by Jeff Elkins
“Optimum speed?” I said slowly, struggling to keep up with his rapid-fire assault of words.
“Fifty-five? Fifty-five miles per hour? The optimum speed for fuel efficiency? If you’re going to sacrifice our atmosphere for convenient travel, the least you could do is take you time. Give us all an extra few years of clean air before you’ve tarnished it all with your foul pollutants.”
I motioned for Billy to refill my beer. It was clear I would need another. “So you don’t drive?”
He laughed at me like a cruel brother laughs at his younger siblings when they can’t answer math problems from his homework. “Drive? Like some Neanderthal? No. I bike. I bike to the metro, and then take the red line into work.”
“Oh,” I said hoping to find common ground with my strange drinking companion. “I like taking the metro. It’s nice to be able to read while you travel.”
He gave me a dismissive smirk. “The intricate beauty of metro travel would be lost on you. I’m not even going to begin to explain the wonder I experience every day because I don’t think you could understand.”
“So there’s more to it than being able to read on the way to work?” I said, teasing.
Billy brought us two new beers. We both took long swigs. I leaned back in my chair as the man leaned forward. “Take, for instance, the precision,” he explained with the intense passion of a long-tenured professor explaining his life’s work. “When I arrive at the platform at the Woodley Park station there is a sign that tells me how many minutes until my train arrives. And it is always, without fail, spot on. I can trust that if it says four minutes, then a train will arrive in four minutes and take me directly to my destination. Now that, my friend, is precision. Where else can you find that kind of perfection? That kind of perfect precision?”
“When I hit the popcorn button on my microwave, it’s pretty precise.”
The man threw his arms up in frustration. “Did you just compare a work of art that carries hundreds of thousands of people a day to making popcorn? Is that what you just did? It’s like comparing the fourth movement of Mahler’s fifth symphony to Taylor Swift’s ‘Shake it Off.’ It’s absurd. And offensive.”
“Well, when you put it that way.”
“What other way could it be put? Barbaric is what it is. Simply barbaric.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I mean,” he said, leaning forward again. “Think about the dependability. I know exactly where each train begins and where they will end. It’s beyond predictable. Can you say the same for your daily commute in the box-of-death-pollutants? No. No, you can’t. But the metro, the metro is reliable. Every ride – the exact same. We dive into the tunnel, emerge at the station, and then up on the elevated track, then back down into the station. It’s like the tide. In and out. In and out. Every day. Always the same. Never changing. There’s comfort in that. Real comfort. Which is why. Today was.” He paused, staring over my shoulder at some horrible memory.
“Come on,” I pleaded. “You clearly need to tell someone. Take a drink and then let that burden go, man. Just let it out. You’ll feel better. I promise.”
He took another long swig of his beer. “Well, I guess it might help to tell someone.”
“It couldn’t hurt.”
“Yeah,” he said taking another swig to bolster his courage. “I guess. I guess it will help. So, sometimes,” he said softly, leaning forward to bring me inside his fear. “Sometimes I’ll take the train passed my stop.” He looked around to make sure no unwelcome spies were listening in. “I’ll take it to the end of the line. Then I’ll get off and take the opposing train back to my stop. I know it’s wrong. I don’t pay for the extra ride because you pay when you leave, but it relaxes me, especially after a hard day of work.”
He took another long drink and looked down into his glass. “Today was a long day. My boss was – well, it’s not important. It was just a long day. Let’s leave it at that. And so, I took the extra ride. I took it all the way to the end. And then, I waited. I waited for the conductor to come on the intercom and say, ‘Last stop. All passengers please exit the train.’ But he didn’t say it. He didn’t say exit the train, or last stop. He didn’t say anything at all. And there was a man still sitting there, down the car from me, reading his paper like nothing was happening. He had one of those hats on. Like on Mad Men?”
“A fedora?”
“Yeah. That’s it. One of those and a brown trench coat.” He took another drink. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not important. Anyway, the man didn’t get off. So I didn’t get off. I thought that if he didn’t have to get off, then I didn’t have to get off either. And then I thought that maybe the train was just going to switch tracks and head back east. Maybe it was simply going to turn around. But that’s not what happened.”
“What happened?”
“The train started to move again. And we stayed on. And it went down, into this tunnel. I mean, I had no idea the tunnel was even there. It was very disconcerting. Suddenly, there’s just a random tunnel at the end of the line? Who puts a tunnel at the end of the line? Why would it even be there? And then we came to a stop at a new platform. A new platform. Can you believe it? Well, correction. Not new. It didn’t look new. It looked just as weathered as every other platform on the red line, but it was new to me, and not on any map. I assure you. I know the maps. I’ve seen every map. And all the maps end at Shady Grove. So this stop was certainly not on the map.”
“So then what happened?” I asked, sitting on the edge of my seat in anticipation.
“Then the conductor came on and said everyone should get off. So I stood, and the man in the hat folded his newspaper and stood, and we got off the train together at this new, unmapped station.”
“Did he say anything to you?”
