STRANGER
I
The first time I saw him was July thirty-first. Dressed in a powder-blue pantsuit with a Guess bag glued to my hand, I was quickly outgrowing nineteen, haughtily noting that I was “almost twenty” to anyone that dared to ask. What they didn’t know--and what I was in denial about myself--was that my birthday wasn’t until fall, my last three months of teengedom masked Estee Lauder and a set of vintage pearls. I’d been perfecting the art of pretending I was grown since I graduated high school, and by the summer of ‘91 I’d stopped dating anyone younger than me to compensate for my girlish looks. My Nana said I’d attract the “good ones” that way.
My memory of The Man is hazy. It was early morning--eight a.m.-- and I was mentally preparing for an obstreperous day at work. With board rooms to buff, clients to greet, and a slew of overnight voicemails, playing Sherlock on the train wasn’t exactly a pastime of mine. In just that afternoon alone, Knix had a two-hour business lunch and our biggest sponsor was coming in to meet the head of sales. I could recall my anxiety clearly.
As for The Man, I remember him stumbling onto the train with a half-empty tumbler and a battered snakeskin briefcase, his left hand mummified in a slipshod bandage secured by a piece of tape. He got off at the Kedzie stop, sluicing through the throng of commuters, one of the only faces in the crowd that wasn’t weighed with fatigue. Other than that, he was just another stranger-- someone I saw on my way to the office. Someone with places to go and people to see, a glaring sun attracting the orbits of a thousand other strangers whose lives I’d never breach, an intricate microcosm invisible to the wandering eye.
I got off at McCormick Place and power-walked to Knix & Marx, my Discman buzzing with the blare of Paula Abdul while my heels clicked on the sidewalk. By the time I reached my desk I’d completely forgotten about The Man, and frankly, anyone else from that morning. I vaguely remember a fight breaking out over priority seating, but I was too preoccupied with the luncheon seating arrangement to gape and gawk and point my finger.
II
The next time I saw him was in the middle of August. It was dark outside--which meant it was past nine-- and I was returning from a stood-up date. The man I was scheduled to meet with left me deflated for hours on a diner barstool, ringing my cell to let me know he was stuck in traffic but would only be ten minutes behind. My naivete let ten turn into twenty, and twenty into forty-five, killing time by throwing back shots of tequila until my stomach ached with erosion.
There were five other bodies in the train car. The bandage on The Man’s hand had been removed-- I noticed this as I watched him grip the handrail. His blistering skin caught the sickly chartreuse glow of the overhead lights. I tried my best not to gawk, but the morbid allure of seeing something in a state not-quite-right gave my eyes a mind of their own.
He also had no briefcase this time. Not a backpack or a satchel, either. It was just The Man, his snakeskin hand, and a pair of eyes that swirled like roiling folds of black lagoon water. I pegged him to be between thirty and thirty-five, allowing myself a generous gap to account for how the stark incandescence deepended every wrinkle in his face. I was also near inebriated, which meant everything felt more exaggerated.
He got off after two stops with a rather hurried pace. As I sat slumped in my chair, lacquered eyes slick with a drunken sheen, I wondered how low the chances were for me to see the same passenger two times in a month. The vastness of the city, teeming with millions of faces with jobs to work and friends to see, made the odds seem fairly slim despite many people commuting the same route everyday. Ultimately, I concluded, what made my interaction with The Man so haunting was that we ran into each other after hours. It felt intrusive-- voyeuristic even-- to see a sliver of someone’s life I was likely never meant to see.
As I waited for the following stop, I pressed my feet into the dirty prints standing in The Man’s wake. It was soft loam from the looks of it, dark brown and speckled with sprinkles of white-- perhaps remnants from a garden bed. Based on the outline they formed, the shoes he was wearing were angular, likely Oxfords or Brogues, arching wide at the bottom but coming to a triangular head. My feet, so tiny and nestled in dainty heels, looked almost comical standing inside his own.
THIS IS PULASKI. DOORS OPEN ON THE LEFT. THE GREEN LINE TRAIN RUNS FROM OAK PARK TO ASHLAND. TRANSFER TO THE PINK LINE AT GRAND.
Still damp, the dirt clung to the soles of my Jimmy Choos as I took my leave at the Pulaski stop, bringing the ghost of The Man’s elusive travels home with me and into my closet. As I trudged home all alone, cardigan wrapped around my chest like a straitjacket, I caught a glimpse of a missing poster plastered to a lamppost. The woman’s face was wan and translucent in the milky glow of the moon, fuzzy even to the keenest eye. Her photo was blown up to the point where she looked like everyone else, not a distinguishing feature available, the amalgamation of every other white twenty-something rolled into a pixelated mess. Her glare followed me as I passed, envious of my sanctuary ahead.
As I reached for the keys to my apartment, I briefly mused over someone leaping out from the velvety darkness and plucking me out of existence, and how poetic such an otherwise heinous act would’ve been given the circumstances.
III
We exchanged words the third time I saw him. It was daytime again-- the first Sunday in September-- and I was on my way to have brunch with my Nana. The train car was swarming with midmorning passengers, each head a balloon seconds away from popping from atmospheric pressure, all buzzing and agog with excitement. Tensions rose as more people piled in, and suddenly I felt lucky to be one of the few sitting down. Bodies loomed over me like perspiring redwoods as they hugged support railings with tightened fists, and I couldn’t help but think of the thousands of germs that were transferring onto their palms.
This thought is how I noticed The Man once again: as we pulled away from a train stop (whose name was submerged by the boisterous crowd) I noticed a glove latching onto the pole right above my head. Attached to the noir-film fingers was none other than my serendipitous partner, all dressed up in a pair of black slacks with a slate-grey top to match. His hair was slicked back with what looked like half a bottle of gel, so hardened and stiff it probably wouldn’t have moved in the eye of a hurricane.
