We were all facing the tracks, waiting. There were fewer than twenty of us. It was a weekday lull. Most of our heads were down, directed toward a handheld device. This big guy was sitting on a bench near me. He and I were the only two people killing time the old fashioned way.
We were a haggard bunch. Foreigners. A sleepy laborer. Single moms. Welfare babies. A girl with thick framed glasses and messy hair typed feverishly on a laptop. More than half of us wore flip-flops. A couple professional types were decked out in expensive suits and ties with fat knots. They were messing with their smartphones. The taller man pecked. The shorter scrolled.
My days were wide open back then. I was working second shift. I couldn't afford a car to get around, so I made do with a monthly transit pass. Riding the subway was a cheap pastime. I rode aimlessly. I traveled by myself, which would have been dangerous had I not dressed like such a bum. Ratty clothes are as good as camouflage. Robbing me would clearly have been a waste of energy. At 5’ 6”, I’m even too small to bother intimidating. There's no sport in giving guys like me a hard time, unless you're sixteen. High school kids will insult anything that might be lower on the food chain.
The big guy stared straight ahead with his elbows on his knees and his hands dangling out in front of him. I peeked in the direction of what he was staring at. All there was was a cross-section of earth. In that part of the tunnel, the walls weren’t finished. I’m not sure if they ran out of money excavating or what. The exposed black rock was kind of scary, all craggy and moist like something reptilian. Once every few feet a bolted square plate prevented the mess from caving in on us.
I know people who don’t feel particularly safe in the Fairbanks station. It’s not high on my list of places to be, but it’s was the one of two transfer points to the green line. Everything about the station was eerie. The fluorescent lights were 30 feet up and either there weren’t enough fixtures or they weren’t the right wattage. The walls soaked up the brunt of what shined. The man-made surfaces were big brown tiles and stainless steel panels, both of which wouldn’t stay clean for anything. Backlit posters promoting rental car companies, hospitals, and restaurant chains glowed in stripes from burnt out bulbs. Punks had scribbled nonsense all over them, not funny nonsense either but ominous symbols and whatnot—ones that marked territory. TVs were mounted next to the escalators in heavy gauge sheet metal boxes with plexiglas fronts. The electronics’ need for protection didn’t bode well for the rest of us.
Grand Central it was not.
The big guy seemed oblivious to any bad vibes. I observed him like he observed the wall. Judging from appearances, he could’ve been on a beach or in a temple. I figured he was in his late 30s. His slack grin made him look sort of dopey. He bore a mean scar and crease on his forehead. His jaw and neck sported a few day's worth of stubble. Like me, he was wearing a t-shirt and shorts. The shirt was yellowy-white and stamped with crackled sponsor logos on the sleeve. I couldn't tell what it commemorated but, from the frayed cuffs, it couldn't have been anything recent. He wore a black woven belt with a lot of the finish worn off. It didn’t do much good. The bottom of his shirt and the top of his shorts didn't overlap in the back. An elastic band and a slice of pasty flesh peeped out.
He picked a prime location as far as dingy subway stations go, adjacent to one of those huge round caged fans on full blast. In August it warms to 80 degrees down there from the constantly opening doors, the scampering bodies, and the trapped heat the equipment radiates. Ducking inside wasn’t much of a relief from the hot summer if the fan wasn't on you. The only drawback was how damned loud the motor was. It sounded like a prop plane. At his range, you’d have had to yell in a person's ear to be heard. He had nobody with him, so it didn’t matter.
I studied him like that because he let me. Most folks have a sixth sense that'll limit observations to a minute tops. He didn't. I was free to watch til I was tired of him. He never stirred, not even when a lady spilled loose change onto the ground. He just breathed. Most folks will fiddle with the crease of their pants or mess with a string on their shirt or joggle a foot. I tend to rub my chin. But the big guy was like a busker posing as a statue. Even his fingers and eyes were frozen. I don't run across people like him too often. When I do, I can’t help but be curious.
