Subway Love

by Nora Raleigh Baskin

  There had been crafts fairs in town before, but no one had ever really seen anything like this. It was huge, with rows and rows of tables, booths, even tents, displaying the work of artisans and artists and craftspeople of all kinds. There were pottery and stained glass, and jewelry in gold, silver, and every other medium. Basket weavers, people who sewed quilts, people who made kaleidoscopes. Soap makers, candle makers, bread makers. It was a hippie mecca, except everything had a price. Even the peace signs.

  Her mother had said she couldn’t go to New York City this weekend, she needed Laura home to work the crafts fair, but she soon sent her out of the booth. Bruce was getting edgy and irritable. They weren’t selling enough. Best stay out of his way.

  Laura walked around, in between the rows. It was a cool but fiercely sunny day. She let herself daydream about Jonas. What would he think of this? Of tables made of tree stumps with branches for legs? Of sheepskin coats? Tie-dye everywhere, even baby clothes and men’s ties, all for sale. And what would he say about a booth filled just with bumper stickers?

  Fighting for Peace Is Like Fucking for Virginity.

  War is not healthy for children and other living things.

  Smoke Dope.

  Hell no, we won’t go.

  Everything could be summed up as a slogan.

  She couldn’t wait to tell Jonas about everything she was seeing. She took it all in as if it were new, as if she could see it through his eyes and share it with him. She wanted to share everything with him — good, bad, funny, sad. Telling him made it real. Imagining what she would say, how she would say it, how he might respond, made her hopeful. Happy.

  She couldn’t wait to tell him about the photographer she saw, the one selling black-and-white portraits, selling a picture of her. She stared at the photograph so she could remember to tell Jonas all about it. It was taken three years ago. She hardly looked like herself at all, but she knew it was. Of course she knew it was. She had denied her own identity when the photographer recognized her.

  “No, that’s not me,” Laura said. It was her image. It belonged to her, not for sale. There were American Indian tribes that believed a person’s soul was taken if someone photographed them.

  Laura’s soul was not for sale. She knew Jonas would understand.

  There were people selling macramé plant holders and Earth Shoes. She imagined describing for Jonas how ugly Earth Shoes were. She hardly knew him, yet she wanted to tell him everything, to be with him, more than anything she had ever wanted before.

  The longing she hadn’t even known she felt, would be filled. When she was with Jonas, she felt whole, complete. Fear, loneliness, emptiness, were gone, and if she could only be with him again, Laura knew she would want for nothing.

  AT dusk, Bruce packed up their wares and they piled into the car. Mitchell tried to get Laura to squeeze into the small compartment behind the backseat of their VW bug, the way she had when she was little, knees bent and slipped in like a suitcase, but she didn’t fit back there anymore. Mitchell and Laura had to sit right next to each other, boxes of unsold ceramic peace signs between them.

  In total, they had made twenty-two dollars and spent more than that on gas and food. Bruce was in a bad mood, and he drove fast, as if to prove how upset he was.

  “I can drive,” Laura’s mother said.

  Bruce kept his eyes straight ahead, raised his hand, and gave her the finger.

  At her mother’s request, they pulled into a rest stop off the highway.

  “I’ve got nothing at home and the kids are starving.”

  Laura had been hoping for a McDonald’s, where she knew over one million burgers had been served, and presumably that number would change when she ordered her hamburger to over one million and one burgers sold. Instead, they walked into a one-story building that looked like it had once been someone’s home, with a sign out front that read GLORIA’S EATERY.

  “No drinks. Just water,” Bruce warned them.

  Laura didn’t like that they’d have to sit at a small table, so close. Bruce would have to sit either next to her or across. He ended up across, but one person down. Mitchell sat directly facing Laura, his eyes glassy and bloodshot. He ordered a cheeseburger and a milkshake. Laura was just happy to not be having seaweed. Her open-faced turkey sandwich was smothered in brownish gravy and came with a hefty serving of canned peas. It was delicious.

