Subway Stories: An Observation Toward Forest Hills

He sat next to her on the hard, orange-colored seat in a Queens’s bound subway car, fanning her with a bright pink fan covered in white leaves. He was 65 if a day. The light glinted off his 80s style herringbone necklace. His beard and mustache were close-cropped, well taken care of. His backwards facing cap said Nike.

Her age was indeterminate. She might have been younger than he but from the looks of her, cigarettes and, I don't know, drugs maybe, had taken their toll. She was still attractive in a worn kind of way, but she seemed worn down, tired, but more than tired. She seemed spacey. She grabbed a scarf from her backpack and dabbed it across her face. I couldn't see the wetness she must have felt.

Her bleach blonde hair was brushed straight back from her face and gathered into a short ponytail. She was wearing all white. She looked fragile and vicious all at once.

The sores on her leg could have been from over-scratched insect bites. Or cigarette burns. Or they could have been the broken skin of a shin bashed too hard against a coffee table. But to me those glaring sores looked like puss-filled ulcerations the can result in over-active drug use.

Her face was made up. She seemed the type to never leave home without it. But it wasn't garish. Just enough. She knew what she was doing. Her eye lids were lined with long fake lashes that didn’t quite fill the expanse of the full lid. They were generously covered in black mascara, which accentuated the empty spaces on either side.

She leaned over to him and kissed him gently in the cheek. He turned his face so that his lips met hers. Another kiss. He loved her. I could tell. And she loved him. He continued to fan her, loose wisps of her bottle blonde hair blowing back and forth in his created breeze. 

I had heard her mention Forest Hills in her cigarette-choked voice when they first sat down on the train. But Forest Hills didn’t seem like their final destination. 

I never heard his voice, but watched him listen intently to every world she said, fanning, fanning. She closed her eyes and lay her head on his shoulder. I watched as he pulled the bottom of her shirt dress down over a thigh he must have felt was too exposed. He would protect her until he died. I knew it. I bet she knew it too, even if she did seem slightly languid at the time.

I wonder where they were going with their five bags of stuff? I wonder who they were? I’ll never know. 

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