Nowadays, the most fascinating people are the rare breed not playing on their phones. The other kind are too boring for my tastes. I’ve casually spied on my fair share of screens. They're sending a text or an email. They're checking scores or the weather. They're scrolling through headlines or status updates. One in five or so will be playing a colorful game. So, without spying you can still read them like a book. I guess the same applies to the endangered newspaper subscribers. When the laborer snapped awake, he’d monitor the CNN feed until his lids drooped shut so you could bet in between nods he was picturing stock prices and plumes of black smoke and ladies crying. My point is it's the people who’ve only got their own person and their surroundings to occupy them you can really wonder about. What’re they going through? What's on their minds?
Given his perspiration, he must’ve trudged from a ways away to get here. The guy's shirt was a patchwork of damp splotches filling in old stain outlines. Not that he cared. He didn’t fuss with his sweat. I saw a drop tremble on the tip of his nose before being wicked away by the fan.
Although the bench could’ve fit three average Americans, he was alone. I could see a few reasons for the distance we kept. For starters, he was ripe. I think his grin had something to do with it, too. Like the rest of him, it didn’t flinch. Too constant a smile is suspicious. To top it off, he slumped badly. His neck jutted forward funny like he was stretching to sniff at something. He could have been a hunchback. People give hunchbacks a wide birth.
***
Eight minutes passed. The train came down the chute right on schedule. The headlights cascaded around the tunnel’s bend before the engine poked through. Everyone looked up in sequence like a wave at the ballpark and then gathered what needed gathering around them. Undeterred, the big guy continued staring.
The train squealed to a stop and the doors parted. A female voice announced, “Fairbanks, Fairbanks Station. Next stop Alstead, Alstead Station.” Passengers exited. We entered like sleepwalkers. The big guy straggled behind but joined us in the nick of time.
Inside, the car reeked worse than usual. Vagrants are always relieving themselves where they shouldn’t. At least the air was circulating. The LCD screens were on the fritz, so they looped the MTA's logo with the sun rising behind it. The established riders were withdrawn into their own private worlds. A drowsy nurse in maroon scrubs dozed off despite the music seeping out of her headphones.
Most of us newcomers sat with at least an empty seat as a buffer. I gravitated to a corner and stood. The floor beneath my feet was sticky from spilled orange soda. I planted myself so that I could grasp a pole. I usually stand. Remaining firmly upright is a fun challenge like enunciating when you’re wasted. You can pick the veterans from the novices by who’s jostled around and who’s rolling with the proverbial punches. It's like everyone’s riding on different tracks, a smooth track for the pros and a bumpy track for the rookies.
The big guy plopped down a few seats up from the door. He could still see the rock wall from his vantage. An older woman with a bag of groceries between her feet had been perched on the row directly in front of him. She was busy minding her own business.
After the doors shut, the racket dropped. A fortysomething woman down the way talked loudly, probably into a headset although I couldn’t see one. A group of preteens laughed and roughhoused. By us, though, it was almost silent except for the train sounds. An electric hum ramping up signaled our departure. We leaned from the acceleration.
The commotion’s muffled echoes set a rhythm. We gently swayed side to side. The cars creaked in sympathy. Every few seconds we passed fixtures in the tunnel casting copper light. The streaks wrote morse code behind the windows. The woman with the headset carried on about an aggravating episode returning clothes. A wad of discarded, blackening gum the size of a quarter was plastered just shy of the guy's shoes. I hadn't seen the guy's shoes before. They were cheap and worn-out. Seams had started tearing and the laces were dirty. The pair were tied with the most knots I'd ever come across, either triple-or-quadruple knotted.
Unlike when I met him, he was now facing something that could get creeped out by his constant grin. The woman with the bag avoided eye contact. She preferred a skyward tilt. I was a third party to their asymmetrical staring contest: him at her and her at anywhere else. Minutes passed like that. I started to feel awkward on their behalf.
He flinched first, wiping his brow with his forearm.
