Station 7

“Station 7”



The subway station was cold like a corpse. I shivered, pulling my jacket closer and wrapping my arms in a tight hug around myself. The air stung. Every breath was icy. Strangely enough, no fleeting fog left my lips as I exhaled.

'Maybe it’s not THAT cold', I convinced myself, solemnly raising gloved hands to my mouth for warming up. I looked around. My head hurt slightly – a dull, throbbing pain.

A large yellow ‘7’ had been painted on the platform’s frosty concrete, but the top of the number had worn away to create a fat, lazy ‘1’. Two pillars marked where the train would arrive, where the line of eager commuters would begin.

Yet, the platform was empty, very empty. I did not see a single soul.

I paused for a moment, scanning the vast station.

'There they are.'

Three figures sat upon a functional bench in the opposite section of the platform, their tiny silhouettes like flecks of dirt on a frozen pond. They were too far away to describe.

Rubbing my hands together, I approached. A steady drip, drip, drip kept my steps in slow tempo. The station was remarkably dead: no hustle and bustle to and fro, here and there, back and forth; no raised voices of excitement, of frustration, of agitation; no clustered bodies packed together like an Upton Sinclair meat factory; simply lifeless. Yes, ‘lifeless’ would be the perfect way to say it. There was something mechanical and efficient about the atmosphere of the subway station. The walls were devoid of movie posters and advertisements, even graffiti. The floors were clear of any litter, stainless.

'Finally,' I thought with a mild grin. 'The city has the sense to clean this place up a bit.'

The maw of the subway tunnel groaned at me. Its black recesses mesmerized.
I raised a gloved hand to the trio.

“Hi,” I said cheerfully as I reached the bench. “Cold night, isn’t it?”
No one responded. Not one even turned to acknowledge me.

I furrowed my brow.

The old woman, the closest, appeared kindly and warm. Grandchildren in the double-digits likely waited for her at home. A kerchief was wrapped around her gray-haired head. Her muddy eyes were slightly sunken, as if a deep sleepiness had crept up on her in her old age. Her wrinkled face – gnarled like a tree – hid years of laughter. Her fingers were knitting an invisible scarf.

Gently, I poked her in the left arm.

Nothing.

'Is she ignoring me?'

With adamant determination, I strode before the trio.

Their eyes flashed and suddenly I had six gleaming eyeballs peering at me intently from their sullen sockets.

“Cold night, huh?” I repeated with a forced smile.

“You got that right,” the pensive young man said, offering me a lopsided grin and lowering my guard. “Cold as hell.”

My smile widened.

The 40-ish businessman sitting in the middle, precise and professional in his suit-and-celadon-tie getup, twisted his lips. He seemed to be waiting anxiously for a miracle. His right hand was stuffed into his jacket pocket, rubbing an unseen something.

“More likely than not, it’ll get colder b’fore it gets warmer,” the grandmother muttered, slipping a slender cigarette from her coat and lighting it impatiently. The smoke hung above the trio like a cloud of sloppy halos.

I winced.

“Lotsa talk about a storm, seein’ how cold it is,” the woman continued, pausing to drag a few puffs as she spoke. “I s’pose it’s for the best, though.”

My eyes were beginning to tear up from the smoke.

The teenager, seeing my discomfort, leaned over and gave Granny a frown.

She frowned back fiercely.

“Y’know,” I interjected, trying not to choke. “Those things can kill you.”

Uproarious laughter echoed throughout the platform. Even the stiff businessman snickered a bit.

The granny smiled and looked at the concrete floor with amusement.

“It doesn’t matter to me much, not for someone in my condition, at least,” she said softly. “But if it bothers you, hon – ” She extinguished the cigarette on the wall, leaving a smudge of ash.

I thanked her and waved away the remaining smoke enthusiastically.

“So, are you waiting for someone? Take a seat,” the young man told me, patting the vacancy on his right.

I hesitated.

'Kate.'

I gave him an anxious smile. A nervous cough escaped my lungs, and I sheepishly denied his invitation.

“Yeah,” I murmured, scratching my head for an idea. “My fiancé Kate. She and I had a date tonight.” I stopped. “Have a date,” I corrected myself. “I mean, we have a date tonight at our favorite restaurant. I was going to drive, but – ”
Shrugging, I surveyed my surroundings. “ – I guess we decided to go with the subway.”

A sinking feeling nagged at me, but I shook it off.

“Oh, Kate, is it? Good-looking girl?” the young man asked, eager for conversation. I raised an eyebrow, then smiled again at his youthful exuberance.

