Subways

Lucky.  The subways run until two in the morning.  After that, unless you have money for a cab, is the night bus. These are ghastly.  Each one a shambling Barbarossa stagecoach.  Engines roaring, raising and lowering pneumatically at each stop, lurching forward before careening into traffic.  Each night they become packed with the detritus of the drinking crowds, too drunk to drive, too broke to take a cab, making their way home in a half-dead mob, eyes glazed over, checking their cellphones for text messages, vomit running down the centre aisle, mostly liquid.

This is public transportation at its worst.  You can say what you want about the morning commute or rush hour crowds, the vomit comet trumps it all.  Which is not to say that the public transportation in this city is always terrible.  There are certain times of day where it is bearable: after about 11 o'clock in the mourning and before four pm, the later evening after the work rush, these are periods of relative quiet.  And there is a certain hour just before the subways close where everything goes almost magic.  Right before the rush for last train, where certain odd people come out of the woodwork.  I met an old woman with white hair and heavy silver jewelry.  Earrings, a necklace, rings, all in the same heavy style.  She wore a leather jacket and spoke in a New England sort of way that sounded like old money.  She had a black eye and as I was talking with her she was doing coke out of a silver tin.  She said that she had gotten into a fight with her boyfriend and that she had been riding the subway for hours.  I told her I liked to ride the subway just the same and that I would sometimes just sit for hours, without a book or anything, just watching people.  And I said how nowadays people all have to do two things or three things at once and they can't just eat dinner without watching TV or they have to listen to music everywhere they go like their life is a movie and they are not only the star but also the director.

She told me about how she was cheated on her husband with his accountant.  She said how he had said that she had only loved him for his checkbook, that it was only natural for her to try to fuck it more directly.  I said how the accountant spoke his lines like a priest promising mediation.  But that he only ever stood in as second best, a consolation saying, "Please, do not look behind the curtain."

I'm not sure how well that went over, so I tried to ask her how long ago this had happened.  She offered me some coke and I accepted.  17 years ago.  Their son never speaks to her but he's a doctor or a lawyer or something in a large American city.  She found a bird dead on the road so she put it in her purse, would you like to see it?

I did a line and said why not.

The whole experience later reminded me of a time when I was headed over to my ex girlfriend's parent's place in in the west end, just before the subway closed.  There was a man in a bow tie sat down across from me with red eyes from crying.  He looked totally despondent, rocking back and forth with the motion of the train.  In his hands he held a small red pocket notebook.  His red eyes traced lines written inside, darting back and forth like a frightened animal.  His lips moved silently as if in prayer.  I imagined his story, the epic saga of love and drama with his one true love, now estranged, who mocked him from the happier time locked within the pages of this aging diary, like these people locked away down here in tin cans, young in their hearts, kept fresh.  And now, each one proud of their scars.