Subway Love

by Nora Raleigh Baskin

  And now that he had the password, all of his father’s e-mails — new, old, sent, and saved — were there for the viewing. And he had her name: Lorraine, otherwise known as SongCatcher@gmail.com. Each time he logged on, it was like a game Jonas was playing with himself not to get caught. It gave him an odd, thrilling beating of his heart. It reminded Jonas of playing hide-and-seek when he was little during summer vacations on Long Island. Someone would hide their eyes and count backward, while everyone else went running, terrified, looking for a place to hide, listening to their time running out.

  Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .

  Knowing he had willingly put himself in a position to be hunted down and caught, but hoping he wouldn’t be, Jonas would hide under a bush, or inside the shed of their summer rental, his heart pounding with fear and excitement.

  He was careful to clear his search history so his father wouldn’t see that someone had been in his e-mail. At first Jonas read only e-mails that his father had read, but the more he read, the more daring he got. He began reading e-mails his father hadn’t yet read, carefully highlighting “mark as unread” when he was finished and leaving everything as it was. His father would come home from work, kiss his mother, say hello to Jonas and Lily.

  “I’m just going to check my e-mails before dinner,” he said.

  Jonas watched as his dad put down his briefcase. He watched his calm, steady gait, like nothing was up, as if nothing were different, as he made his way into his bedroom, where he kept his laptop. Jonas kept his eyes down on his math book, or his novel, or his history notes, but his thoughts were focused on his father, on the e-mail Jonas had read earlier that day, on knowing something his father didn’t yet know. Knowing that he could have deleted the e-mail, that he could affect this secret relationship. He could even write back and tell Lorraine it was all over, then delete the sent mail.

  But he never did.

  What he did do, however, was print out the e-mails and hide them in his room, at the very back of his desk drawer, instead.

  “Let me try,” Nick said. “What’s the number again?”

  Jonas had it memorized by now, but Nick still had no luck. When they called the number Jonas had in his cell phone, they got some old lady who told them if they called again she would report them to the police. Other configurations yielded fax machine buzzes or other wrong numbers.

  “You must have heard wrong, then,” Nick tried.

  “Yeah, maybe. Or she’s dicking me around.” But somehow Jonas didn’t really believe that.

  LAURA couldn’t stop thinking about him, Jonas, the boy from the subway, and she was glad her brother hadn’t come to New York with her. She found herself staying inside, listening for the phone to ring.

  “We have to go out to eat,” her dad said. “Besides, you’ve been in all weekend.”

  “I can make us eggs,” Laura said.

  She and her dad ate in front of the television, which was another plus in coming to her dad’s, but the truth was, she didn’t know whether he had eggs in the fridge or not. She could eat cereal. Her dad bought the good kinds, Froot Loops and Sugar Frosted Flakes. In fact, it would be a dream to eat cereal for dinner and watch TV. That way if the phone rang, she’d be right here to answer it. Only it didn’t, other than a call from her father’s accountant and one wrong number.

  This Saturday night, Laura’s father watched All in the Family (Laura agreed to watch too if her dad promised to watch Bridget Loves Bernie afterward), and they had scrambled eggs with cheese, toast, and bacon. The same familiar sadness came over Laura afterward as she watched her dad doing the dishes. She missed him. He was standing right in front of her, and she missed him so terribly.

  When she was a little girl, if they went out someplace, she used to pretend to fall asleep in the backseat of their station wagon on the ride home. Mitchell got to sit up front, right in between their parents, looking out onto the road unfolding in front of them. There was a clear order: daddies drive, mommies sit next to them, oldest kid in front. If Daddy was at work and Mommy was driving, two kids could sit in front. It was a simple age rotation. So as long as Mitchell was alive and living at home, Laura was relegated to the backseat, but if she timed it right, she could look out the side window most of the ride, then settle down, stretch out across the seat, and close her eyes. By the time they got home, everyone thought she was fast asleep, and instead of waking her, her mom would instruct her dad to carry her up to bed.

