Miss Subways: A Novel

by David Duchovny

  Emer did her best Bill Clinton. Moving on. Most of the rest of the parents and kids waltzed in and out of her focus as her thoughts wandered to the subway and getting out of there. And it went off without incident. They were all civilized twenty-first-century people. Apparently.

  UNDERGROUND WOMAN

  THERE WAS STILL A CROWD to get through outside the school, kids of all ages and their parents, and though Emer wanted to avoid everyone, she was stopped and pigeonholed by a few upperclassmen, former students who wanted to show off how mature they’d become. Though it was mildly unsettling when the fifteen-year-old boys wanted to flirt harmlessly with their passably hot former grade school teacher, calling her by her first name or using “Ms. Emer” with sly imprecise irony, Emer knew they simply yearned for acknowledgment as the men they’d become, or were becoming. Emer understood it was her duty to mirror their masculinity back to them without confusing them with any actual intent, crossing any lines, or blurring any boundaries. She knew how to do it, how to act slightly abashed yet impressed at their literally sophomoric innuendo, though her awareness of lines and crossing them was in a bit of disrepair at the moment.

  She backed away and nodded and smiled and inched her way to the perimeter of the crowd. She stepped off into the street, turned, and pointed herself to the subway. Three blocks to freedom. As the delivery convoy fell in around her, she felt nearly invincible.

  She also felt like she was being followed, by whom she wasn’t sure. It could be Con, it could be Mama, it could be Sid. Six months ago, no one would follow her to the train, now maybe three people were. Things were looking up. She noticed Han, with a worried aspect, at the entrance to the station. “Can’t go underground,” he said. “Get ticket. Moto.” He pointed to the motor on his bike. Foiled by the rules again. Emer waved goodbye to the two-wheeler armada and descended. It was her graduation day too, and she’d have to go it alone.

  She swiped her MetroCard and waited for the train. An a capella quartet sang the Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go” as the waiting people wearing headphones ignored them. Emer knew now that riff would take up residence in her mind for the next hour, or week—“If I go there will be trouble / If I stay it could be double.” She scooped her hand along the bottom of her knapsack and came up with a handful of change and some gum. She put the change into the hat by the singers and the gum in her mouth. The train came and the doors opened.

  As she was stepping aboard, she glanced right and left, and caught a glimpse a few cars down of what might’ve been Mama. Emer got on the car, walked to the window where the cars were connected, and peered through. It was. It was Mama, a couple cars back, walking toward her. Emer turned and headed up the other way. She walked through two cars. When the train stopped at the next station, she poked her head out and looked left. Two cars down, Mama had her head out of the car, looking around. Emer felt Mama couldn’t really pull anything in public like this. Could she? Emer knew she didn’t have to run, but she was running anyway. She kept moving up the cars.

  At the next stop, she repeated her lookout. She looked down and left—there was Mama again and this time their eyes met. Emer stepped out onto the platform, Mama followed suit about twenty yards away. As the doors were closing, Emer lunged back in. She’d seen that move done in movies. It didn’t work in movies and it didn’t work today. She saw Mama successfully reenter the car, heading her way.

  Emer walked all the way to the front of the train, moving slowly from the lit platform into darkness. She was trapped. She reached up and put her hand on the emergency brake. She’d never done that before. In New York you’d have to be pretty fucking sure some apocalyptic shit was going down before you pulled that thing—like a damn velociraptor on the loose would be the bare minimum reason. She wasn’t even sure it was connected. But she pulled it, hard, and it worked. That it worked exactly as it was supposed to surprised her and made her laugh.

  Even though the train was not nearly at full speed, some people were thrown off balance by the sudden stoppage, and Emer took advantage of the confusion to head to the doors in between the cars. She got out and jumped down on the tracks. She was aware she might be completely overreacting. It was like she was hearing another voice in her head, and that was the voice she decided to listen to; it would tell her what to do.

  MYSTERY TRAIN

  SHE’D NEVER BEEN DOWN on the actual subway tracks before. It was dark and hot, and the filth seemed sedimented but somehow loose. Even the detritus had detritus. She had to squeeze her way along the wall for the length of the lead subway car before she could see open track.

  The tunnel felt more, when you were in it, like a cave than something man-made. It felt as wild as untouched nature somehow. The tunnels were built in 1904, and well over a century of hidden, festering shit down here threatened to overload Emer’s already feverish imagination. There was some light thrown by the grimy bulbs along the way. Emer was scared of being crushed, but she felt she’d be able to see the headlights of a train coming down the darkened track and get out of the way in time. She didn’t know what the next station was. She hadn’t thought that far ahead, she hadn’t thought ahead at all. She kept walking on toward a light that was reaching her weakly around a curve in the tracks a few hundred yards away.

  She tried not to look down at her feet or get consumed by the fear of skittering noises and darting shadows—rats, no doubt. Somehow rats were the most mundane explanation for the noises and movements; the alternatives were even more ghastly and terrifying. There were plenty of signs of life down here, too many, actually. She never thought she’d be comforted by the thought of giant rats at her feet, but she was. Almost.