Right after his wipe, the train car exploded into daylight. The sun’s never so bright as when you jump from underground to above in an instant. I rubbed my eyes. Once they adjusted, I could see the scene was unchanged. The woman had taken interest in her cuticles.
Out of the blue, the big guy blurted, "Hullo!”
She had to have heard him. It’s safe to say the whole car heard him. But she didn't show it. She ran one thumbnail along the base of the other.
"Where you going?" he asked next.
She coughed. Eventually he offered, "I'm going to St. Michael's. Lunch is at one."
The woman didn’t react. She cleared her throat thoroughly. She picked a lozenge out of her purse, unwrapped it, and placed it in her mouth. I didn’t blame her for giving him the cold shoulder, a lady all by herself. Who knew what this guy was capable of? Freaks migrate to cities like lions to watering holes.
“Do you want to go to St. Michael's? I can get you in. For free.”
She shifted the lozenge to the other cheek.
“Do you want to?”
As though called by a friend, the woman grabbed her belongings. She rose and wobbled a few rows closer to the front of the train, gripping seatbacks for balance. The guy followed her with his eyes. The snub didn’t crimp his grin.
You can see why riding the subway made great entertainment. You can't make this stuff up. No movies have scenes like that. No singer writes a song about a sweaty guy who's probably handicapped. It'd be hard to spin the event into a great story since it didn't lend itself to intrigue or sensationalism. It was a real popcorn moment for me at least, though, the lady ignoring the big guy.
***
We all lurched as the train slowed for the next station. We lost the laughing kids and gained a handful of men and a chick with curly blonde hair. Before they all could settled in, we departed. The youngest of the men, a few years my senior, occupied the spot the old woman gave up. I peered up the car to find her. She was deep in thought, her head cocked toward a window, watching things blur by. My handhold was getting slick from being held, so I readjusted.
The youngish man pick up on my movement peripherally. I smiled when he glanced at me. That satisfied his curiosity. He tugged his backpack onto his lap and retrieved a paperback book. I read the title upside-down as best I could—something something Master Jiu Jitsu. It was the sort of dog-eared pamphlet you'd get at a public library. Most of the pages were black and white photos of a shirtless, muscular Asian man posed mid-position with brief instructions underneath. Even if the book wasn’t a strategic selection, it was effective. It sent a message: don't mess with me. I’m so into martial arts when I’m not practicing them I’m reading about them. The young man ran through a few subtle motions. They reminded me of what cheerleaders memorizing routines do with their eyes closed and their headphones on.
Transitioning from a block to a counterstrike, the reader was interrupted by a "Hullo!" from the big guy. The reader twitched, raised his eyes from the page, and nodded toward his neighbor across the aisle.
The big guy waited patiently for more of a response. When he didn’t get one, he asked, "Where you going?"
Without looking up, the reader answered, "Class."
The train rattled, filling the gap.
"I'm going to St. Michael's. Lunch is at one."
“That's good," the reader said into his book.
"Spaghetti Tuesdays."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah. You like spaghetti? I can get you some if you want to come with."
"Nah. I can’t. I gotta study."
"I like spaghetti. I get two plates."
The reader said, "That’s great but..uh,” while rifling through his bag. He pulled out earbuds, uncoiled them, and plugged them into his phone. "I'm sorry but I gotta study," were his last words before pushing the buds into his ears.
"What you listening to?"
The big guy was ignored again. I was starting to feel for him. Still, he didn’t stop grinning.
***
A door slid aside at the front of our car. The banging of the car’s linkage and clacking of the wheels prompted those of us who were aware of our environment to glance in the noise’s direction. A sketchy character joined us. Between his crazy hair and the tattoos on his neck, I felt amply threatened. He made his way down the aisle. He scanned the scene like a witness does a lineup.
The man paused by a woman dressed in a business suit and reasonable heels. I couldn't hear their exchange. I could tell from how she responded, though, that he hit her up for money. She shrugged apologetically and pulled her bag closer to herself. No dice. The hustler moved on. He slinked toward my end of the car, passing over individuals he didn’t think he could capitalize on. Our eyes met. I must not have been much of a prospect because he didn’t try me.