He grinned back.

‘Good looking’ was an understatement. Kate was everything to me: her auburn hair, her disarming smile, her captivating figure.

I closed my eyes for a moment.

“Were you gonna get married?”

I opened my eyes.

It had been the old woman who spoke. Her voice rang with innocence and warmth, but the words were cold and biting. I was a bit insulted.

“When are we getting married?” I reproved. “In the spring. March 25th.”

The old woman turned away.

I shifted my stance, my feet growing tired.

The subway platform seemed to get colder for a moment.

Granny started her imaginary knitting again.

“Hey,” the young man said to break the dead silence. “You didn’t happen to catch the final score of the game tonight, did you? I was going to check it myself, but well – ”

He trailed off.

Shaking my head, I turned to him, trying to put the old woman away.

“No. Sorry. I don’t follow sports much.”

“It’s alright, I guess,” he murmured.

“You a sports person?” I asked suddenly.

He shrugged sheepishly.

“You mean, do I play? Naw.”

He flexed his biceps and then laughed.

“I’ve never been too great at sports. I’m more of a musical person.”

He paused as if preparing a speech.

“You know, they say that you’re either musical or sports-savvy. There’s no in-between.”

I nodded.

“I guess so.”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “Music is more of my thing.”

The subway station crawled with ice. I shivered involuntarily and clutched at myself, holding in my body heat with greed. The platform felt sterile and dead, the spotless concrete our sepulcher.

The teenager smiled absently, staring at the empty subway tunnel, apathetic in his countenance. His cloud-gray eyes were glossy.

“So, you like music, huh?” I questioned to fill the time.

He nodded.

“What kind of stuff do you listen to?” I pressed.

The teenager leaned back against the wall and grinned slightly.

“All sorts of stuff, man,” he admitted offhandedly with a broad spread of his gloveless hands. “I dunno. I like to keep my options open. What’s good is good, right?”

He pondered for a moment.

“I’m not really set – ”

He slashed his hands downwards.

“ – in one style, you know?”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.”

I rubbed my forearms briskly, appearing to the trio like a shivering, helpless nudist stuck in the middle of a Russian winter.

“Do you play an instrument?” I asked in a shudder-ridden voice.

He let his breath hiss out from between his teeth.

“Well, sorta. Guitar. I’ve only been playing for a couple of months. I’m not very good.”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Hey, at least you’re trying. I was never good enough for those sorts of things. Music, that is. It takes practice,” I told the young man confidently, thinking back on my high-school days.

‘It takes practice’. I had heard the phrase over and over before. I suppose I repeated it to the teenager more out of glee than necessity, sort of how high-society types enjoy slipping colorful words into a conversation without warning, words such as obfuscate and degenerative.

Did I believe him about the guitar? Sure. Why not?

I repeated the mantra to myself with a hoarse whisper.

“It takes practice.”

The businessman bit his bottom lip.

The teenager returned my shrug indifferently. He did not seem to hear me, considering how he simply stared off into the big black nothingness that was our beloved subway tunnel. A train was bound to come soon.
What’s taking her so long? I grumbled silently, shooting a glance towards the platform door for any sign of my fiancé.

The menacing silence was harsh – harsh because it was neither peaceful nor calm, but restless. It was not the sort of cozy silence that you met next to a fireplace among friends and family, the sort of awkward silence that was quickly replaced by an impromptu joke or laugh.

No. It discouraged conversation. The cold was its bride, so to speak. The two – the dead silence and the piercing cold – danced in unison around our bodies merrily.
A dull roar came from the subway tunnel. I turned to see the teenager smile grimly. My pulse quickened, but only by a slight margin.

First, the roar came as a subtle whisper, gently coaxing us into the false notion that the sound was hospitable; then, a low voice; then, a yell; then, a scream. All at once, my world of sound gave way to a swirling cacophony of fierce violence. The platform filled with a howling that deafened the four of us and knocked our numb brains onto the frigid concrete beneath our anxious feet. A streak of light rocketed out of the archway and into the lonely station. The faces of those riding on the speeding train blurred, almost ghostlike in their arrival and departure.

The whipping winds, the blaring lights, the clack-clack clack-clack of the metal wheels against the electrified track assaulted my senses. I closed my eyes to shield myself.

Then, quickly as it came, the chaos was gone, shooting into the opposite archway with mechanical fervor. My body was in the grip of ice, and only slowly did a disappointed sigh heave through my lungs as I realized the train was not for me.