  She followed the curve toward the light, and saw ahead that it was the Eighteenth Street ghost station. But before she made it to the platform, awkward, angled movement—like big animals, not rats, awaking from sleep—caught her eye and stole her breath. She turned to see a figure, a man it must be, or a bear, walking slowly toward her. As her eyes became more adjusted to the darkness in the tunnel, more shapes became apparent to her—people—men, women, and even little tents. This was some sort of encampment. This must be one of those homeless communities she’d read about that somehow survive winters, summers, and persecution in the tunnels. The ghost station would make the best place for the forgotten ghosts among us to make a home.

  The hulking man approached. There was no emergency brake to pull now. He flashed a bright light in Emer’s face, blinding her—he had a cell phone with a flashlight app, of course he did, of course a homeless man had a smartphone. He grabbed her, hoisting her over his shoulder as easily as a backpack; he was preternaturally strong, and moved with the impossible, jittery speed of a horror-movie predator. He carried her deeper into the tunnel and away from the light of the tracks.

  He put his hand, the size of a skillet, over her mouth, nose, and eyes. Now she felt real, focused, pointed fear, enveloped in his moving embrace; he smelled of piss and shit and a long-unwashed Homo sapiens musk. Her bile rose.

  “Please don’t hurt me,” she said.

  Finally, he put her down. She didn’t know where she was, but she could see it was inside this camp of sorts. There were twenty or thirty people living in the abandoned tunnel, as well as some dogs—but no, as Emer calmed herself a bit, to her amazement, what looked to be dogs were … alligators? Whitish yellow alligators, mythical albino alligators, maybe five or six of them in a makeshift pen. She’d heard all the apocryphal stories since childhood, of the pet baby alligator craze in the ’50s that had people flushing the growing beasts down their toilets when they had gotten less cute, and the amphibians had survived in the sewers, so the stories went.

  She’d thought so much was myth before the last few months. Her mind immediately started to square this impossibility to a new worldview. It made sense that the alligators would become a race of albinos, never having seen the light of day—thank goodness. Then she caught herself making sense within the nonsense. Amazing how life
adapts, it all makes scientific sense, blah blah blah, but the white lizards were terrifying to look at. They were smaller and less muscular than their aboveground swamp counterparts, but eerie, uncanny, and the color of dead fish.

  The area was lit by candle and cell phone. There were drawings on the walls like the cave paintings at Altamira crossed with Keith Haring graffiti. Many images were crude and silly and pop culture oriented, a hodge-podge pantheon—a lot of Michael Jackson, Prince, some Game of Thrones, Kurt Cobain, but there were also some Egyptian-looking ones that had bodies of people and the heads of these albino alligators. Like the white alligator was their totem.

  “I know you,” her abductor said.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “They call me Golem,” he said, covering himself in the dark cloth of the mythical Jewish Frankensteinian avenger entity. “We’ve existed throughout most of European history. Jews made our particular race down here in the subways in the late ’30s and ’40s, but don’t have much use for us anymore, it seems. But we wait, we wait. You never know when our time may come again.”

  She tried to define his features in the near dark, and they did seem to be melting, morphing in the flickering light—half formed, blocky, left in haste by a maker; as if indeed conjured from the clay of disenfranchised, human despair.

  “I know you,” Golem said again vehemently.

  Emer pulled back, relieved to create distance from the veritable force field of his funk. “Well—you live here in the subways, I take the subways, I look out the windows, maybe you’ve seen me on the trains?”

  “Yes, yes, that’s it!”

  Emer was relieved that it was so easy.

  Golem took an instinctive, reverent step back, lowered his gaze, and dropped to one knee. “You’re Miss Subways!”

  Emer wasn’t sure she should accept or reject this homage. “No, no, I’m not, that’s not right. The voting isn’t even over.”

  When Golem looked up again, there were tears in his eyes, streaking darkly down the soot on his face, smearing the clay cheeks. He pulled a loop of string from his pocket, and something dangling caught the light.

  “How long I’ve been searching for you. I’ve caught glimpses of you, in my mind, I thought. Ages searching. To give you this.” He spread open the string with filthy, giant, gentle hands and placed the necklace over her head. Emer could now see clearly what it was—the silver token, the trophy given to every Miss Subways winner. “So no harm may come to you.”

  He called out to the rest of the encampment—“Hey, everyone, over here! Miss Subways!” He turned back to Emer and whispered, “I was created for the likes of you. Many of us were created for you. We are the offspring of the disempowered and the weak. We are their fears animated, made quasi-flesh, given all the strength of their hopes and desire for revenge. You know what golems are.”

  “I’ve heard and I’ve read. But it’s an Eastern European myth. I mean, I’m sorry if that’s insulting. To call you a myth. I’m just so confused.”

  Golem reached down to the subway rail beneath him, saying, “Is this a myth?” and with one hand, twisted the third rail at a right angle to itself.

