"Watch out for those damn ghosts," the bum said, laughing, grinning a dirty-toothed grin.
Gerald fell in love with her that morning.
Gerald stood at the edge of the crowd with his hand against a pillar. He ran his finger over the cold, gravelly cement. The subway station always smelled of metal and soap, of machines and people just out of the shower. A thin man in a suit stood beside Gerald, one of those phone earpiece things attached to him, making him look like a robot. He yelled at whoever was on the other end of the phone, like he was yelling into thin air. Two kids with lunchboxes sat side by side on a bench. One punched the other on the arm, and they both laughed.
All around Gerald the crowd hummed, feet clicking and sticking on the cold ground.
She came in through the south entrance, her sunglasses on, her jackets zipped up against the November cold. She leaned against her pillar. Gerald watched her out of the corner of his eye. He could feel her looking around, looking at him. He slid his hand further up the pillar, his jacket falling further open, his wallet inching out of the inside breast pocket. An inch and a half of leather showing now. She had to see it.
The train snaked into the station. The doors opened. The crowd surged and shoved around him; he looked at her pillar, and she was gone. A woman with a bagel smushed into him, got cream cheese on his coat.
"Sorry," she mumbled without looking at him.
The crowd pressed him into the car and the doors shut behind him. Warmth was everywhere, coming from the car's heater, coming from the bodies pressed against each other. The odor of coffee on the air. Gerald felt his pocket. The wallet was gone.
The train began to move and the station slid away outside the window. Gerald watched his pickpocket as she edged through the crowd toward the north entrance.
He held on to the metal rail above his head and smiled as the train plowed into the darkness. Graffiti raced by on the tunnel walls. He closed his eyes and pictured his girl, climbing up the stairs and into the cold hard air of the city, scooting along the sidewalk, head down, hands in her pockets while the wind whips her hair around. She turns down an alley and tucks herself into a corner behind a dumpster. She unzips her coat, pulls the wallet out, and opens it, rifles through it, stares. No money, no credit cards, no ID. Just a piece of paper. She holds it in her little pink fingers. One side says BUSTED. She flips it over. So audacious. Find me tomorrow. She huffs, pouts, crumples the paper, sticks it back in her pocket. She fumes. A tiny ball of fire.
Gerald smiled and felt his feet rocking with the train.
She was there the next morning. She leaned against her pillar, her arms crossed, her top teeth biting into her bottom lip. She stared at Gerald. He sat on the bench and stared back while people cut back and forth between them. The subway came and went. She let the crowd and all their wallets and purses and jewelry walk right by in front of her. Then the station was nearly empty: the cashiers were changing shifts, the cop was heading out the north entrance, and the pickpocket padded across the concrete, the soft pat of her shoes echoing around the station. She stopped in front of him and crossed her arms again.
"What was that all about?" she said.
Gerald smiled at her. He put his palms on the bench and leaned back, crossed one leg over the other. "Surprised?" he said.
"Are you going to turn me in?"
"I wasn't planning on it."
"Then what do you want?"
He looked at her feet. She wore black ballet slippers. "I see you every morning," he said. "Just wanted some company, I suppose."
"Are you trying to hit on me?"
"No."
"How old are you?"
"I'm not trying to hit on you."
"Okay." She looked around the room. A janitor was wandering around with one of those grabber-claw things, picking up coffee cups and fruit-bar wrappers. She sat down beside Gerald and pulled the crumpled piece of paper out of her pocket. She looked at it, flipped it over, turned it between her fingers. "What does audacious mean?"
"You've never heard it before?"
"No."
He took the paper from her. "It means daring, bold."
"So audacious."
"Yup." He handed the paper back to her. She folded it up and slipped it neatly into a pocket. She looked at her feet. Pushed her hair back behind her ears.
"I'm Gerald. What's your name?"
She licked her lips. "You think I'm audacious?"
"I do."
"So just call me Audacious."
"You don't have a name?"
"Not that I'm going to tell you."
"Well, Audacious is a little long for a name."
"So shorten it then, whatever. I'm not telling you my real name." She stood up.
"Shorten it? Like Audi?"
She stood in front of him, zipped her jackets up, first the denim one, then the Windbreaker. "Like the car?"
"As in short for Audacious."
"Fine then. Audi." She turned around, headed for the north entrance.
"See you tomorrow?" Gerald said. His voice bounced off the walls of the station.
She tucked her hands into her jacket and walked out of sight.
He brought her coffee the next morning. Audi stood across the station and stared at him until the train left, then came and sat down beside him. Didn't say a word.
"I thought you'd like it sweet. I put lots of sugar in it. Lots of cream," Gerald said.
She took it from him. "Thanks," she said. She took a sip, licked her lips. "You know, this is two days in a row I've missed a score because of you."
"Whoops."
"You're going to have to help me out if you keep this up," she said. She smiled at him. The gums above her top teeth showed pink and tender. Her dark eyes sparkled. Gerald felt himself filling up inside.
"I brought you coffee," he said. "What else do you want?"
"I'll think of something."
For two weeks she was there every morning. Gerald missed his train to talk to her. He showed up late to the office every day. Not that there was anyone who would notice.
Audi told him about herself. She was twenty-two years old, had been fending for herself for the last six years. She ended up on the street when her boyfriend left her. He owned a house, begged her to move in. She did, and a month later he'd had enough of her.
"Get your shit and move out-that's all he said to me," Audi said, turning her coffee cup around in her palms. "I knew my parents wouldn't let me back in; they were all pissed off that I left in the first place. So I went downtown to stay with one of my girlfriends. She said there wasn't room, and that was that. I started sleeping in here." She waved her arm, gestured to the cavernous space.
"In the station?" Gerald said.
"Over behind those vending machines. It's warm back there, the machines make it warm, and there's space. And the cops don't look back there."
"Not the most comfortable place in the world, though."
"No." She drank her coffee and looked at the vending machines. "But I hung around here enough that I figured people out. And started stealing their stuff. It's easy. And I got enough to pay a sixth of the rent at this place." She told him about the apartment, a place downtown where she stayed with a half-dozen other people her age, the population of the apartment constantly in flux as people disappeared and new ones showed up. She slept on the kitchen floor. Rent was cheap.
"And you're happy there?" Gerald said.
"No."
She leaned forward, her paper cup dangling from her fingertips. She scrunched her face and looked at the ground. Her jackets bunched up around her shoulders, her back. Gerald held his hand behind her, an inch from her back, thought about it, watched her, and finally rested his palm flat and gentle against her jacket.
"You know, I've got extra space, if you ever need somewhere to stay," he said.