The sounds and lights faded as I gathered my wits.

My heartbeat was racing.

The businessman nervously thumbed the thing in his pocket with renewed agitation. I conjectured that perhaps he was waiting for a call from his boss on the cell phone in his pocket.

He stared at the patch of cement several feet behind me, looking through my body as if it was not there. Beads of sweat freckled his worried brow. He clenched his teeth.

“Heh,” the teenager laughed with nonchalance. “Guess it’s not time yet.”

I brought my wrist upwards to check my watch.

'9:43.'

“Kate should have been here by now,” I complained to no one in particular.

“Things don’t always go as we e’spect, hon.”

“No, but she isn’t usually late like this,” I snapped.

She cocked her head curiously.


“You got any family?” she asked in her oddly-sweet voice.

“Me? You mean kids? No – ”

I stuttered.

“ – No, no. No. No, kids.”

I gulped away the lump in my throat.

“Someday – maybe. Someday, Kate and I might have a few, but that won’t be for a while.”

My cheeks flushed with warmth – maybe from the cold, maybe from Granny’s question.

“Why do you ask?”

“Oh, no reason, hon. No reason.”

She resumed her finger-knitting.

An ashen look taking him, the businessman opened his mouth slowly. His voice broke like the creaking of an old rusty gate, thick with despair and regret. His eyes were glossy as if some horror flashed before him.

“I – ”

His lips stopped and left him in a sorrowful trance.

“I had kids,” he gasped suddenly, and then he fell silent once again.

Divorced? Likely. The top-floor getup he had showed that he was more concerned about the weekly report than the tiny smiling faces that cooed his fatherly title once he returned home each night, if he – in fact – actually did, which I also doubted.

Several moments marched by. The encroaching cold nibbled at my ears and at my nose. A fluorescent bulb above my head flickered madly. I rubbed my gloved hands together, trying to conjure up some semblance of warmth, hoping that my fiancé would arrive, hoping that the train would arrive.

I tapped my foot impatiently. Gradually, as I waited in the silence, the sinking feeling returned. It was a mix of aggravation, anguish, and hopelessness. I tried to shake it off, but it would not leave, It spread through my veins like a poison. Worse yet, I could not pin the source. Was it Kate’s absence? Was it something else?
My chest tightened. My vision blurred, and – for an instant – the subway platform felt like something out of a dream: distorted, distant, odd. I was not supposed to be here. I was supposed to be with Kate.

Where was she?

My gloves were not enough to keep my hands warm.

My head swam with confusion and disorientation.

Years passed as I waited in the silence.

Years or seconds.

I was not quite sure. The throbbing pain in my head screamed like a banshee. Flash after flash after flash after flash of fire shot through my nerves. My mouth opened and closed. I could not discern if I spoke or not.

“Hey.”

I snapped my eyes open.

The pain and noise vanished.

“You alright, man?” the young man asked with concern.

I rubbed my temple with a finger.

“You alright?” he asked again.

“Yeah, yeah,” I assured him.

The cold had overwhelmed my body. I rubbed my hands to no avail.

“Cold?”

I nodded.

“Me too. Cold as hell, here.”

I hopped up and down idly, trying to keep the bloodflow going.

“Is the train going to come soon?”

He stuffed his gloveless hands into his ragged jacket.

“Not sure. We’ve still got time, I guess.”

I grumbled, glancing at the dark tunnel and waiting for another silver streak to come out from it.

“Well, as long as Kate is here when it comes, I guess I’ll be okay.”

He grimaced.

Another long silence dragged on. The old woman occupied herself with the imaginary finger-knitting. I laughed to myself, wondering if she wanted a scarf for the cold but had forgotten the necessary thread and needle. Her left hand seemed limp. Perhaps it was only numb from the frigid air. She moved her lips, silently continuing a conversation with herself. Her glossy eyes were fixed on a far-off location, or maybe she was watching TV. The wrinkles in her face pressed deeper as worried discomfort seeped into her bones. Hunching over, she twisted her hands passionately – right hand moving deftly, left hand only twitching, almost lifeless.
Her lonely stare unsettled me.

The businessman had stopped sweating. Good thing, too. He would have frozen to death from the cold. He had even taken the hand out of his pocket and carefully rested it atop the other in his lap. He was mumbling something to himself. His right hand was clenched around an invisible cell phone, or perhaps a palm pilot. I couldn’t tell.

'That is what happens,' I thought with conviction, 'when you work too hard.'