  When it came time to leave, Bruce waved to the waitress. “No, just a check,” he told her. When she started to walk away, he called her back. “Oh, and can we . . . ?” He looked around the table. “Can we have a doggie bag, please?”

  Bruce pointed to Laura’s plate, where she had left half a piece of soggy white bread that she was about to finish. The waitress gave him a funny look but shrugged and whisked the plate away.

  As soon as she had backed into the kitchen, Bruce stood up. “Let’s go,” he said.

  “What?” Laura’s mother asked, but she got to her feet, most likely because Bruce was pulling on her arm.

  “Cool,” Mitchell said.

  They were halfway to the exit when the waitress appeared, stepping out from the kitchen. She looked right at Laura at first, with a confused look on her face and then anger.

  “I knew we never should have waited on you freaks,” she said. She held a white paper bag in one hand, a check in the other.

  “Clark!” she called into the kitchen. “Clark, get out here! Quick! Those hippies are skipping out on the bill.”

  Laura turned and ran out the door.

  THE train had been newly scrubbed, it was obvious, but by the time it pulled into the 59th Street station, some writer had already motion-tagged it, writing on it as it traveled. Then the bright blue-and-green block letters spelling Zippo floated along the side, just under the windows, as the train came to a stop. This was the right train. He’d made it. Trying to forget his unpleasant encounter with his father, Jonas checked his cell phone. 12:05 a.m., and the doors slid open.

  Laura was standing just inside the car, illuminated like a window display.

  “Jonas.” She whispered his name and he moved beside her.

  For a long moment, they stood together, not moving, until the train pitched and Laura stumbled forward. Jonas held the pole with one arm and with the other pulled her into his body. She felt like she melted against him, and she let out a strange, feral-sounding cry.

  “What is it?” Jonas shifted himself back so he could see her, but Laura wouldn’t lift her face from his chest. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” Laura said.

  He pulled her body away from his so he could look into her face. “Listen,” he said. “I can’t do it like this. I can’t do this. I need to know your last name. I need this to be real. I need to find you.”

  They sat down on the seat. “You can’t,” Laura said. “It’s too crazy. It’s too creepy weird. If you found me, I’d be really old. Really old. And besides, why haven’t I found you, if what you told me is true? If there’s all these ways to look people up and write to them? Why didn’t I just ogle you years ago?”

  “Google, and I don’t know,” Jonas said. “But I don’t care. Just tell me your last name.”

  “Duncan,” she said.

  Duncan. It was a common name, probably too common. Laura Duncan. What would he find out? He didn’t want to know; he didn’t want the Internet to know more of his fate than he did, or to be responsible for any more of his life. Hundreds and thousands and millions of sensors, connections, and transmissions that he had no control over. All that meant anything was this moment, right now.

  Jonas reached over and held the small of her back against the palm of his hand.

  “I know this sounds strange,” he said. “I know all of this sounds strange and impossible to believe, but I love you, and that’s all that needs to be real.”

  He kissed her mouth. He opened his heart and let his thoughts, his feelings, his history, dissolve into hers. He felt her lips and her tongue; he felt her
teeth and the inside of her soul. He had never wanted anything more than he wanted her. He wanted to fix everything, protect her. Stop time and pull them out.

  “I wish there was someplace we could go,” Laura said.

  “There is,” Jonas told her. “But you have to trust me.”

  She kissed him back, gently, taking his face in her hands. “I do,” she whispered. “I will.”

  “And you can’t be afraid of rats.”

  LAURA would not remember the incident itself, only the tension leading up to it. The long, unfruitful day at the crafts fair, the longer car ride back, the owner of the restaurant running after their car with a baseball bat, Mitchell getting sick later, holding his head out the window and throwing up.