He stopped when he got close to my guy. He scratched his ear. "Heya, you got a dollar, slick?"
"I have five dollars."
"Right, right. Can I get a couple of 'em so’s I can snag a bite? I’m flat broke at the moment. Spent my last cent catchin’ this ride."
"I have a five dollar bill."
"Hey now, that’s okay. That'll do fine, slick. Even better. Yeah."
The big guy tipped over and reached for his wallet.
I was in disbelief. No one else was concerned about this transaction. Why would they be? They had their own lives to tend to. Nearby, the reader just slid his legs to the side to give the hustler room. I don’t think he had any clue who he was clearing the way for.
My guy got his wallet free. He pried the velcro folds apart.
I couldn't bear to stand by anymore.
I let go of the bar. I intercepted them at an angle. I stuck my hand out in the direction of my guy’s bifold. "Hey now. Put that away. You don't need to do that," I said to big. "What’re you doing? Don’t. He doesn't know what going on. Hit up somebody else.” I turned and said to the hustler. He wasn't pleased, naturally. His face went sour. He sneered. I added, ”Don’t bother him."
He inched backward, but that could have been from the train. "Step aside, bro. He knows plenty alright. You best get goin’. Go on. Sit." He pointed to an open seat. He edged forward and made up the lost ground. I didn’t budge. My mind raced. A voice in my head looped ‘what am I doing?’. I wasn’t sure what came next. My plan ended with the speech. I thought he’d listen. Another voice told me ‘Relax. He’s a punk. He’ll go away.’ I remember noting basic physical facts. He had maybe a four inches on me. He was stringy, though, not much meat on him. The writing of his neck tattoo was so fancy I couldn’t make it out. His breath stunk of cigarettes.
I overheated. My ears reddened and my underarms started to tingle. My stomach tightened. Between the hustler and me, I could see my guy gazing up at the both of us with his brown eyes like he didn’t get what the fuss was about. He held his wallet in the air as though he was offering the thing, ID and all, to whoever wanted it. He let his arms droop a bit when he caught me glaring at him. "I don't know what?" he asked. I didn't have the opportunity to answer because the hustler started reaching into his front pocket for some reason. That scared me. A slew of weapons flashed through my mind. Brass knuckles. A shiv. A knife. A gun. No. The pocket couldn't hide a gun unless it was a tiny, fit-in-your-purse model. I pegged him as the knife type. I was going to get stabbed.
"Okay. Okay. Easy," I said. I reached back, withdrew my own wallet, and plucked the singles out. "Here. Just walk on by." I thrust the bills I had out in front of me. The hustler snatched the bills with his free hand and made a fist around them. He shook his head at me before he split. He must've thought the confrontation was pointless. From the way he took the money and fled straight away I decided he was bluffing about the knife. Or I had misread him.
With the space vacated, the reader rotated his legs back around like what just happened wasn’t a big deal. I’m positive he was clueless. They were all clueless, weren’t they? The nurse kept napping. The reader kept reading. The blonde texted the entire time. I was alone in this.
The big guy rested his wallet in his lap. It was made of lime green canvas. “Frank” was written on the front in thick blue marker. The ink had bled into the fabric. The letters’ fuzzy edges upset me. Faded stuff is sad. A grown man with his name in large print on his wallet is sad, too. With both his hands, he splayed it open for me to have the five instead. His bottom lip puckered a little. He was disappointed, I think.
I backpedaled. I didn’t have anything to say. My heart fluttered from the dispute. I felt as though I had lost weight or something. I felt lighter. I wasn’t shaking. I was hovering. I scolded myself. Involvement is off-limits for us watchers. We keep our distance on purpose. We’re neutral parties. But this hustler... What was I to do? None of the others were going to step in. I felt obligated. The three of us were on our own to settle accounts. But what if the hustler didn’t take my money? What if he wanted trouble? Would Frank have stuck up for me or would I have caught a beating or worse?