I turned away from him and began talking with the friendly teenager again. I had lost all feeling in my legs from standing up so long, but I refrained from sitting down, eager to embrace Kate the moment she entered the platform.

“Anyways,” I said, casually striking up conversation. “Do you have classes downtown or something? Is that why you’re here?”

The young man blinked. I was a ghost to him, and he stared at me blankly for several seconds. Finally, snapped back to reality.

“Wh-what?” came his response.

“What are you here for?”

“M-me?”

He stuttered.

“I was – I was at a party. I – ”

He froze. Some winter deity had pressed the ‘Pause’ button. His mouth hung open. His eyes looked forwards, wide and terrified. The word caught in his throat. He met my confused expression with more fear.

Something died there. His happiness died, perhaps. I don’t know.

But I felt the death. I watched it happen. Something in him broke free, something that he did not want wandering hand-in-hand with his emotions.

“I-I-I – ” he repeatedly gurgled.

My heartbeat grew very loud and time stilled. I waited for the endless string of I’s to turn into something. I was frozen too, waiting, waiting for the words to come. My subtle frustration and pity turned into a fathomless sadness.

He slowly shook his head back and forth, his eyebrows tightening and his jaw clenching into a firm cage of offset teeth. His flushed cheeks paled and the edges of his eyes began to glisten. He fiercely held back the tears.

My heart fell. As his countenance changed, so did mine. I wanted to cry. I did not even know this boy’s name and I wanted to cry. I stood before him, dumbfounded. I could not move. The cold snaked through the expanse between our bodies.
I wanted to embrace him like a long-lost son, to hug him close, to kiss the side of his face and tell him that he was loved.

But I was paralyzed.

My bottom lips quavered.

Suddenly, the world disappeared. The old woman, the businessman, the subway station, the icy roads outside, even Kate disappeared. This boy was the only person who mattered.

I was trembling. My heart pumped hot blood through my body. My ears tingled, desperately expecting his voice as he struggled and stuttered and stumbled for the words he craved.

I tried to raise my gloved hands to touch him, but I could not muster up the strength.

The drip, drip, drip echoed in my ears.

Our eyes met. I gazed into his youthful cloud-grays. Those pretty globes looked back at me with regret, with anger, with innocence, and with an overwhelming sense of fear. The fear swept over and through me like a wave, like the cold that had conquered this subway station. I could feel his loneliness, his need to be loved.
Did someone love him? Did he have a family to hug him and a home to cherish? Did he have friends? Had he met a girl yet? He wasn’t any more than five years younger than me. Had he kissed her yet? Would they get married, like Kate and me? Had he saved himself for her? Did he love her?

I wanted to turn away out of shame. There was so much filth I had kept inside.

Could he know? Could he understand? Could he understand how selfish I was? Could he understand the false bravery that covered up my cowardice? Could he understand why I cheated on Kate all those times and never told her? Could he understand my hate? My fear?

His eyes burned with anguish. My heart twisted with pain and sorrow. I yearned to hug him, to tell him everything would be okay, and then have him tell me the same. I wanted brotherhood with this boy. I wanted love.

I didn’t understand the emotion spilling his face. I was so sad, but so fulfilled. My heart felt warm, warm, warmer than ever before.

Our emotions smoldered until he was able to find his words. He broke his gaze from mine, looking at the floor with shame.

'No. No shame,' I wanted to tell him.

He finally spoke after several moments of painful silence in a jilted dialogue.

“I O.D.’d., okay? I took – I took only what the guy told me. Only what he told me. Not a bit more.”

He wiped his sniffling nose on his sleeve.

“We were all at a party, so what was the harm in taking a few hits, you know? I mean, nothing’s wrong with that, right?”

His voice was trembling.

“I-I kept telling myself ‘It’ll be okay’.”

He shook violently. He stared at me and began to cry again, softly whimpering, “It wasn’t my fault.”

I looked at him, confused. Then, reality sunk in, and I refused to believe him, even as his lips turned a pretty shade of blue, even as his cloud-grays assumed a lifeless gloss.

He was lying.

Words spilled out of my mouth – words of horror, words of disbelief.

“W-what happened to you?”

My finger pointed – shaking – at the businessman.

He stayed silent.

The teenager glared at me, tears settling in the rims of his eyes, and raised his thumb and forefinger to the side of his head like a pistol, then let loose a dramatic ‘Pssshheeeeew!’

I looked down at the businessman’s lap. It was not a cell phone or a palm pilot he held.

It was a gun, a ghostly, black-handled gun.

Drilled into his right temple was a clean little bullet hole.

