumped me slightly as the train stopped.

       “Sorry,” she said.  I smiled awkwardly at her, but she was absorbed in the screen of her phone again.  I looked back up at the bald man, who was taking his bag off the seat beside him and stowing it under the bench. 

       “Stand clear of the closing doors, please,” said the voice of Manhattan Transit.  The girl in the green sweater powered down her phone and watched the walls of the subway tunnel rolling in the darkness outside the window.  I wondered how she could miss the way the man across the car was staring at her.  He was still holding the book.  It was a paperback, and the binding was breaking between his fingers.  She tucked her hair behind her ear and I saw his eyes follow her hand from the nape of her neck to the handrail beside her. 

       The train began to slow again.  He pulled his bag out from under the seat and pushed the paperback into it, then looked back up at the young woman.  She swung her bag over her shoulder and moved to stand at the door, right next to him.

       “This is 14^th Street,” said the voice of Manhattan Transit.  The girl left.  The man turned his head to look at the place by the door where she had been.  When I got off the train at 33^rd, he was still watching the empty air.  My phone rang as I climbed out of the station.  It was my mom.

       “Hi sweetie,” she said.  “What’s going on?”

       “Nothing,” I said.                

  • 1:35 PM
  • 17 Views
  • 2 eProps
  • 2 Comments