Next Stop: Vacation

It’s a warm, rainy night. A couple boards the train, she in a brown floral blouse and khakis, he in casual business attire. They are fit, fine and lovely. The train begins to move. It rocks back and forth comfortably, causing them to adjust with minor footsteps. The movements of the train become harsher and they step to one side—suddenly back to the other. A rhythm develops; she steps to the left, to the right. In perfect time she is practicing the Salsa they learned last Tuesday. He begins to follow with a bit of a kick to impress.

            “I probably couldn’t imagine you speaking Spanish”

            They practice the romance language.

            “Are you sure that isn’t Italian?” she teases and corrects his pronunciation.

            The train lurches to one side and they are conjoined momentarily for a kiss. The natural perfume and taste of her lips and the warmth of his mouth transport them for a split second as their lips’ split and become one. As the train rights itself they remain close and continue to practice.

            “Donde estas”

            “Good, that’s good” She says. He notices her umbrella standing on it’s own against the closed door and he reminds her not to forget it.

            As the train rocks, they return to their lessons. A slowing movement of the train causes him to gracefully place foot over foot, which impresses her.            No one gets on at the next stop. The train starts again with a click of the tongue against the roof of his mouth. He starts to perform a tap routine, first with his right foot, and then the left contagiously joins.

The rocking train causes his hand, which holds an umbrella to swing forward slightly. It swings gently, back and forth, back and forth. It swings up, close to her belly.

            “Pop!” He gently pokes her taught tummy. They giggle as her slender fingers stroke his torso. They discuss underwear, the intimate extents of which I won’t transcribe, but the word “ribbed” is mentioned.

            The train begin to slow rapidly for the next stop and he grabs the overhead bar. He bounces his knees playfully and holds his foot suspended an inch above the ground.  She is impressed. The doors open and the independent umbrella stays suspended against the corner. He is impressed. She grabs the umbrella and they get off at the next stop.

A Ruinous Device

One man is talking to another:

            “I had this incredible dream last night where I was lost. I was on this bizarre bus that dropped me off at the wrong stop. So I’m walking around, trying to get back to Stratford through these dark winding roads, and here’s the key–“

            The other man puts up a digit, pulls out his cell phone and answers a call.

 

*                        *                        *                        *                        *                        *                       

 

He’s absolutely thrilled to be here. His feet, in his baby Nike sneakers, are dangling inches above the floor of the train, and kicking erratically, spastically. The expressions from his small mouth rapidly shift in a cycle of wild grins, playful sounds, mischievous smirks and blank, observant interest in all that’s around him.

            His arm shoots up—he’s noticed his reflection in the glass across from him and has found a new playmate. A young blond woman in the other row can’t stop shooting him wide smiles. Shy but voracious, he thwarts her gaze by popping his head in and out of a crook in his mama’s arm.

            He often peeks down the car, as he can’t get enough of the variety of faces, actions and mysterious comings and goings of all the people. They come from so many different environments of outdoor and underground platforms, holding all sorts of packages and wearing so much on their faces and huge hulking bodies. They are part of a seething rapid-fire universe that is a far off goal to his energy and interest, if not a match for it.

            His mother is too tired for it, though, and she hands him a cell phone. Almost immediately, his feral energy becomes focus and minimized like a laser beam. His legs kick occasionally, and the wild monkey sounds pop up here and there, but otherwise he has become complacent. He is fooled into satisfaction for the rest of the ride and tied into a world the size of his tiny palm. He has conceded.

Eye for an Eye

“Not on trial, but being judged as a villain to Mr. Astor”, the headline read. I find it a piece of interest, a story about a descendant of John Jacob Astor. Astor was arguably the first billionaire of New York City, a real estate mogul who famously regretted on his deathbed “not buying up every square inch of Manhattan”.

            However, it’s not my newspaper. It belongs to the woman sitting next to me. She feverishly munches on the Pringles she purchased here on the 42^nd street platform. She rhythmically sweeps crumbs off the paper, which she is also reading. I make my way to the sensational 3^rd paragraph, when her pink horn-rimmed glasses poke their way into my vicinity, her lashy eyes and face of poor complexion turning towards MY notebook. She wants to know what I’M reading, what’s part of MY personal existence here on this platform.

            I understand her obtuse existential attack and turn my head back. The train comes and we board, sitting apart from each other.

Golden Girls

It had been a very long day. At the end of a thirteen-hour film shoot in Park Slope, I was forced to walk three long uphill blocks to get the B68. I don’t like taking the bus, and this is generally the only bus I take. When it arrives, the driver says, “Get on the one behind me”.

When that one arrives, the other driver says, “I’m done”

“The other driver said to get on your bus,” I explain, with a couple of tired passengers behind me to back me up.

“I’m done” He’s stone cold, with his gloved hands up at a full stop.

We head down to the F train, which isn’t so bad if it weren’t for the fifteen-minute walk from the stop to my house. Fortunately there’s a bus that can cut that down to a five minute walk if I’m willing to wait. I arrive at the bus stop to find four people already waiting. Their names are Kate, Kat, Val and Chris; they are my age, and the first thing I hear from them, with all the aching walking and waiting, makes it all worthwhile.

“We been waiting for this bus so long, we coulda watched a whole other episode of Golden Girls, lemme just point that out” says Kate. This iconoclastic moment all but drops the exhaustion from the day behind me. My heart lifts and I slump down to jot it out.

“Y’know someone learned English from watching Golden Girls” Kat says.

“Yao Ming” Kate and Liv say simultaneously.

The bus comes and the girls say goodbye to Chris, boards the bus with me. He tells me he’s engaged to Liv and shows me the tattoo on the inside of his lip, which spells out her name in black ink. “I got so blottoed before I got it done, but the moment the needle touched my lip” He jolts upright and his eye shoot open, “Stone sober”.

We talk about the originally kung-fu stars of Hong Kong Cinema and he tells me about the price of beer in Berlin “Twelve cents after the bottle deposit”. My stop comes in a few moments and I bounce all the way home.