The subway station grew colder. My bones turned to ice. I could not talk.

Her voice cooing, Granny spoke up.

“The doctors said I still had some time. They said that the heart surgery would last me awhilonger.”

She smiled grimly.

'No. No. No!'

My mind raced. They were lying, all of them. They were crazy. This couldn’t be right. There was no way this could be real.

I backed away from them, the entire leprous lot of them. The cold closed in around me like a prison. My breath huffed in and out of my lungs fervently, and yet no fog came from my mouth as I exhaled.

'Kate. I have to find Kate.'

I looked at my watch, and my world crumbled.

'9:43.'

A loud whirring filled my ears. The subway station was spinning; headlights filled my vision; horns honking; snow falling gently; brakes failed to catch the icy asphalt; spinning; spinning; something hit my car head-on; everything became a snowglobe of broken glass, broken metal, broken bone; swirling; spinning; swirling; Kate screaming from the passenger side.

Dying.

My mind returned to the frigid station. I raised a fearful hand to my forehead.

Blood.

'How? How can this be?'

“Do you believe in God?” the old woman asked peacefully.

The words refused to leave my lips. I could not respond.

“No matter,” she dismissed with the wave of a hand, seeing my simple plight. “Whoever He is, we’ll all get a chance to meet Him now.”

I stared at her, the color draining from my face.

'How could I be dead? I had a life, a fiancé! How could God take it all away? Is there even a God? Why would He let this happen to me?'

A door opened and closed on the opposite end of the subway platform. The shape was distant, but I could see her auburn hair and her captivating figure. My heart stopped. It just stopped pumping. I could not breathe.

She approached.

'No! No! Please, God! No! Don’t let her die. Don’t let her die, please!'

I begged and begged and begged with no voice to the empty air.

She was just as I remembered her: that brown overcoat I bought her last Christmas, her intoxicating perfume, her small mouth, her curious eyes. She was fingering a delicate gold cross that hung from a necklace around her shapely neck.

She was so beautiful.

Somehow, she was calm.

I was ashamed to look at her, ashamed to call her my own. Standing next to me, she took my hand in hers. I could hardly feel the touch of her fingers – it was so cold. I was overwhelmed, overpowered, consumed by her presence.

'How can she love me?'

My chest was full of magnificent speeches and poems that I wanted to tell her, but I was so afraid.

“Kate,” I said weakly.

“Yes?” Her voice did not waver.

My eyes let loose a brief tear, and we turned towards each other.

“I-I don’t want to die. I’m not ready to – to die,” I cried, unable to contain the terrible sinking fear that had gripped me.

She smiled softly, letting go of the gold cross and brushing the stray hair out of my eyes.

“I am,” she said boldly. "It's okay. I-I don't understand why it was my time, but it's okay."

Confused, I looked into her sky-blue eyes. She was at peace. She wasn’t afraid. I didn’t understand it. I never understood it – not in life, not in death. She rested her head against my arm and she sighed softly as we waited for the train to come.
I wanted her, but I was repulsed by her. How could she be so calm? Even with the spark of life snuffed out, she still maintained her calm, carefree demeanor. Part of me wanted to stay by her side, but part of me wanted to flee back up those stairs, to run.

But I could not.

An awful screech – the screech of metal wheels against rail – echoed from the tunnel. A bright light poured from the archway. Slowly inching forward, a hulking steel beast came from the archway and stopped its doors between the two huge pillars, hissing and wailing its eternal purpose.

I gripped Kate’s hand tighter. The squealing tires of my car before the impact rattled in my ears.

I could hear the teenager behind me sobbing at the approach of our demise, but I did not turn to comfort him. I simply stared ahead and waited for the doors to open.
They slid aside after a few moments. A tall man stepped out. A yawn burst from his mouth as he wordlessly ushered us toward the doors. He appeared to be incredibly bored.

Finally, he spoke – no, not in a booming tone that rung through the station.

“Tickets, please,” he asked with a soft southern drawl.

The old woman did not hesitate. She was the first to get her ticket out, procuring it from her right pocket with reverence. She handed it to the tall ferryman and stepped onto the subway train.

She smiled at me.

“It was my time, hon,” she said in her oddly-sweet voice.

The tall man peered at the ticket.

“Heart failure,” he muttered. “Seein’ a lot of that nowadays.”

He paused, carefully tucking the ticket into a fold of his belt.

“Next,” the ferryman droned.

No one moved.

The tall man – agitated – pointed a slender, crooked finger at the teenager.