“Smart move.” I told him from below. I don’t know where my sudden boldness came from. The Man peered down at me with a gangly smile, picket-fence teeth oddly vampiric.
“Pardon?”
“I said smart move.” I tried again. “Y’know, to wear gloves on the train. That way you can’t get germs on your hands, and you can pick your teeth or touch your eye without catching a disease. I’ve never seen that before. I think I might start doing it.”
“Oh.” The Man’s voice was much deeper than I was expecting. It tore through me like a gust of winter wind, and despite the insufferable heat of the train car, sent a frosted shiver down my spine. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
As we whizzed into the underground, I suddenly felt fatuous sitting there with a dopey expression on my face. The air was packed with muffled discourse, each one competing for dominance, talks of business deals and dinner plans, stock prices and yoga classes-- and here I was complimenting a stranger on his fashion choices. How dumb I was to think my meek attempt at conversation would do anything but fizzle out like a faulty firework. I suddenly wished I was on another train car.
“Say,” The Man cleared his throat after a long bout of silence. I felt his heavy gaze on shoulders like a woolen coat. “Not to be too forward, but haven't I seen you before? Your face is oddly familiar.”
“Uh, maybe. I take this train every day for work.”
“Aha!” He lit up like a spark plug. “You’re the one with the big-city office job! You always wear a powder-blue suit.”
“Do I?” I questioned. “I don’t remember that being such a staple in my wardrobe. I mean, I guess I’ve worn it a couple times this month, but…how do you know I’ve got an office job?”
As I looked up to meet gaze, I discovered that the body next to me was now the corpulent mass of a diabetic woman. She was toying with the insulin monitor strapped to her inner forearm. In the brief moment I submerged into recollection, The Man had disappeared like a rabbit in a magic act. For an even briefer moment, I contemplated if I’d even seen him in the first place.
IV
Our penultimate encounter was September 29th. I know because I was on my way home from my Nana’s 80th birthday party-- we’d just finished dinner and drinks at her favorite restaurant downtown. I was coming off my third mojito as I boarded the train, miniskirt askew and jewelry entangled. Clutching at my locket and various chains was a nervous fixation I had, and walking to the station under a moonless sky was nothing short of petrifying.
I was hoping the comfort of the Green line’s fluorescence would coax me into comfort, but I felt even less at ease standing at the rail. A man in his thirties with mosaic skin was sleeping in the seat next to me, tattoos creeping down his calves and all the way up to his neck. It almost looked like patterned poison ivy that was spreading like a rash.
“Sorry,” I muttered as I bumped into him. The man awoke with a hold and knocked loose a name tag reading RAMOS. He scrambled to the floor to go catch it.
But apart from my new friend, there was nobody else in the train car. At least, that’s what I thought until I saw the skyscraper shadow hidden by the door.
The Man slithering into view like a black-and-white film reel, all dressed up in navy tweed and a pair of workman’s boots. He approached me with an auspicious gait--both hands tucked in his pockets and spindly legs striding wide.
“Good evening, little miss powder suit.” He said, tipping his hat in my direction. “Have a big outing tonight? You look like you’re dressed to the nines.”
“It’s for my Nana’s birthday party.” I explained. I wanted to keep my words deliberately short. The less he knew, the better. “She’s turning 80 today.”
“Sounds fun. So where’re you headed now?”
I felt those eyes again-- black like dominos but speckled with light-- come down on me like a tropical tempest. They were heavy, suffocating, hauntingly vacant, and most importantly, relentlessly prying. I wanted nothing more than to fling myself onto the tracks, if only to get away for a moment.
“Home.” I choked out. I was struggling to maintain my composure. “I’m on my way home. I’m tired and it’s nearly midnight.”
“Home? But it’s a Saturday.” The Man countered. “For kids like you, the night is still young. When I was your age--”
“I’m not a kid.” I shot back, teeth clenched into daggers. “I’m twenty-one.”
“Sorry.” The Man backed off, recoiling into his jacket. “I didn’t mean to strike a nerve.”
Feeling like a picked-to-nothing carcass, I turned my attention to Ramos. To my dismay he’d fallen into another coma of sleep, chest rising and falling like tides on a shore, blissfully unaware of the tension around him. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I clung to the hope that he’d wake up and swoop in to save me.
The Man had gotten closer. He took a step forward in the time I looked away. I could see dead veins running under his eyes like twisted pitchforks, almost sinewy in nature. There was a stain on his navy jacket whose color I couldn’t make out.
“Please, and I mean this with all due respect, please just leave me alone.” I warned, inching closer to the exit. Regardless of what the next stop was, I knew that I had to get off.
THIS IS ASHLAND. DOORS OPEN ON THE RIGHT AT ASHLAND.
As soon as the train car came to a stop, I grabbed my bag and whirled onto the platform with tsuamic force. Head spinning like a top, I fastened the strap of my purse and began to bolt for the exit doors. I heard the whiz of the Green line make its way towards California, sending ribbons of wind fluttering through my hair. I took a moment to look down. Both shoes were untied and my stockings were sagging at my ankles. Anyone unlucky enough to spot me at this hour would’ve thought I was a hooker coming home from a brothel. I had to make sure I had enough cash to call for a taxi home-- walking would simply be dangerous.
V
As I fumbled in my bag to fish out my wallet, I heard a pitter-patter behind me. There was The Man, looming over me in black, tweed swallowing in frame. I watched in horror as he unbuttoned his coat, revealing a horribly stained white shirt. He outstretched his hand like a priest handing me communion.
“Looking for this?” He asked, unfurling his wiry fingers. In his gloved palm was my leatherbound wallet, empty and stripped to the bone.
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