Subway Love

  He started again. “Laura —”

  She jumped up. “Listen, I’m sorry. But this time I really have to go. I can’t get in trouble again.”

  The train was slowing and jerked to a fast stop. The doors slid open and just before she bolted out, she bent down close to Jonas’s face.

  “I don’t know what’s going on either, but if you want, I think you can find me here.”

  She opened her mouth slightly; she leaned toward him; she pressed her lips to his. He hardly had time to return her kiss.

  “I’ll wait for you,” he said, and she was gone.

  IT would be another two weeks before Laura could get back to New York City, and this time Mitchell was with her. Zan would always ask what was happening, but Laura often didn’t want to talk about it. When she got home, it felt as if it had never happened. It was almost easier to forget, like the end of the dream you are having that fades away as soon as you begin to wake up. All that’s left is a vague feeling. Until she got back to New York, and the life behind her broke off and fell away like a snake sloughing its skin.

  There had been no sign of Jonas anywhere. Laura was looking, intently, scanning every face on the subway, certain he was in another car, or just about to get on, or off. She even tried to find him in the throngs of people walking the sidewalks of Manhattan, more people than ever. The warm weather brought them out.

  “You OK?” Mitchell asked her.

  That was an odd thing, her brother inquiring after her. Their dad wasn’t home from work yet, and the doorman had let them into the apartment.

  “I’m fine,” Laura answered. Mitchell had the TV on.

  “You’re so jumpy,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  In a way, she wanted to tell him. There was a time when he was her older brother, a real older brother. They played TV tag and hide-and-seek; they filled water guns from the outdoor hose; they flew balsa-wood airplanes off the roof. The story goes that Mitchell even stopped a three-year-old Laura from running out into the street when they still lived in Brooklyn. He saved her life, the story goes.

  “There’s just something —” she started and stopped.

  But it wasn’t like that with Mitchell anymore. They had left Brooklyn Heights, left their dad, left TV-Wonder-bread-land and entered peace-marching-headband-wearing-tie-dye-world. And somehow, while Mitchell jumped ship, Laura was left standing on the other side, alone. She knew what it felt like to have the world gawk while you struggled. Mitchell didn’t. He wouldn’t understand. He was the secret police; she couldn’t confide in him.

  “I gotta go,” she told Mitchell suddenly. She picked her jacket up from the couch.

  “Where? What? No, you’re not,” Mitchell said, but he kept his eyes on Sonny and Cher.

  Laura figured the best thing to do would be to return to the same subway station, maybe find the same train, the same car. Yes, she remembered the graffiti, the puffy letters, the Pink Panther or the snow-covered pine trees, and she found herself skipping down the stairs to the underground, afraid the train would come and she would miss it. Somehow missing it by only seconds would be so much worse than never knowing it had come and gone. She had no idea what to do other than walk forward and hope something would come to her, hope that when the time came to make a choice, she would know which was the right train. That’s how it had happened before.

  Two trains came by, both covered in messy, darkly scribbled lettering, the second with its windows whited out. But neither had the colorful three-dimensional tagging. When the third train hissed to a stop decorated with palm trees and beach umbrellas and the name Spike, Laura decided to just step on.

  She couldn’t wait any longer.

  Maybe something would happen. She sat down on the first open seat and she waited.

  Of course this could be a total waste of time, or worse. Mitchell could be calling their dad at this very minute, telling on her. What if her father called home again, and Bruce answered. But that wasn’t really Mitchell’s style. If push came to shove, Laura believed he would cover for her. There are some allegiances that rank above all others. Kids versus adults. And something told her to stay on this train.

  The number of people in the car thinned out as the subway headed uptown. It was unusually hot. People were fanning themselves, trying to lower the stuck windows. The constant hissing of doors opening and closing, the bell that rang in warning, the vibration of the steel wheels, began to sound like a lullaby. Laura leaned her head against the wall. The heat, the vibrations. She felt woozy and she closed her eyes.

  “I know you.”

  Laura’s heart froze, her eyes flew open. You were not supposed to talk to strangers, anywhere, certainly not in New York City, and they weren’t supposed to talk to you. But someone was talking to her. She sensed a male presence before she recognized his face.

  “Spike?”

  He stood without holding on to the bar, his legs splayed apart for balance but not so much that he looked like he was worried about falling.

  “So, why are you here?” Spike asked her. “I mean, I know why I’m here. But why are you? This train goes to places no white girl should be.” The bell sounded and the doors flew open. Spike moved toward them and waited.

  Where was she? Had she fallen asleep and now she was lost? There wasn’t even time to figure it out. The subway car was filled with people, not Midtown businesspeople but uptown people, hot and tired, all wanting to get home.

  She felt so white and out of place. She knew she wasn’t supposed to think this way, but she was afraid. Jonas hadn’t shown up. She didn’t know what subway she had even gotten on, where it went, or how to get back. The city was a huge web of underground danger, a maze she didn’t understand, and Spike was the only face she knew.

  “Wait!” Laura called out to him. There must be a reason she was here and he was here. But Jonas was not. Spike was about to leave.

  “Wait, can you help me?” Then she said it again. “I’m looking for someone. Can you help?”