  It was something Laura said or did as they were walking into the house. But when Bruce hauled off and punched her in the stomach, she went down. It seemed instinctual to curl her body into as small a ball as she could and stay there. She felt what she assumed was his foot kick her in the back, twice. He said something to her with each kick, but Laura wouldn’t have been able to recount what it was. Everything from her memory was washed away when she looked up, from her odd perspective under the dining-room table, and saw that her mother was standing there the whole time.

  She didn’t remember much, no, nothing of the incident at all, over the next week. When her mother let her know she’d be going to her dad’s in New York the following Friday, Laura packed her stuff into her backpack. She stood outside while Bruce pushed the VW down the driveway as her mother, sitting inside it, popped the clutch and threw the car into gear. Once the car was running, they switched places and Laura quietly got into the backseat.

  “Let your father know Mitchell isn’t coming.” Her mother faced forward while she talked. “Tell him he had band practice or something.”

  School had been out for a week.

  And no one mentioned what had happened to Laura. Not her mother. Not Mitchell. Certainly not Bruce. No one said anything about the punch, the kick, Laura’s seeming disassociation with the whole experience. Laura would never really understand how she had provoked Bruce’s violence, as if anything could be explained.

  What had she done wrong? Left the lights on? Was the door unlocked? She couldn’t remember. She would never remember. The only image imprinted in her mind was her mother’s face — and her mother’s silence. It would be the last time she ever saw Bruce, and it was the last time she saw or spoke to her mother for a long, long time.

  THE rumble of the train started far off, from deep inside the subway tunnel. The pitch of the train got higher as it neared, as if someone were playing an instrument and sliding up a scale. But the sound wasn’t really getting higher, was it? It was an illusion, a trick the sensory world played on its inhabitants. Just like the glow inside the subway car when Laura stepped on, turned around, and Jonas was right behind her.

  She called out his name, fearing he might be another illusion, light waves passing through time, but here he was, standing next to her, so close she could smell his clothing, the minty scent of his breath. Was he real? And then, as if in response, the subway thrust her forward, and she felt the solidness of his body as he stopped her fall. He was real.

  When he wrapped his arms around her, suddenly everything elusive became known, everything shattered became whole, everything harmful became safe. Everything ugly was now beautiful. The world she had left behind slipped away, and the most real thing she could feel was Jonas’s strength holding her up as she cried out, a sound that came from a single unbroken spot in her heart.

  “What is it?” he asked her. “What’s wrong?”

  In his arms, time fell away, all the time that had passed for her and not for Jonas. While he held her, there was only the present. She could tell him what had happened, about Bruce, about her mother, about Mitchell, but all of it would be history for him. It would be long since past when he got back home and fell into his own bed.

  But when he kissed her, she existed as if she were only just born in this moment. She wanted only to prolong this time, to melt into his body and have him melt into hers. Jonas said he had a plan, somewhere he could take her, somewhere they could be together and be alone. Suddenly nothing else mattered but the union of their time, the union of their memories.

  “You have to trust me,” Jonas told her, and in that point in time she did. “And you can’t be afraid of rats.”

  “THERE you are. There you are, for Christ’s sake. I’ve been looking all over for you. I need to paint my masterpiece,” Max said. “And it needs to be tonight.”

  Max hopped on the car just before it left Manhattan heading into the Bronx, like crossing a meridian; the train lifted into the air, elevated on the tracks above the streets.

  “I need you to promise to do something for me,” Max said. He stood in the center of the subway, holding on to the middle pole, letting his body drop left and then right. He was agitated. He had a suitcase with him, presumably filled with spray cans, and a camera bag hanging from his shoulder.

  “When? Now?” Jonas asked. Laura sat quietly, holding his hand.

  “No, man . . . early in the morning. I mean early, like first-thing early.”

  “I didn’t bring my camera . . .” Jonas started to say.

  “Never mind. I have one here. You can’t go home tonight,” Max said. “I need you.”

  “We weren’t planning to,” Jonas said. He felt his face heat up.

