I watched the sticky coffee streams snake across the train flooring from left to right as far as my eyes could see. The lights in the tunnel blinked through the windows, flashing like fireworks beyond the glass as we sped through the tunnel. The entire car was silent except for the pounding, screeching of the train as it raced onward.
I had found myself a window seat and was staring blankly out through the glass covered in graffiti scratches as the train pulled into the next station. Lost in my own thoughts, I was gazing impassively at the people on the other side where they crowded the platform, waiting for the doors to open. A flash of black leather hurried past the window. I looked up, startled, when he stepped back in front of the glass and rapped on the window with his knuckles from the other side to draw my attention. My breath caught in my throat as I found myself gazing into the most amazing green eyes I had ever seen. He smiled at me and motioned with his hand across his mouth in a gesture of making a happy face. I saw him mouth the words “Smile, Beautiful” at me as the train doors closed and we began to pull out of the station.
Smile? What the heck did I have to smile about?
Time and again, I felt as if my life had been ripped to pieces and put back together with fragments missing. The picture would never be whole again, only more and more pieces falling away - eroding towards emptiness.
First my mother - then my father - everything I had ever known, my home, my childhood friends, all taken away - one by one - and now Marisol.
Even though I had left her behind, part of me was always secure in knowing that she existed. I tried to think of happier times - a bright memory of us laying on our backs in a pile of autumn leaves at the park, laughing hysterically at everything and nothing. I remembered triple scoop ice cream cones on humid summer afternoons, licking the vanilla as it slid down the cones over our fingers. Then a vision of us sitting on the stoop of her apartment building, whispering about our first kisses, our cheeks red and rosy.
I focused my attention back to the present. There were fewer than a dozen people scattered around the subway car, all evenly spaced, as if trying to put as much distance between themselves and the person closest to them. My gaze flicked across a man in his mid-thirties sitting in the last row of seats, his crisp Ralph Lauren suit a color that bordered between blue and black. He held a Wall Street Journal spread across his lap, barely covering the fact that he was casually jerking off in the corner. His eyes met mine and he smiled in a way that made my skin crawl. I felt bile rising into my throat.
“You’re disgusting.” I said it loud enough for everyone in the train car to hear and turn their gaze upon us, forcing him to cover himself with the newspaper and try to put his junk away before someone else said something. “Pervert.” I added, as we pulled into my station and I dashed for the doors.
Encounters like that seem to happen to me often. Oliver likes to joke that it’s some sort of pheromone I give off that smells like whiskey, attracting all the drunks and crazies as if I were the Pied Piper.
Encounters like the one I had with Mister Wall-Street-Jerk-Off made me wonder what the hell was wrong with most people - but then there was Mister Green Eyes. I started thinking about him as I headed up the subway steps to the street. Those were some remarkable eyes - unforgettable eyes - piercing and clear. I smiled to myself, thinking about the fact that Mister Green Eyes had noticed me - that our paths had met and merged for a brief instant in this city of multitudes where a chance meeting was almost never repeated. It was that sense of anonymity which made people like Mister Wall-Street-Jerk-Off feel comfortable enough to do what he did, knowing that even if he got caught he’d probably never have to face the people in that train car again.
I had only beheld Mister Green Eyes for a brief moment, clad all in black with shaggy wild hair the true shade of ebony - so dark that it contrasted sharply with everything around it, including his pale skin and those amazing eyes, but the image of him stuck in my mind. He had managed to make me smile after all.
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