“Ticket,” he judged.

The teenager stepped forward. Terror was scrawled across his face. He did not want to go, but something irresistible in the tall man’s voice compelled the young man to obey. He dug into the deep recesses of his pocket until he came back with a slightly-wrinkled ticket. He cried as he handed it to the ferryman, and then joined Granny on the subway, finding a seat and collapsing into it with fear and regret.

The businessman did not even look up as he shamefully handed his ticket to the tall man. The ferryman shook his head sadly as the man passes by.

“You’ve ruined a lot of people’s lives tonight with what you did, mister,” he accused.

My heart pounded frantically.

I did not want to die. I thought of the life that waited for me on the other side of that platform door. I thought of my holiday bonus – how I planned to spend the money. I thought of calling Dad for the first time in eight years.

My bottom lip quivered.

I remembered the feel of Kate’s hand in mine, her warmth, her smile. I remembered a long, sunset-lit walk on a sandy beach, just like in the movies. I remembered a warm hug. I remembered how my courage wavered as I dropped to one knee and slipped a ring onto her slender finger. I remembered our kiss.

'It’s not my time!' I screamed, but the words stayed bottled inside.

Kate was next. She squeezed my hand before she released it, and then pulled the ticket from her coat. The ferryman smiled with kindness as she handed him the scrap of paper. She embraced me.

I held her.

We hugged for an eternity, and then for a bit more.

I did not want to let her go.

Finally, we parted reluctantly. Stepping onto the train, she turned to me and urged me to follow. Her eyes were full of longing. I watched her go, and my heartbeat failed. All at once, I wanted to hold her again. She was everything to me. The few moments apart were too long.

It was my turn, and I wanted to hurry to her side.

“Ticket, please.”

I nodded solemnly. Reaching into my pant pockets, then into my coat pockets, I searched just as the others had.

Nothing.

Kate was begging me to hold her again, to join her on that silver subway train. Her soft smile faded slowly as I desperately searched myself.

“Just a second, Kate,” I assured her. “Just need to – heh – find my – my ticket.”
I was trying hard to stay calm, to not break down and weep. It felt like being lost in the mall at age five: afraid, alone, confused. My breath was short and anxious. No matter how hard or furious my search became, though, I found no ticket. Suddenly, my pleas for life turned to pleas for death. I could not go on without Kate. I could not leave her.

I clenched my teeth.

'The ticket! Where is the ticket?'

Never before had there been a man such as I: a man on the doorstep of heaven, shunning life – no, not only shunning life, but craving death – for the sake of his love. The annals of history would not remember my struggle. The pens of poets would never honor me.

And yet, I strove. I strove to die, to die for Kate.

'Kate.'

There was no ticket for me.

“No ticket?” the ferryman asked coldly.

I patted myself, groped each pocket, and explored each fold of my clothing.

Nothing.

“I-I know it’s here!”

Kate’s eyes began to fill with tears.

'Let me die! Let me die and go with her! I begged God. Please, let me die with her!'

The ferryman shrugged.

“Look,” he explained. “If you ain’t got no ticket, you don’t ride. Things like this happen from time to time. Some folks come here without a ticket, and I gotta send ‘em back the way they came. Your time ain’t up yet.”

He smiled at me.

I trembled.

“No. No, you don’t understand,” I argued. “I need to go with her.”

I jabbed a finger at Kate.

He shook his head.

“Sorry. Ain’t the way it works.”

Kate looked at me. I met her mournful eyes with my own. My chest felt as if it was going to explode. I felt miserable and alive. The cold silence of the station only amplified the blood rushing though my ears.

Unclasping the gold cross about her neck, Kate gently placed it in my outstretched palm, silently smiling at me and closing my hand around the necklace. She knew that this was goodbye. She knew that I was not ready to let her go.

She retreated back through the doors.

The ferryman spun and entered the subway train, the door sliding shut mechanically on all of my desperation and hope and fear and desire. Warmth flushed my cheeks. My lungs puffed the cold air as I cried and sobbed. Kate was strong. She didn’t cry. As the train began to pull away – that eternal, terrible train – I saw her lip the words ‘I love you’ through the window. I clutched that little gold cross like an idol.

She was so beautiful.

As her face disappeared into the darkness of the archway, as her ghost left that sad and lonely subway platform, I felt my body being wrenched from the twisted wreck of my car – gentle snowflakes falling around me and the paramedics, gentle ‘I love you’s ringing in my ears. I slipped back into the arms of life, the warm snow falling all around me.




-B-