The big man wasn’t so big anymore, like he was making his way down a different horizon line than everyone else. He looked back at something way behind me, maybe the distant crowd of us and his victim, and then he dipped below the range of shoulders and was gone. There was no two-faced man. No woman either.
Grandpa settled down inside me. I never knew he could get upset like that.
On the uptown side of the station, a twenty-something who looked like he’d stayed up from a night of clubbing broke into a free-form flow like he was the headliner and we’d all come to hear him and the sound of that train coming was our love and adulation taking him higher and higher. I have no idea what he was rapping about.
So I jumped.
The lights of the lead subway car were the eyes of that thing I’d seen on the second take of Mr. Muscle, only they were flashing with the fire from full clips being dumped on me.
My hand settled on something warm, soft. Moaning. There she was. I grabbed an arm, pulled. Got hold of her hip, slid my hand up under the other shoulder. There was space below the platform. I dragged her to cover.
Happened to me once. Small, smelly guy, spilling blood himself, pulled me from a burning wreckage over stone and dust and sheet metal, through a tangle of poles and beach umbrellas and plastic sheeting, to a quiet little spot underneath sides of meat quietly flaming. We listened to gunfire crackling and kids crying for a while. Don’t know what happened to him after the evac.
I held the woman tight against my chest, legs around her hips to keep her from rolling. Her hair flew and crawled all around my face and head as the train blasted past us inches away. For a second I didn’t know where I was anymore. Too many dreams, too much reality.
She was a warm, trembling bundle against my beating heart. I closed my eyes, and turned my head so her hair could get all of me, neck, ears, eyes, and lips — like she cared — and her fingers were memorizing the shape of me and I was something special to her.
But the train screeched to a stop and we choked and coughed on a burnt, electric stink and dust and she broke free but knocked her head against a car’s undercarriage and stared at me like I was the one who’d thrown her down there.
Her face was rounder than I thought, now that I could see it with her hair flowing away, reaching for the light and the air and freedom.
“Sorry,” I said, pulling my legs away from her because I was afraid that even with everything going on I’d get a hard-on and that would make the situation a complete cluster fuck.
People were shouting above me and I thought I was okay, though my knees and hips were singing like an out-of-tune choir. I thought we could crawl to one end of the station and get out, so I pointed and started moving. If there’s one thing hearing voices, much less combat, taught me, it was recovery. If you just lay there, you’re screwed. Keep moving.
I grabbed her arm. She brushed me off. “Don’t touch me,” she said, like it was the worst thing that had happened to her so far that day.
You can’t touch the moon.
Great, Grandpa.
I said, “Hey, I just saved your life.” Getting pissed now. Like when you take fire from people you’re supposed to be saving and you want to lob a few shells back to say, You’re welcome.
Somebody with training interrupted from above and got me to answer her questions: no blood, moving my limbs, breathing regular. “The woman’s fine too,” I added.
All I got back was “What woman?” and “Stay calm” and “Help is coming.” After a few whispers, the voice asked, “What meds are you on?”
My heartbeat woman was still staring at me, hard, reading between my lips and holding on to steel-smoking motor mounts that looked hot to me. But her skin wasn’t blistering and I figured, well, I don’t know what. She had to be in shock. I was. So I told the voice from above, who identified herself as a nurse, what had happened: I saw a man chasing a woman through the crowd, tried to stop him, couldn’t catch up, and he pushed her into the train tracks. I jumped down after her.
I didn’t mention the vision I had of that man, or that I was in love with the girl in the tracks.
This is the stuff of heroes, I was thinking. I mean, I’m a Marine. A vet. Doing my warrior thing. That meant name in lights, spot on the Late Show, cash rewards. I’d have to play down the Java programmer angle, though. Nobody wants to know about a smart vet.
“You saw the monster,” my heartbeat woman said.
“Yeah. If that’s what you call it.”
My father killed something on high steel when he was young.
Thanks, Grandpa, but I’m busy right now.
“I’m real to you.” She looked into my eyes like she was trying to see through them.
“Shit, yeah.”
He killed something like that. And afterwards, the bridge came down.
Yeah, Grandpa. Quebec Bridge. Mohawk disaster. I remember. Can we talk about it later?
“You’re not afraid to die.”
“Right.” Easy to stay loose about the death end of life when the living part doesn’t stick.
Its blood’s a curse. Mixed with ours. The dealing with it is our duty. Even down to you.
Blood? What? Never told me that one, Grandpa.
“I can’t save everyone,” she said, and in that dark place tears shone in her eyes. “I can’t do more for you. I have others to take care of.”
In that small space she seemed to be crawling backwards away from me. I reached for her again, but this time I missed, like my hand went right through her.
I thought it had to be that thing’s blood that drew me to you. Hard as it is to believe.
And here I thought I was special.
You are. Though I’ve been wondering if that thing was ever going to show up. You carry the responsibility.
What responsibility?
There aren’t many descendents left. Seems like you’re all that’s left.
For what?
Did my best to show you the way. Wish your father’d lived long enough.
And then she was already halfway under the subway car, folded over but still facing me almost between her own feet like a circus contortionist, sliding back without making a sound or moving a muscle. Her eyes were darker than any space in the tunnel or under the train, darker than a night without stars and moon, or a dreamless sleep. But when I looked into them, I gave that darkness a touch of light and she nearly cracked a smile. That’s when I knew I’d been talking to the wrong ghost. Family just never knows when to get out of the way.
“Wait, what’s your name?” If this had been a Manhattan lounge maybe she would have said something like Cinderella and I’d never have seen her again.
“Medicine Snake Woman.”
“What the hell kind of name is that?”
“You’re welcome,” she said, and flashed me a small, sad smile like she’d already read everything she needed to know between my lips and she was moving on to bigger and better things.
Then she was gone, and it hit me. She was the one who should have said thanks, and “You’re welcome” should have been my line.
I woke up dizzy back in the real world underneath a train with police and EMTs talking to me through the crevice between the platform and the train, rats piling up around the third rail wondering if the lunch buffet had arrived.