  “Careful, Hank,” her mother would say. “Don’t wake her up.”

  And Laura would feel her daddy’s strong arms lifting her right out of the car and cradling her, just like when she was a baby. And even if she couldn’t actually remember what it felt like to be a baby, this felt good, so good. So safe, and weightless. Her daddy was the protector of the whole world.

  But now he looked so helpless and alone, laughing at Archie Bunker picking on his son-in-law. Laura could feel her heart breaking in two — two parts — one for her and one for him. He couldn’t protect her anymore. She was leaving in less than twelve hours. Sunday morning she’d be back on the bus to Kingston, and her mom would be waiting for her, maybe her mom and Bruce.

  After her father went to bed, Laura snuck out into the living room and called the operator.

  She cupped her hand over her mouth and the receiver. “I just wanted to check if this phone is working properly,” Laura whispered.

  “Why, yes it is, miss. Are you having trouble with your line?”

  “No, I mean, I just wanted to make sure it was working.”

  “It seems to be,” the voice said. “Are you all right, sweetheart?”

  “Yeah, I am.”

  The city noises, sirens and horns, were comforting. Lights moved across the ceiling as cars went by in the street.

  “How old are you?”

  “Fourteen,” Laura answered.

  “Are you home alone?”

  “No, my dad’s sleeping.” Then Laura had an impulse to tell this nice woman everything. I met this boy on the subway and I have no idea who he is but I gave him my number and he hasn’t called. I know that sounds stupid but I think he really wants to call me. I don’t know why he hasn’t. Now I’m leaving and I’m going back to my mom’s house where we live with her asshole boyfriend who sometimes hits me and while I’m mentioning it, my brother’s an asshole, too.

  But I really like this boy. He said his name is Jonas.

  But of course she didn’t say any of that.

  “Are you sure you’re all right, then? Your phone seems to be working just like it’s supposed to.”

  “Yeah, thanks.” Laura hung up.

  SPIKE has a real name, of course. It’s Max Lowenbein, but he sure wouldn’t tell anyone that. When he first started doing throw-ups, at ten, he used the tag Slug138. Then he was SuperKool for a while, but that was two years ago. It took him all winter to rack up enough spray paint for his piece, his masterpiece, a burner that would set the city on fire. Every writer, everyone who was anyone, would be talking about it, a full end-to-end train.

  He had been planning it for months, benching for hours to memorize the schedules, the routes, every train, every layup, even frequenting art museums and galleries, sketching it all in his notebook. No one had done a whole train before, at least not with style. Spike had been working to perfect his style, and replacing the spray-paint cap with the fatter nozzle from Niagara Spray Starch gave him just what he needed, wider surface coverage and less drippage. He knew in his heart that he was nearly ready. The secret to life is good timing. Timing is everything.

  Can’t wait too long. Can’t move too soon.

  He had done the Pink Panther car. That was a hit. Some other writers, some dope writers like Snake131 and Lil Hawk, were still talking about it. But not his masterpiece; no, his masterpiece was still to come.

  It had to be just right. It would take all night and he would need a crew. The secret to life is good timing, and good timing might require warmer weather
.

  IT was a month and a half before Laura returned to New York City again, to a rainy, cold January. There had been flurries when she left Kingston. Here it was freezing rain. Only a few people stood on the platform. Laura read the wall behind her while she waited. It was covered with graffiti, messages left in response to other messages, different handwriting, who knew how far apart in time.

  Beatniks are worthless.

  (and underneath)

  Your attitude is worthless.

  (underneath)

  Beatniks have been extinct since 1960. Where have you been?

  (underneath)

  Beat the draft.

  To beat is cool.

  To beat-cool is not to be beat.

  To beat-cool and not to be beat is nowhere.

  Laura wondered if it made sense to anyone. She only vaguely knew what Beatniks were, precursors to the hippies, the Beat Generation, underground and nonconformist. Laura wondered how long ago these messages had been written, if the people who wrote them ever came back to see the responses.

