Later he would wonder what exactly had made him look up again at that precise moment in time.
He would ask himself over and over what would have happened if he hadn’t. He would torture himself with all the permutations, the what ifs and what thens and what nows.
But he did look up.
The 9:05 from Babylon to Penn Station kept going. Merrick to Freeport to Baldwin to Rockville Centre. Lynbrook to Jamaica to Forest Hills to Penn.
But Charles clearly and spectacularly derailed.
ATTICA
Two nights later after dinner, my four-year-old climbed onto my lap and demanded I do treasure hunt on his back.
“We’re going on a treasure hunt,” I whispered as I traced little steps up and down his spine. “Xmarks the spot . . .” as he squirmed and giggled. He smelled of shampoo and candy and Play-Doh, the scent that was clearly and uniquely him.
“To get to the treasure, you take big steps and little steps,” I murmured, and when I finished he asked me where this treasure was exactly, and I answered him on cue. This, after all, was our routine.
“Right here,” I said. And hugged him.
My wife smiled at us from the other side of the table.
When I kissed them all good-bye, I lingered before stepping out into the driveway. As if I were attempting to soak up enough good vibes to last me through the night, straight through the redbrick archway of Attica and into the fetid rec room. Like a magic aura that might protect me from harm.
“Be careful,” my wife said from the front door.
When I went through the metal detector, it went off like an air raid siren.
I’d forgotten to take my house keys out of my pocket.
“Hey, Yobwoc,” the CO said while patting me down. “Keys are like . . . metal.” Yobwoc was Cowboy backward and stood for Young Obnoxious Bastard We Often Con.
PHD was just one of my monikers here.
“Sorry,” I said, “forgot.”
As soon as I entered the classroom, I could see there was another piece of the story waiting for me at my desk. Eleven pages, neatly printed.
Yes, I thought. The story is just getting started.
Other sections soon followed like clockwork.
From that first day on, there would be another piece of the story waiting for me every time I entered the classroom.
Sometimes just a page or two — sometimes what would constitute several chapters. Placed flat on my desk and all, like the first one, unsigned. The story unfolding piecemeal, like a daytime serial you just can’t pull your eyes away from. After all, it would end up containing all the staples of soap opera — sex, lies, and tragedy.
I didn’t read these installments to my class. I understood they were solely for me now. Me and, of course, the writer.
Speaking of which.
There were twenty-nine students in my class.
Eighteen blacks, six Hispanics, five pale-as-ghosts Caucasians.
I was reasonably sure that none of them had ever ridden the 9:05 to Pennsylvania Station.
So where was he?
TWO
An expanse of thigh — that’s all at first.
But not just any thigh. A thigh taut, smooth, and toned, a thigh that had obviously spent some time on the treadmill, sheathed by a fashionably short skirt made even shorter by the position of the legs. Casually crossed at the knees. All in all, a skirt length that he’d have to say fell somewhere between sexiness and sluttiness, not exactly one or the other, therefore both.
This is what Charles saw when he looked up.
He could just make out a black high-heeled pump jutting out into the aisle, barely swinging with the motion of the train. He was directly facing her, his seat backward to the city-bound direction of the train car. But she was blocked by the front page of The New York Times, and even if she wasn’t blocked by the day’s alarming if familiar headline — MID-EAST BURNING — he hadn’t yet looked up toward her face, only peripherally. Instead he was focusing on that thigh and hoping against hope she wouldn’t turn out to be beautiful.
She was.
He’d been debating his next move: whether to turn back to his sports stats, for instance, whether to stare out the grime-streaked window, or scan the bank and airline ads lining each side of the car, when he simply threw caution to the wind and peeked. Just as The New York Times strategically lowered, finally revealing the face he’d been so hesitant to look at.
Yes, she was beautiful.
Her eyes.
They were kind of spectacular. Wide and doe shaped and the very definition of tenderness. Full, pouting lips she was ever so slightly biting down on. Her hair? Soft enough to cocoon himself in and never, ever, come out.
He’d been hoping she’d be homely or interesting or simply cute. Not a chance. She was undeniably magnificent.
And that was a problem, because he was kind of vulnerable these days. Dreaming of a kind of alternate universe.
In this alternate universe, he wasn’t married and his kid wasn’t sick, because he didn’t have any kids. Things were always looking up there; the world was his oyster.
So he didn’t want the woman reading The New York Times to be beautiful. Because that was like peeking into the doorway of this alternate universe of his, at the hostess beckoning him to come inside and put his feet up on the couch, and everyone knew alternate universes were for kids and sci-fi nuts.
They didn’t exist.
“Ticket.” The conductor was standing over him and demanding something. What did he want? Couldn’t he see he was busy defining the limitations of his life?
“Ticket,” he repeated.
It was Monday, and Charles had forgotten to actually walk into the station and purchase his weekly ticket. The time change had thrown him off, and here he was, ticketless in front of strangers.
“Forgot to buy one,” he said.
“Okay,” the conductor said.
“See, I didn’t realize it was Monday.”
“Fine.”
Another thing had just occurred to Charles. On Mondays he stopped at the station ATM to take out money he then used to purchase the weekly ticket. Money he also used to get through the week. Money he didn’t, at the moment, have.
“That’s nine dollars,” the conductor said.
Like most couples these days, Charles and Deanna lived on the ATM plan, which doled out cash like a trust fund lawyer — a bit at a time. Charles’s wallet had been in its usual Monday morning location, opened on the kitchen counter, where Deanna had no doubt scoured it for loose cash before going off to work. There was nothing in it.
“Nine dollars,” the conductor said, this time impatiently. No doubt about it; the man was getting antsy.
Charles looked through his wallet anyway. There was always the chance he was wrong, that somewhere in there was a forgotten twenty tucked away between business cards and six-year-old photos. Besides, looking through your wallet was what you were supposed to do when someone was asking you for money.
Which someone was. Repeatedly.
“Look, you’re holding up the whole train,” he said. “Nine dollars.”