“No. He didn’t even seem to notice me. He just stepped right off the train, as if it was something he did every day. And then he went down this staircase.”
“Did you follow him?”
“No. No, I didn’t.”
“Where did the stairs go?”
“I don’t know.”
“How did you not follow him? How did you not figure out where the stairs go?” I demanded.
“There was a sign, a small sign, above the stairs. It was black with white letters. Very official looking.”
The man sat back and stared into space again, pondering. I waited as long as I could, then the words burst from me. “Well, what did the sign say? Come on, man. What did it say?”
“It said, ‘This way to the new tracks.’”
“This way to the new tracks?”
“Yes. This way to the new tracks. That’s what it said.”
“Well, didn’t you want to see the new tracks? Didn’t you want to know where they'd go? I’d think someone who loves the metro as much as you would want to see new tracks. If anyone would want to see new tracks, it would be you. I would think. Right?”
The mousy man met my bewildered eye. There was sadness in him, a deep grief. It radiated from him in waves. “No,” he said softly. “I’m not interested in any new tracks.”
“So what did you do?”
“I got on the opposing train. And I returned home.”
“Oh,” I said because it was all I could think to say.
“The ride home was wonderfully predictable,” he said, sadly. “Dependable. Reliable. Just as I expected it to be.”
Wednesday
“Okay, Andy. You got me here,” Marissa said as she pulled out the chair in front of me and took a seat. She wore a sharp gray blazer and matching skirt, with a white dress shirt underneath. Her blond hair was pulled tight into a bun. She placed her cell phone on the table, clicked the button on the bottom of it to check the time, and then took her glasses off and began to clean them.
“How long has it been?” I asked. A plate of grease soaked bacon-cheese fries sat between us, but I knew she wouldn’t touch them. There was a time when we’d silently race to eat them, fighting one
another to get the last bite. I took a fry, stretched it until the cheese broke, and offered it to her.
She gave me a look like I was absurd. “Please,” she said. She motioned for the bartender to come over. The bar was empty tonight. Only a few patrons were scattered around. When the Billy arrived at the table, Marissa said, “I’ll have a Whiskey Sour. No sugar.”
“Another beer for me,” I added. “Same thing,” I said, showing him my empty mug.
Billy nodded and left.
“How many have you had?” Marissa asked, sitting back in her chair and crossing her legs.
“Two,” I said, but three was the truth.
Marissa smiled. “And what are we wallowing in tonight, Andy? What did you do?”
I plucked another fry from the plate and watched the cheese snapped. “I don’t want to talk about that,” I said.
“Well… What do you want to talk about? Why, exactly, am I here?” she asked, checking her phone again. Marissa had several intonations in her tool box. The annoyed-mother tone she was using now was my least favorite.
I sighed. “I just had a question, that’s all.”
The waiter arrived with our drinks. She took a sip from hers and said, “Spit it out then. What’s your question?”
I ate another fry. “When was the last time we sat down like this? I was trying to remember.”
“That’s your question,” she said.
“No. I’m building to it.”
“I don’t know, Andy,” she said with a sigh. “Three, four months ago? It was at Lucy’s birthday party.”
“No. That doesn’t count. There were a bunch of people there. I mean just you and me.”
“God,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Why do you care? I mean, Jesus.” Her phone lit up. She picked it up, scanned the screen, and began typing something with her thumbs.
“We use to do this all the time,” I said.
“We use to do a lot of things all the time.” She put her cell down and took another sip of her drink.
I took a swig of my beer, building courage. “About that,” I said. “What happened to us? Why didn’t we work out?”
“Damn it, Andy,” she said with a laugh. “That’s why we’re here. Six years. Six years after the train wreck that was us finally ended, and now you want to cross-examine our relationship. You’re going to trudge out to the cemetery, dig up the corpse of us, and autopsy it here? In this shit hole? Damn it, Andy.” She shook her head with disbelief, gently scratching her eyebrow with the nail of her middle finger. I wasn’t sure if the choice of fingers was a message or subconscious.
I sat back in my chair and looked at the ceiling. “I don’t know,” I said. “I just thought it might be time to learn from past mistakes.”
Marissa leaned forward, placing her elbows on the table. “She’s done a real number on you, hasn’t she? She’s got you all mixed up.”
Fighting off exhaustion, I rubbed my eyes with both hands, and then sat forward. “I don’t know,” I said.
Marissa sat back again, crossed her legs, and took another sip of her drink. “How long is she making you wait?” she asked with a smile.
“Saturday night,” I said. I ate another fry. “How’d you know?”
“Lucy told me,” she said. “So you’re plan is just to sit here until she shows up on Saturday?”
“Better than being at home alone thinking about Saturday.”
She raised her glass in a toast to me. “You poor, sorry bastard,” she said. “Alright. Since you are clearly suffering. Let’s do this. You start. Why do you think we didn’t work?” Her phone buzzed again. This time she looked at the screen but didn’t pick it up to respond.
I took a drink and thought. “We grew apart,” I said.
“What a bullshit answer,” she said with a laugh.