  “OH, man. You don’t know nothing about the Holocaust. You got it all wrong,” he told her. “The people who survived weren’t the strongest.”

  She was feisty — he’d give her that — so he had agreed to help her find this boy she was looking for. Max knew exactly who she was talking about. That boy who was separated from time and searching the tunnels, doomed to wander the earth for his sins, like Cain, though this boy had no such sins. He didn’t belong here, in this time; that was for sure.

  Max wanted his art to travel the same way, timelessly and forever, like that boy. The steel wasn’t safe anymore. It was being buffed out every day now. It wasn’t going to last, Max could feel it. Celluloid, that’s where it was at. He needed to capture it, hold it. Film. That was the future.

  They were riding the subway together, talking, just bullshitting, passing time, like he did with his crew. Only this was a girl, a white girl to boot.

  “Of course they were the strongest, Spike,” she countered. “Only the strong survive, don’t they?”

  “Max,” he told her. “My real name is Max.”

  “I’m Laura,” she said, and smiled. When she smiled, her face lit up and the sadness seemed to disappear, for a little while anyway. But it was worth it.

  “So, then, who survives?” she asked.

  “Well, not the strongest,” Max said.

  He wanted to help her. Really, he did. She was a searcher. He liked searchers. A truth seeker, like he was. You don’t find them every day. But shit, she was really obsessed with the Holocaust. And she wasn’t even Jewish. But she felt it, he knew. He could see it in her eyes. She was a seeker. And he wanted to help.

  “The survivors were the ones with imagination,” he told her. “They were the ones that never stopped believing.”

  She looked like she was buying it. Hell, it sounded pretty damn good, if he must say so himself. “Strength has nothing to do with it,” he went on. “It was weakness. Weakness for food, and pretty clothes, par
ties, for the good old times, for love. It was the ones that could still dream. They were the survivors.”

  “For love?”

  “Yeah, for love. Survivors are the artists, the painters, the writers,” Max went on. “The dancers, the poets. The ones who can live in their minds while the rest of the world is falling apart.”

  They were on their way back again, after riding uptown to the very last stop, traveling in an unbroken line to Midtown, where she belonged.

  “This is your stop,” Max told her. Fifty-ninth Street. She’d figure it out from here.

  “Well, I guess I should get off,” she told him. She reached for her bag beside her.

  “Sorry I couldn’t help you find him,” Max said.

  “That’s OK.”

  And then, wouldn’t you know it, when the train stopped, that white boy was waiting for her, right there.

  A goddamn fucking miracle, if you asked Max.

  THE goal, of course, was to get a name for yourself. That’s what getting up meant. A writer who has hundreds, thousands, of throw-ups, who has his name everywhere, all over a certain train line, is considered king of that line. But Max wanted more than that. He wanted to paint his masterpiece. He wanted people to talk about his work for years to come. He wanted them to remember him, not just for his name, but for his style.

  In the future, they would write books and make movies about him. He had the talent, everybody knew that. He had already transformed the art of graffiti writing. When he first started, the lines were messy and flat, boring. Max had been the first one to move into 3-D, then into bubble style, filling in with fading colors. Practically no one was doing the fade when he started. Now, of course, you see it everywhere, but he was one of the first. Or so he said.

  At the Writers’ Corners, the one on 149th, they all wanted his tag in their black book. He was going to be famous and everyone knew it. He just needed to do something big, a whole car, end to end. He was almost ready. The weather was getting warmer, but not too warm. The 6 train was his target. He knew the route by heart. The One Tunnel was the ultimate layup. He had enough paint. The time was now, before he turned sixteen and could get in real trouble.

  The MTA was all geared up about this new World Trade Center, but Spike was going to take the headlines; his burner would pull right into that station for the opening ceremonies next week.

  It was going to be magnificent, and no one would ever forget.

  JONAS woke up to his mother’s crying. He slipped out of bed and knocked on her door as softly as he could, soft enough not to wake Lily but loud enough to be heard over her wretched sobbing.

  Jonas heard his mother reach for a tissue, blow her nose, and pretend to be pretending nothing was wrong. “What is it, sweetie?”

  “Mom, can I come in?” Jonas said through the door, although there was nothing he wanted to see less than his mother’s blotchy, wet, swollen face. He didn’t really want to see his mother in her bed. Before his dad left, his mother had never stayed in bed this long. Jonas had probably never been up before his mother in sixteen years. Now it was a daily occurrence.

  “Certainly.” She was wiping her face and pulling up the covers. The room still smelled of his dad’s cologne.

  Jonas sat down on the very end of his mother’s bed, as far from her as he could. The shades were drawn, and it was dark. She used to get up and run Saturday mornings, rain or shine, all year long.

  “Want me to make coffee?” he asked.

  “That would be terrific.”

  Jonas stood up.

  “I am so lucky. You’re the best child any mother could ever hope to have. You know that, don’t you?” his mother said.

  Jonas didn’t turn around. “Thanks, Mom,” he said. It was like a cruel joke.

  The good part was he could make the coffee, get Lily her cereal, plop her in front of the TV, and slip out of the house without having to explain anything to his mother.