  She hadn’t stopped thinking about him, about Jonas, but she’d tried. She’d imagined so many stories, about how the boy had called her father’s apartment while she was away. She didn’t talk to her dad between visits, but in her fantasy he called their house in Woodstock, about some issue or another, and then casually mentioned that some boy had called looking for her.

  Jacob, Jeremy?

  Jonas?

  Yeah, that was it. He called and explained he had wanted to call over the weekend but had gotten run over by a taxi. . . . No, that was no good. . . . No matter what story she came up with, nothing really worked. If a boy wants to call you, he calls. So when Laura looked up and saw Jonas Goldman walking into the subway car, she was over him. Done. Finished. She lowered her eyes and hoped he hadn’t noticed that she had seen him.

  “Laura?”

  He said it again before she raised her head slightly.

  “I tried calling you and calling you. I think you gave me the wrong number.” He sat down right beside her. He was wearing an odd jacket, some strange kind of woolly material she had never seen before. He had no umbrella, but he was the only person on the train who wasn’t wet at all. Wrong number. Laura shifted away slightly. Her intuition was right; he was bad news, but then again, he looked so sweet, earnest, without guile.

  “I must have called a million times.”

  And he didn’t seem to mind looking eager. Most boys wouldn’t have admitted that. Unless he was lying, that is.

  “No, I didn’t give you the wrong number. I gave you my dad’s. You never called.”

  Laura realized that, to a degree, she had just given herself away — let him know that she had noticed he hadn’t called; she had been waiting, and she probably let him hear her disappointment.

  “I even checked my phone line,” Laura said. “About a hundred times.” She laughed. Somehow with this boy it didn’t matter.

  “Well, don’t you have a cell phone?”

  “What’s that?”

  Jonas made a face that Laura couldn’t interpret.

  “I guess you don’t,” he said. “Maybe I could just sit and talk to you? Wanna go to a Starbucks or something?”

  She didn’t want to do it again, look stupid, let on that she had no idea what he was talking about.

  Her mouth opened but nothing came out.

  “Coffee?” he asked.

  So she answered, “Sure.”

  IT was just too crazy. It wasn’t like everyone had poured out of the subway car and they’d simply lost track of each other in the throng. It was weirder than that. Jonas just disappeared. The doors opened. Jonas actually held out his arm to let Laura go first. She stepped onto the platform, sensing he was right behind her, and then sensing he wasn’t.

  She moved forward, away from the gap, out of the way of the crowd waiting to board, and he was gone. She turned around and no one was there.

  “I told you, I just got off at the wrong stop,” Laura told her mother Sunday night. Her mother was reading the paper under a single floor lamp. Laura was lying on the floor sharing the light, trying to read a book.

  As it turned out, her mom was at work when the phone call from New York came, and it was Bruce who spoke with Laura’s dad, and it was Bruce who had to walk into town to deliver the news to Laura’s mom. By the time they got back to the house and called her dad, Laura had been found.

  Bruce was working in the next room, at the dining-room table, where he had a large industrial sewing machine set up. He and Mitchell were planning on building a tepee as soon as the weather got a little warmer, somewhere up in the woods behind their house. Bruce had brought in heavy white canvas and special thick thread. For some reason, anything American Indian was groovy cool.

  “No, next time Mitchell will go with you. That was ridiculous. Your father was furious.”

  “No,” Laura blurted out.

  She didn’t want her brother to go. If Laura was ever to find Jonas again, she had to be alone. If she was ever going to figure out what had happened when they stepped off that train, Mitchell couldn’t be there. She knew that.

  Bruce looked up from his work. “I’m not going to walk all the way into town again because you don’t know which subway to take.” He put down his stitching.

  “I mean, I just made a mistake. I was fine.” Laura felt something rising up her spine, like an involuntary surge of electricity. Her muscles tightened.

  Mitchell would ruin everything. “I don’t want Mitchell to go.”

  Bruce stood up.

