“How do you like your coffee if I can ask, black or regular? Or maybe you don’t want any from me, if you do drink coffee, which would of course be all right too.”
“Regular, but I don’t want any, thanks.”
“Come on, take it, it’s not toxic and I can drink my coffee any old way. And it’ll perk you up, not that you need perking up and certainly not from me,” and he gives me a container. “Sugar?” and I say “Really, this is—” and he says “Come on: sugar?” and I nod and he pulls out of his jacket pocket a couple of sugar packets and a stirring stick. “I just took these on the way out of the shop without waiting for a bag, don’t ask me why. The stick’s probably a bit dirty, do you mind?” and I shake my head and wipe the stick though there’s nothing on it. “Mind if I sit and have my coffee also?” and I say “Go ahead. It’s not my bench and all that and I’d be afraid to think what you’d pull out of your pocket if I said no — probably your own bench and cocktail table,” and he says “Don’t be silly,” and sits.
He starts talking about the bench, how the same oak one has been here for at least thirty years because that’s how long he’s lived in the neighborhood, then about the coffee, that it’s good though always from the shop upstairs a little bitter, then why he happens to see me every Saturday: that he’s recently divorced and has a child by that marriage who he goes to in Brooklyn once a week to spend the whole day with. He seems even nicer and more intelligent than I thought and comfortable to be with and for the first time I think he’s maybe even good-looking when before I thought his ears stuck out too far and he had too thin a mouth and small a nose. He dresses well anyway and has a nice profile and his hair’s stylish and neat and his face shaven clean which I like and no excessive jewelry or neck chain which I don’t and in his other jacket pocket are a paperback and small ribbon-wrapped package, the last I guess a present for his little girl.
His train comes and when the doors open I say “Shouldn’t you get on it?” and he says “I’ll take the next one if you don’t mind,” and I say “I don’t think it’s up to me to decide,” and he hunches his shoulders and gives me that expression “Well I don’t know what to say,” and the train goes and when it’s quiet again he continues the conversation, now about what I think of something that happened in Africa yesterday which he read in the paper today. I tell him I didn’t read it and that maybe when I do read my paper it won’t be the same as his and so might not have that news story and he says “What paper you read?” and I tell him and he says “Same one — front page, left-hand column,” and I say “Anyway, on Saturdays I don’t, and for my own reasons, have time for the newspaper till I get home later and really also don’t have the time to just sit here and talk,” and he says “Of course, of course,” but seriously, as if he believes me, and we’re silent for a while, drinking our coffees and looking at the tracks.
We hear another train coming and I say “I think you better get on this one,” and he says “Okay. It’s been great and I hope I haven’t been too much of a nuisance,” and I say “You really haven’t at all,” and he says “Mind if I ask your name?” and I say “Your train,” and he yells to the people going into the subway car “Hold the door,” and gets up and says to me “Mine’s Vaughn,” and shakes my hand and says “Next week,” and runs to the train with his container and he’s not past the door a second when the man who kept it open for him lets it close.
I picture him on his way to Brooklyn, reading his book, later in Prospect Park with his daughter as he said they would do if the good weather holds up and in an indoor ice-skating rink if it doesn’t, and then go back to my lookout. People spit and throw trash on the tracks, a drunk or crazy man urinates on the platform, a boy defaces the tile wall with a marker pen and tells me to go shoot myself when I very politely suggest he stop, there’s almost a fight between a man trying to get off the train and the one blocking his way who’s trying to get on, which I doubt would have happened if both sides of the double door had opened, but again no sign of my two young men.
Vaughn’s not there the next Saturday and the Saturday after that and the third Saturday he’s not there I begin thinking that I’m thinking more about him than I do of anybody or thing and spending more time looking at the staircase and around the platform for him than I do for those young men. I’ve gradually lost interest in finding them and over the last four months my chances have gotten worse and worse that I’ll even recognize them if they ever do come down here and as far as their repeating that harassing-the-girl incident at this particular station, well forget it, and I leave the station at noon instead of around my usual two and decide that was my last Saturday there.
A month later I meet Vaughn coming out of a supermarket when I’m going in. He’s pulling a shopping cart filled with clean laundry at the bottom and two big grocery bags on top. It’s Saturday, we’re both dressed in T-shirts and shorts for the warm weather now, and I stop him by saying “Vaughn, how are you?” He looks at me as if he doesn’t remember me. “Maybe because you can’t place me anywhere else but on a subway bench. Maria Pierce. From the subway station over there.”
“That’s right. Suddenly your face was familiar, but you never gave me your name. What’s been happening?” and I say “Nothing much I guess,” and he says “You don’t wait in subway stations anymore for whatever you were waiting for those days?” and I say “How would you know? You stopped coming yourself there and to tell you the truth I was sort of looking forward to a continuation of that nice chat we last had.”
“Oh, let me tell you what went wrong. My ex-wife, giving me a day’s notice, changed jobs and locations and took my daughter to Boston with her. I could have fought it, but don’t like arguments. I only get to see her when I get up there, which hasn’t happened yet, and maybe for August if I want.”
“That’s too bad. I remember how devoted you were.”
“I don’t know it’s so bad. I’m beginning to enjoy my freedom every Saturday, as much as I miss my kid. But I got to go. Ice cream in the bag will soon be melting,” and he says goodbye and goes.
If I knew his last name I might look him up in the phone book and call him and say something like “Since we live in the same neighborhood, would you care to have a cup of coffee one of these days? I owe you one and I’ll even, if you’re still curious, let you in on my big secret why I every Saturday for months waited at our favorite subway station.” Then I think no, even if I did have his phone number. I gave him on the street a couple of openings to make overtures about seeing me again and he didn’t take them because he didn’t want to or whatever his reasons but certainly not because of his melting ice cream.
Several weeks later I read in the newspaper that those two young men got caught. They were in the Eighth Street subway station and tried to molest a policewoman dressed like an artist with even a sketchbook and drawing pen, and two plain-clothes-men were waiting nearby. The police connected them up with Eliot’s death. The two men later admitted to being on my subway platform that day but said they only started a fight with him because he tried to stop one of them from making a date with a girl the young man once knew. They said they told Eliot to mind his business, he refused, so they wrestled him to the ground and then said he could get up if he didn’t make any more trouble. Eliot said okay, got up and immediately swung at them, missed, lost his footing and before either of them could grab him away, fell to the tracks. They got scared and ran to the street. They don’t know the girl’s last name or where she lives except that it’s somewhere in the Bronx.