thoughts, of which humans are merely the chemical messengers.
Everywhere down the long, impatiently waiting bulk of the train, people exited. Everywhere, that is, except for the first car, the car I stood beside. No one came through any of the three sets of doors set into its length—most certainly not the girl I had briefly seen.
I thought this was odd. True, the first car always had an inexplicable tendency to attract fewer passengers than the others. But it shouldn’t have been entirely empty at this hour of the morning. Was there something the matter onboard? Was I going to be putting myself in jeopardy by getting in? What about the girl I had seen? Was she the victim of some assault whom everyone had abandoned? Or—and why did I imagine this?—was she the reason the car was empty?
All these thoughts rattled through my head in the time it took the hungry train to disgorge its old riders and swallow new ones. Then I heard the doors begin to roll shut, saw them inching out of their slots, and I knew the train was chafing to be gone.
If I didn’t move now, it would leave without me.
How would I ever learn the story of the girl pinned to the window like a dead butterfly?
Did I even want to learn it?
Yes, I thought, I did.
I tossed myself through the narrowing doors, feeling them snap at my coattails.
Inside I caught a pole with my free hand (briefcase swinging in the other), spun around halfway, and fell into the gray plastic bench against the inner wall.
As the train roared off, I saw that the car was indeed empty, except for one small figure at the front end (and, I assumed, the driver, ensconced in his little coffinlike cab up front; however, I had not noticed him in his window when the train pulled in, since the drivers tend to keep their cabs dark for better tunnel vision, and also since I had been so shaken by the sight of the girl; for all I knew the cab could be empty and the train a driverless rogue).
The other person in the car with me was, of course, the girl I had seen as the train surged into the station.
From my new perspective, the girl was even more dramatically positioned. Only now the window was obsidian black, shot through with an occasional blue tunnel-light.
Her arms were raised over her head as she gripped the narrow ledge above the door. (I knew her fingers would come away filthy from such a hold, since I had often stood that way myself.) Her legs were braced wide apart, to accommodate the unpredictable rocking of the train. The X of her body seemed pasted to the graffiti-sprayed wall. As I watched, she pressed her young loins against the door as if to burn a hole in it with the force of some fervid desire compounded not of sex, but of some even more primal urge.
She was dressed like a million others girls: flat shoes, black stretch pants, a white shirt hanging out to below her slim hips. Her shoulder- length hair was an unusual color, though: icy blond, almost platinum. The black headband she wore across the top of her skull and down underneath her fall of hair only accentuated the startling color, and I could picture her choosing it for just that reason.
With that confident—and usually false—sense of certainty that we sometimes get as we consider strangers, I felt that she had to be a student, either late high school or first year of college. Why she was standing in such a strained and dramatic fashion, though—that I couldn’t say. Was she high, I thought, so early in the morning? Or was she only emotionally distressed? Perhaps she stood as she did just for the hell of it. As I said, I often stood and gazed out the front window myself, watching the lost, dark miles of track go by, wondering when the last time was anyone had set foot on any particular spot. I especially liked watching as the train pulled into the stations, seeing the assembled commuters sprawled chaotically like chess pieces shaken out of their box.
Now that I had seen how bizarre a person framed in the lead
Everywhere down the long, impatiently waiting bulk of the train, people exited. Everywhere, that is, except for the first car, the car I stood beside. No one came through any of the three sets of doors set into its length—most certainly not the girl I had briefly seen.
I thought this was odd. True, the first car always had an inexplicable tendency to attract fewer passengers than the others. But it shouldn’t have been entirely empty at this hour of the morning. Was there something the matter onboard? Was I going to be putting myself in jeopardy by getting in? What about the girl I had seen? Was she the victim of some assault whom everyone had abandoned? Or—and why did I imagine this?—was she the reason the car was empty?
All these thoughts rattled through my head in the time it took the hungry train to disgorge its old riders and swallow new ones. Then I heard the doors begin to roll shut, saw them inching out of their slots, and I knew the train was chafing to be gone.
If I didn’t move now, it would leave without me.
How would I ever learn the story of the girl pinned to the window like a dead butterfly?
Did I even want to learn it?
Yes, I thought, I did.
I tossed myself through the narrowing doors, feeling them snap at my coattails.
Inside I caught a pole with my free hand (briefcase swinging in the other), spun around halfway, and fell into the gray plastic bench against the inner wall.
As the train roared off, I saw that the car was indeed empty, except for one small figure at the front end (and, I assumed, the driver, ensconced in his little coffinlike cab up front; however, I had not noticed him in his window when the train pulled in, since the drivers tend to keep their cabs dark for better tunnel vision, and also since I had been so shaken by the sight of the girl; for all I knew the cab could be empty and the train a driverless rogue).
The other person in the car with me was, of course, the girl I had seen as the train surged into the station.
From my new perspective, the girl was even more dramatically positioned. Only now the window was obsidian black, shot through with an occasional blue tunnel-light.
Her arms were raised over her head as she gripped the narrow ledge above the door. (I knew her fingers would come away filthy from such a hold, since I had often stood that way myself.) Her legs were braced wide apart, to accommodate the unpredictable rocking of the train. The X of her body seemed pasted to the graffiti-sprayed wall. As I watched, she pressed her young loins against the door as if to burn a hole in it with the force of some fervid desire compounded not of sex, but of some even more primal urge.
She was dressed like a million others girls: flat shoes, black stretch pants, a white shirt hanging out to below her slim hips. Her shoulder- length hair was an unusual color, though: icy blond, almost platinum. The black headband she wore across the top of her skull and down underneath her fall of hair only accentuated the startling color, and I could picture her choosing it for just that reason.
With that confident—and usually false—sense of certainty that we sometimes get as we consider strangers, I felt that she had to be a student, either late high school or first year of college. Why she was standing in such a strained and dramatic fashion, though—that I couldn’t say. Was she high, I thought, so early in the morning? Or was she only emotionally distressed? Perhaps she stood as she did just for the hell of it. As I said, I often stood and gazed out the front window myself, watching the lost, dark miles of track go by, wondering when the last time was anyone had set foot on any particular spot. I especially liked watching as the train pulled into the stations, seeing the assembled commuters sprawled chaotically like chess pieces shaken out of their box.
Now that I had seen how bizarre a person framed in the lead