  Laura understood, as she had for a while, that it wasn’t pain she was afraid of. She had experienced much worse, a fall from her bike onto gravel, a nail that went right through the bottom of her Keds, that sliver of wood that wedged directly underneath her fingernail when she ran her hand down the railing.

  No, it wasn’t pain. It was the anticipation.

  It was fear, and it was fear that made her angry.

  Mitchell would pretend to be concentrating on his sewing, and their mother would keep her eyes focused on her newspaper. Bruce was walking closer.

  “If your mother wants Mitchell to go, he’ll go.” Bruce took his knee and thrust it against Laura’s thigh. It would leave a bruise for certain, but the impact didn’t make a sound.

  Finally, Laura had to tell someone. Not about Bruce. Not that. But about Jonas. She had to tell someone, and that someone was her best friend, Zan.

  Zan had moved to town right smack in the middle of the school year, seventh grade, the year after Jamie Stein moved away. The teacher introduced the new girl to the class as Alexandra Benoit.

  “It’s Zan,” the girl answered. “Not Alexandra.”

  “It says Alexandra.”

  “I prefer to be called Zan.”

  Laura sat back and watched, in awe of this skinny, orange-haired newcomer who was brave enough to correct the teacher.

  “I think Alex is a more appropriate nickname for Alexandra.”

  “Zan. I’ll stick with Zan.”

  At once Laura knew she had to become friends with this girl. She wasn’t a rebel in the way Jamie had been, embracing the counterculture by wearing long skirts and headbands and no underwear. No, this girl was the real thing, a rebel with a cause. Besides, Laura was in the market for a new best friend.

  “That’s so crazy,” Zan said.

  “I know.”

  The girls were walking back to Zan’s house from the grocery store. The sun was teasing the world, hinting at an early spring. Easter was still two weeks away, but Laura took off her hat and shook out her hair.

  “No, I mean really crazy,” Zan said. “He just disappeared?”

  “I know.”

  “Well, you know, a love that isn’t tested can’t be real,” Zan said. She poked her head into the paper bag, then her hand, and rummaged around. “Didn’t we get bubble gum?”

  “Where did you hear that? Anyway, jeez, I don’t love him. I don’t even kn
ow him.”

  “Well, maybe he loves you. So he’s testing you.” Zan found the gum.

  “He doesn’t love me. And I don’t want to be tested. It was just really strange — that’s all I can say.”

  They walked up the front steps of the trailer where Zan lived with her older sister, Karen — who, like Laura’s brother, was absent most of the time, either physically or otherwise — her mom, and her stepdad.

  “Nobody’s home,” Zan said. She pulled open the front door. “Come on.”

  Laura knew trailers weren’t exactly supposed to be luxurious, but she liked it. It was compact and cozy. Everything had a place or a little pocket to slip into. The beds were attached to the floor, with drawers hidden underneath. Tables popped out of panels in the wall. Doors slid to the side and disappeared.

  The living room wall-to-wall carpet was covered with a large shaggy rug. Laura plopped down on the couch. “Where is everyone?”

  Zan turned on the television and fiddled with the antenna until a fuzzy picture appeared.

  “My mom is at work. I have no idea where Karen is, but who cares?” she said. “And let’s hope Pete never comes home.” She slouched down on the shaggy rug and rested her head against the couch. Another thing that brought Zan and Laura together, or kept them together, was their mutual hatred for their stepfathers (in Laura’s case, her mother’s boyfriend).

  “So, where were you going to go with him? Starburst?”

  “Starbucks. I’m sure of it. I listened carefully.”

  “Well, let’s call that number, then, like in the movie Desk Set, and find out what Starburst is.” Zan sat upright.

  “Starbucks.”

  “Whatever. Let’s call.”

  “Desk Set’s a movie. That’s not real.”

  “It is. That’s what librarians do. They can answer any question you ask them. It’s their job; they have to.” Zan got to her feet. “Starbucks. It sounds like something futuristic, like Lost in Space. Or Star Trek. Do you think it’s like something from Star Trek? Ooh, I love Dr. Spock.”