  He headed straight for the subway station at Fifty-ninth Street.

  Jonas now knew he could find Laura, not what time but where. Always on the same subway, on the uptown 6 train, sometimes the downtown, sometimes being the operative word. It took all of waiting, hit or miss, sitting in the station, but it was always the 6 train, the one with graffiti. The train with the artwork, the mess, the letters, tags, pictures, and color splashed all over it.

  Jonas never knew he’d have the train schedule so clearly mapped in his head. He knew the routes and pretty much the entire timetable. He flew down the stairs into the darkness of the subway station, eyes wide open, drinking in all the available light.

  “You’re not the falling-in-love type,” Nick had told him.

  “I know I’m not,” Jonas agreed. For different reasons, they had both finished their math quiz early and were sitting in the faculty stairwell.

  “Well, for someone who’s not the type, you sure spend a lot of time thinking about her.”

  “And hanging out in the subway looking for her,” Jonas added.

  “You’re shitting me! Is that where you’ve been? Is that why you never text me back?”

  “No service down there.”

  Nick smacked his friend in the arm. “You still don’t have her phone number?”

  How could he explain? He couldn’t. It didn’t make sense. It sounded more than borderline crazy, so better left unsaid.

  “You can’t tie yourself down,” Nick said. “This weekend. Saturday night. You and me. And you’ll forget all about mystery girl with no phone.”

  It wasn’t worth explaining, but Jonas had other plans.

  Jonas swiped his MetroCard before he realized he had left the apartment without his camera, something he almost never did. He thought about going back, losing the fare, having to swipe his card again, but the uptown train stopped right in front of him. The graffiti had been scrubbed off and only the faintest outline remained, lighter in color than the rest of the metal car, a blurry outline of the huge puffy lettering. The windows were scratched but paint free.

  Jonas stepped inside, expecting exactly what he found: Laura sitting, waiting, just as she said she would be.

  “Sorry it took me so long,” Laura told him.

  Jonas lifted his brow. “So, how long?” It was Saturday morning now. It had been seven days.

  The train jerked into motion.

  But for Laura it had been longer, hadn’t it?

  He had figured it out. Somehow time was moving faster for her. Her kiss was still warm on his lips. He had seen her just last weekend.

  He hesitated. “So, when did you see me last?”

  “Me? See you? Don’t you remember?”

  She had no way to reach him. How many days had passed for her? How many weeks? No e-mail. No texting.

  For a second he was seized with self-doubt, even jealousy for a world he knew nothing about and couldn’t visit, much less control. What did she do with her time, the in-between time? But he shook off the feelings. He was so glad to see her again. Her face, her smile.

  “It was two weeks ago, wasn’t it?” she asked.

  Jonas didn’t answer.

  Laura went on: “Yeah, as much as my mom likes to get rid of me, the bus from Kingston costs a lot and it’s a long drive from Woodstock and we only have one car and it doesn’t always start. My brother wasn’t supposed to come with me, but after what happened last time, my mother made him . . .”

  Jonas was only half listening. How could this be possible? He interrupted her. “So . . .” he started slowly. “So, what year is it?”

  “What year is it?” Laura echoed. “What year is it . . . when?”

  “Now,” Jonas said. “What year is it now?” He knew he was taking a risk. It sounded like a question from a science-fiction movie or one of the medical shows where the guy is waking up from a head injury. Laura must have been thinking the same thing.

  “You want to ask me who the president of the United States is?”

  Jonas didn’t answer. He watched Laura??
?s face, trying not to be distracted by the dip of her collarbones, the skin that was showing at her neck.

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?” she asked him.

  He nodded.

  “OK,” Laura said. She spoke more softly.

  There were a few other people on the train. It was still pretty early.

  “It’s nineteen seventy-three,” she began, and as she spoke, Jonas lifted his eyes and let them wander around the subway car, the greenish color of the walls, the molded plastic benches. He looked up at the print ad that decorated the top of the car, just under the rounded ceiling.

  “And the president is — unfortunately still is — Richard Nixon,” Laura went on. She seemed to be watching his face carefully. She spoke slowly. “But not for you, is it?”

  Jonas shook his head. They both looked around the train. A youngish mother wearing lots of eye makeup sat with a sleeping toddler sprawled across her lap, and an older couple were holding hands at the other end of the train.

  “Don’t say anything,” Jonas said.

  “I won’t.”

  They fell silent and let the train lull them for a while. The older couple got off. A tall man in a velour jogging suit got on.

  “This is weird, isn’t it?” Jonas said finally.

  “Yeah,” Laura said. “But it feels right.”

  IT did. Jonas hadn’t felt this right in a long time. He had a sense of being home, right here in the subway car. And it was odd, since he had never liked being down in the subway system, being underground. When he was little, he was afraid the city would most certainly collapse on top of him. How can all those buildings and all those people and cars and buses be just eighteen feet above the tunnel? It was impossible.

  “It’s fine, Jonas,” his father would say. “It’s perfectly safe. Look —” His father would take his hand and walk him down the steep concrete steps. The smell of urine and the roar of the trains would assault him.