The summer humidity hadn’t yet reached the depths of the subway tunnels below the city as she sat, notebook in hand, scrawling notes about the early morning prisoners of transit. She hadn’t chosen the local trains today; no, she decided on the F train with its frequent comings and goings for today’s endeavors.
People watching.
Train surfing.
Documenting the fine art of human behaviors while they surfed the inconsistent wave of public transportation that others wanted to forget.
But not her.
She found the ebb and flow of bodies congregated on platforms, milling about on their cellphones, checking watches, and reading books, to eventually thrust forward with purpose once the train pulled to a squealing halt and the doors flung open in a woosh of stale air, oddly relaxing. Fortunately, she had nowhere to go, which added to the stress-lessness she felt as her pen flew across standard lines, fitting words between both, not so much worrying about writing in complete sentences as she was with getting movements accurately written down.
She turned a page, slowly at first, glancing about the just now emptied platform on the melodic clicks and clacks of tin-canned commuters. The garbled sound of the PA system caused her and the recent addition of a couple to tilt their ears, frown, shake their heads, and roll their eyes in complete unison because, well, no one knew the language of the underground. If she learned anything during her people-watching days, it is that true city-goers no longer reacted to the static distorted announcement because there was no point in even trying, so they tuned that out just as they did everything else save for their own needs at the time.
Which was smart on their part since the city was a breeding ground for everything noteworthy and mentionable.
She scribbled the last note she had when the PA announcer started back up, and a to-go coffee cup floating in her peripheral had her eyebrows raising at the indignation of personal space and head turning to see the kind amber eyes of her favorite person lopsidedly grinning at her.
How Hudson found her, she could hazard a guess, but since it was too early for free thought, she opened her mouth to ask but was waylaid by his phone showing her GPS location, to which she granted him a view of her rolled hazel eyes.
“They don’t work well when you’re on the train,” He let the explanation dangle as she took the cup so he could round the bench, look down at it with minor disgust before prissily perching on edge, “but I feel the knowledge went out alongside your sanitation know-how where New York City benches were involved.”
She stifled a chuckle.
“That I knew.” She said against the lip of the coffee cup before taking a sip. She sighed deeply, letting the warm elixir feel her with joy. “Why the surprise? Maybe I wanted to be alone.”
“Maybe I wanted company.” He settled into a slight hunch of his shoulders, leaning his elbows on his knees as he swung a look at me. “Madi, you’ve been sitting here for over an hour. Do you plan to take the train or just watch it pass you by?”
She only held her notebook up for him to quickly glance over her shorthand before he rolled his eyes slowly, which both annoyed and excited her. His appearance always meant an adventure she wouldn’t ever take by herself.
“Ah, so you’re judging silently, I see. Don’t you ever tire of note-taking?” He murmured, rubbing his hands together, probably wishing to scratch the side of his lip but lacking hand sanitizer to do so safely. The subway made him cringe, but he kept his cool when he forced himself into her calm presence because she loved the subway and all its griminess and grumpy patrons.
It wasn’t all black-and-white subway tiles and thick yellow “stand back for your safety” lines; it was much more than transit.
“Not really.” She looked past his handsome if always sullen, bearded face to the twelve-plus waiting for the next train to come through. “Uptown or downtown?”
“Downtown?” He perked up at the options, not noticeably to the untrained eye, but the light to his voice and subtle upward jut of his darker brows had her grinning.
“Dim sum?”
“Does that even have to be said? Of course, dim sum.” He looked at her then with lowered brows and a mischievous shine in his eyes. “As long as we get ice cream somewhere along the way.”
“It’s 8 am and you’re thinking about sweets?” The squeal of quickly approaching metal cued us to stand and move unperturbed to the edge of yellow on the platform. Everyone else followed suit, each in their own little world.
“Like my father isn’t the king and reigning champion of quadruple-stacked pancakes with everything sweet piled on top.” His hands went to his pockets; hers were busy with a coffee cup, and the other was sliding the notebook into her black backpack. She held it firmly to her side, by intuition, nothing of actual value inside, only tucked away in her person.
Trust no one; the darkness would whisper in the tunnels. You trusted your gut, which was about it, or the weather channel when bad weather was to be had. No one liked navigating flooded city tunnels once they got off work.
The whoosh of air brought on by a couple of metric tons of metal came to a clunky screeching halt and allowed them to duck in under the arms of those who rushed out. If you frequented the city or lived there full time, you always remember the rush of bodies, metal, air, and the hurry to one place or the other during time restraints.
The city slept, but only to the sounds of clicks, clacks, and the honking of impatient cabbie horns.