Frank was locked onto me now. He rotated to face me. "I don't know what?"
"Nothing. Nevermind.” I paused. “Forget it." After a minute I told him, "You should really hold onto your money, you know. Don't just give it away. He didn’t need it. You need it. It’s yours."
"But he said he was hungry."
"It’s lunchtime, bud. I’m hungry. Everybody’s hungry. Don't you get hungry?"
"Food’s free for me. I do chores and get five dollars a week. I can buy whatever I want like magazines."
"Well still. You should be careful."
"I am careful."
Even though the threat had passed, I couldn’t calm down. Every few seconds I checked to make sure the hustler wasn’t coming back with reinforcements. It didn’t help that Frank wouldn't leave me in peace. Not that he pestered me. He didn’t say anything else for a while. But I knew he was staring. Maybe a couple minutes later he picked up where he left off with, "I'm not stupid."
"I didn't say you were."
"I'm not," he plead.
I bent closer to his level. "Okay. You're not."
"I'm not," he said—much softer. “I’m really not.”
“Right.”
Around us, the others were more or less quiet within the clatter. I reviewed the banner advertisements lining the cabin. A latino thrilled to be going to community college. A black woman ecstatic about a payday loan. A family frothing for a trip to the history museum. None of us on the subway was as tickled as the people photographed.
I felt Frank’s eyes on me. His grin had returned. "Where you going?"
"Nowhere. I'm exploring."
"I'm going to St. Michael's."
"So I heard. Spaghetti Tuesdays."
“You like spa-”
I cut him off. “Not really. It’s okay. I take Chinese over Italian personally.”
“Oh. I could get you in if-”
“No. I can’t.”
“Maybe tomorrow?”
“I don’t think so. I uh work and...”
I couldn’t handle the interrogation. We weren’t going to be buddies, so why drag it out? I was spent. I decided to hop off ASAP. We were nearly to Bay Street. I would go home early.
I looked out a side window. There was nothing to see besides the dashes of light. The reader sneezed. Frank said, “Gublessyou.” The reader didn’t hear. The tunnel brightened as we entered the next station. We braked. A woman’s voice announced, “Bay Street, Bay Street station. Next stop Kings Street, Kings Street station.”
As quickly as I could, I snuck out. My goodbye to Frank was a matter-of-fact, “Well, this is me.” I didn’t give him time to respond. I split the flow of boarding passengers. The lunch crowd had been freed from wherever they’d been held. The station roared with riders trying to overcome the background noise with louder noise of their own.
I walked down the hall and shuffled through the line for the escalator. A set of young parents teamlifted a toddler in a stroller up the stairs in the middle. I stepped on and ascended. I could smell fried food. At the top, I thought I saw Frank behind me. But I told myself it couldn’t have been him.
Everywhere I went, I was swimming upstream. I slid between the human obstacles, each moving at their own pace. I wove through the tchotchke tables and newsstands. I neared a fork in the road. I had a choice to zig or zag, to exit on Market or on Hudson. Market was the more direct route. I took a left toward Hudson to throw any would be stalker off. Impossible as it was, I felt like Frank was in my brain now, that he knew where I was headed. He was going to wind up on my doorstep somehow.
I climbed the cramped stairwell. Outside, the conversations multiplied but spread as they could in the open air. Up rose the clamor and down poured the wet sun. For a moment, the warmth was refreshing. It was soon oppressive. I didn’t care. I was glad to be out of confinement and back in my element, back in obscurity.
At the first intersection, I turned east onto Ayers. Professionals traveled in packs. Stationary figures smoked near lobbies. Onions sizzled on a hotdog stand’s grill. The shade wasn’t much cooler so I didn’t bother hiding in it. I walked along the middle of the sidewalk, weaving as necessary. I make a game out of not being touched.
Across Ayers at a bus stop, I noticed a solitary figure slouching inside the shelter. It was hard to see around the traffic, foot or otherwise, passing between us. Whoever he was, he wasn’t happy.
I picked up the pace.
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