“Well,” I said crossing my arms. “Clearly I don’t know the answer. If I did, I wouldn’t have asked you to come here and explain it to me.”
Her phone buzzed again. She picked it up and typed another message with her thumbs. “Okay,” she said, still typing. “I’ll hold your hand through it.” She put the phone down and picked up her drink again. “When were we good? Think back and tell me about a time when things were working.”
I ate another fry. “College,” I said. “We were good in college.”
“Be more specific,” she said.
“Fine,” I said, thinking. “Racquetball. I use to love playing racquetball with you.”
“Okay,” she said. “What else?”
“Friday night movie nights on the couch,” I said, remembering sitting next to her, both of us in pajamas, watching a DVD from the two-dollar bin at Walmart.
“You always wore those stupid blue slippers with the holes in the toe,” she said.
“You made the best popcorn,” I said. “Extra salt.”
“That’s the trick,” she said with a grin. “What else?”
“Oh,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “I don’t know. Hiking together was fun.”
“Hiking together was fun,” she said. “So we’re hiking, we’re watching horrible movies, and we’re playing racquetball. Sounds perfect. What happened?”
“Things changed,” I said.
“Things always change,” she said. “I didn’t play racquetball when we first started dating. You had to teach me. And then I started kicking your ass.”
“I let you win,” I said with a grin. “Because I felt sorry for you.”
“Keep telling yourself that, Andy.”
“But things did change. Just not in a good way. Racquetball was a good change. I liked that change.”
“Sure,” she said. “It was something you loved to do before you started dating me. Tell me more about these changes that came from nowhere destroyed our beautiful time.” Her phone buzzed again. She glanced at it, then ignored it.
“Well that, for one,” I said. “You couldn’t keep your eyes off that stupid thing.”
“I have a demanding job,” she said. She was giving me her lawyer tone like she was tricking me into revealing something case-shattering to the jury. I hated the lawyer tone only a little less than the annoyed-mother.
“So that’s the change. You got a job and disappeared, and things got crappy.”
“Crappy for who,” she said, sipping her drink.
“Crappy for us,” I said.
“Not for me,” she said. “I love my job. Loved it then. Still love it now.”
“Fine,” I said. “Crappy for me.”
“Why?” she said, challenging me.
“Because you were gone. All the time. There was a different work party every Friday night. No more movies. No time. You had to get all dressed up and go to some stupid thing with your work friends.”
“You’re acting like you weren’t invited,” she said with a grin.
“That’s not me. I’m not getting all dressed up to go and hang out with a bunch of people I barely know,” I said.
“Exactly,” she said, sipping her drink again.
I snorted a laugh. “Sorry, you’ll have to explain it for all the non-lawyer types at the table.”
“Oh, Andy,” she said in her big sister voice. I didn’t mind that one so much. “How do you not get it? We didn’t grow apart. We were taking a walk together, and then you decided to sit down.”
I squeezed my eyes tight, trying to force understanding into my brain. “What?” I said.
“When you say ‘we grew apart,’” she said, imitating my voice. “You make it sound like it was an accident. When the truth is, I found an adventure I wanted to take. I invited you to come with me. And you chose not to.” She drank the last of her whiskey, put the heavy glass on the table, and reached across with both hands to grab my arms.
“I’m not saying I was perfect,” she said. “I know I have my issues. But what happened to us wasn’t some accident of fate. It wasn’t destiny. We chose to stop being interested in each other. I found a job I loved. You decided not to
love it with me. You found new hobbies, like when you started training for marathons, or when you started building bikes in the garage? You had your own adventures, and I chose not to join you. We didn’t ‘just grow apart.’ We chose to go on without each other.”
I sat back in my chair, only partially convinced.
She stood, retrieved her phone, and straightened her skirt. “Good talk, Andy,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” she said with a smile. “And listen. I hope everything goes the way you want on Saturday.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”
Thursday
I watched him from across the crowded bar. He was a small man with a thin, pointed nose. He wore a brown and blue plaid suit coat with patches on the elbows, a white dress shirt, blue pants, and ragged fedora. The close cut hair around his ears was graying, and his bow tie was fluffy and sky blue. His glasses were round and delicate, with thin, circular rims. He sat alone at a table in the corner. I’d been watching him for ten minutes and hadn’t seen him order any food or drink. He just sat, satisfied wife his empty island.
I couldn’t help but stare. He was out of place in the noisy bar that tonight was bustling with thirty-something hipsters. He wasn’t swept up in the current on social anxiety like the rest of us. He wasn’t sliding from herd to herd, explaining the importance and uniqueness of his day job. He wasn’t pontificating on the flaws in a movie he hadn’t seen but had read a great deal about online. He wasn’t chatting up acquaintances about his new, revolutionary, scientifically enhanced, completely-unheard-of-but-soon-to-be-the-standard-of-everyone eating habit. He was quiet, alone, and happy.
I turned to Billy and ordered two beers and a plate of fries. Once they arrived, I gathered the beer mugs with my right hand, snatched up the plate of fries with my left, and made my way over to the odd man’s table.