  Max scooted along the seats and sat down right beside Jonas. He lowered his voice, though the one other guy in the car was fast asleep and looked like he had been for forty years. “I’m going to bomb this train tonight, and when it comes out of the layup, as soon as it hits daylight, as soon as it crosses the El, you’ve got to get the pictures.”

  Jonas started to interrupt him, but Max kept talking. “You’ve got to be there right on 149th Street. It’s the best spot, and you can’t miss. You can’t go back. They’ll break up the train as soon as they see it, and then, car by car, they’ll buff. You understand?”

  Both Jonas and Laura nodded.

  “But why don’t you just do it?” Laura asked him.

  Max pulled the camera strap over his head and off his shoulder. “I can’t. Here.” He handed the bag to Jonas. “Take this. I’ve rigged it up with a battery on the advance. I can’t be there. They’ll be watching. They’ve got real cops now on the rails, and they’d bust me the minute they saw me. But a white boy with a camera, a white boy that looks like you — they wouldn’t know what to make of you.”

  Jonas took the bag. “You rigged it?”

  “Yeah, just hold down the release. Make sure the battery is attached. It will shoot and keep shooting. Just hold your frame steady and get the whole train. Got it? Get the whole train, that’s the key.”

  Jonas poked his head inside the camera bag. “Oh, sure. That’s easy. It’s got an automatic advance, OK? You rigged it? Yourself? Wow.”

  “Automatic release. Advance. Whatever you say. You’ve just got to promise. Time is running out,” Max said. “Anyway, I gotta go. I gotta drop this off, get the rest of my paint and my crew, and come back.”

  Max leaned over and spoke directly into Jonas’s ear. Then he bumped him on the shoulder and stood up again. “Hey, it’s been real,” he said to Laura. “Peace.”

  When the train stopped, Max jumped off, and he seemed to fade. The night filled in the space around him. The one streetlight on the platform was broken. He was in shadow, barely visible.

  “Just promise me,” he shouted to Jonas from the platform.

  “I promise,” Jonas called back.

  “We promise,” Laura added.

  JONAS had no intention of not seeing Laura again, even if it meant meeting her on the subway in the middle of the night for the rest of his life; living on a diet of Chinese takeout; raising their children to be careful of the third rail; growing old and dying with nothing but an MTA MetroCard in his pocket. There had to be a way to make this work,
to make this right. To make it real, more real. They had to stay on track. It had to work. It just had to.

  He had held Laura’s hand in the darkness; he watched her steps carefully, and together they climbed back inside the empty subway car. Max had explained exactly how to get inside a car with no electricity, and he had empathically suggested they find a money car, the cleanest by far. Plus, he’d explained, writers don’t go for them, because no one ever sees those cars, so the work bums and cops don’t bother checking them, because there’re no writers to bust. “You’ll be alone there, all night,” Max had assured them.

  The early-summer night brought a coolness, especially in the tunnels. Jonas could feel Laura’s skin rise into goose bumps.

  “Here.” He took off his jacket and slipped it around her shoulders. The money car had no seats, just benches like tables, for counting money, Jonas figured. It was empty, but it kind of looked like a hospital room, with canvas platforms and cabinets. It was clean. They lay down on the benches.

  Time is a funny thing. The way it lingers and hangs around when you’re bored, and the way it moves faster when you need more than is given. Jonas wanted to know every part of Laura’s body, touch every inch of her skin, and kiss her so deeply he would devour her and so be vanquished. The union of their bodies, his into hers, and hers engulfing his, brought him to the completion of his existence in a way he had never known before.

  And when they were consumed and then completed, when they pulled away from each other but stayed close, it was as if he could feel the minutes and the seconds ticking by, slipping away, taunting him. They rested side by side, his jacket beneath them, their bare legs entwined.

  “You can’t go back to that house,” Jonas told her. He felt her smallness beside him, her femininity, her beauty, and anger grew inside him. “You have to tell your father. And you have to tell him tonight.”