  “You make a powerful case,” Emer said.

  “And you,” Golem continued, “you are Miss Subways. Stop denying your power.”

  One by one, the homeless came toward her, shuffling and groaning in spastic motion, as if a movie were playing with random frames spliced out.

  “It’s time to engage with your adoring public,” the man said. “Meet the ninety-nine percent.”

  She had no idea what they were going to do to her now. A few of the men and women began to emulate Golem and kneel at her feet, murmuring about Miss Subways this and Miss Subways that.

  “They won’t hurt you,” Golem said. “You are their token woman, their queen, their genius loci. As long as you remain underground, we will give our lives, such as they are, to protect you.”

  “I’m no one’s queen.”

  “Everyone is someone’s queen.”

  “Are you keeping me here?”

  “That medallion ain’t chopped liver,” he said, touching the token around her neck, making it swing into the light. “You are Miss Subways, you ride anywhere for free.”

  TOKEN WOMAN

  “DEATHLING!”

  From the darkness, the shout came echoing down the tunnel, and again, “Deathling!” The homeless, the unemployed golem, turned to face the approach, casting their candles and cell phones that way, creating a spotlight for the entrance of a villain. Emer recognized the voice of Mama Waters, but the golem were suddenly perturbed, whispering among themselves a name, in tones respectful and afraid—Anansi. Emer knew the name from dreams and half-remembered reading, but now something clicked, as when one goes from learning a language to fluency one day.

  The golem backed off a bit. Emer felt a chill on her skin as their warming bodies withdrew. Golem cast a disapproving eye upon his brothers and stood tall with his Miss Subways. He steadied her with his bloodless, cold clay hand. Emer faced her accuser, Mama, no, Anansi. Anansi spoke first. Her long dreadlocks had turned into hissing red, yellow, green, and black snakes, all traces of Mama’s politeness erased by the haughty grandeur of a goddess.

  “There you are, Deathling. You can’t hide from me, even amongst your tough Jews here.”

  “I’m not hiding.”

  “I see your talisman. You are hiding underground. You’re trying to steal my man.”

  “But I didn’t know.”

  “This is not a court of law. You will soon find that out.”

  “Do you even want him?”

  “It does not fall to you to ask questions of the gods, Deathling. You have injured my pride. In your racial, cultural ignorance, you may not know me well, but you know your Greek myths, your Western ways, think back on those instructive stories and how the gods punished the humans who stole their men or their women—turning them into trees and deer, drowning them in their watery reflections.”

  “But I didn’t know.”

  “That is precisely the human crime.”

  Emer looked at Golem, whose blunt clay face remained impassive. He shrugged. Emer somehow found courage in that.

  “But what of your crime?” Emer shouted. “You stole Con from me with the promise of talent and fame, but you gave him nothing.”

  “I keep him very well.”

  “You keep him, yes, you keep him silent, unrealized, like a half-made man.”

  “You know nothing of our deal or of the way I make deals. My deals change with the wind.”

  Emer felt like a child arguing with an adult who held all the cards. “Can’t we reason together? Come to a new arrangement?”

  “You ask a goddess to negotiate?”

  “Why not? We are women. Rational women.”

  “I will roast your eyes on spits and drink your blood.”

  “Okay, well, that’s … that’s an opening position.”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Fair? Who ever promised you fair, Deathling? You are in the realm of gods now. You will feel fair ripped from your weak whining heart soon.”

  The raised voices were riling up the albino alligators; they snapped at the air with their terrible teeth, the palpable confusion compelling them to nip at one another, seeking an outlet. But they seemed to calm when Emer got near them, and even wag their tails like dinosaur dogs. She saw a flicker of doubt in Anansi’s eyes, and it emboldened her. She put her hand on what appeared to be a gate, a threat. Emer pressed—“And what of your real remaining powers in this new world and here, underground?”

  “My powers?”

  “You are far from Africa. It’s been hundreds of years. You have lost your flock. Maybe you’ve lost touch. Maybe you’re obsolete.”

  “Keep at it, Deathling. You will soon feel what is left of my power.”

  Emer felt a child’s righteousness rise up within her, a wave of unearned
certainty that she had no choice but to ride. She surmised from her knowledge of aboveground deities losing potency in the underworld, and took a flier—“Your magic and your deals and your wagers, your pride and your beauty, have no place down here where I am queen.”

  Emer opened the gate. The ghostly alligators spilled out one over the other and surrounded her like spastic plastic bodyguards. Anansi’s dread snakes recoiled, and the goddess took a nervous step backward.

  “I am Miss Subways,” Emer announced, “and I have powers of my own.”

  The rest of the golem stood up a bit straighter.

  “You don’t know who or what you’re fucking with.” Anansi sounded hollow.

  Emer pushed forward. “How can you know what love is? You can’t die. All you have is pride, that’s not love. In order to love, you have to know what death is.”

  “You lecture me. You make no sense.”

  “I make sense to the living. You’ve come down here to teach me a lesson, but it’s you who will learn from me.”

  The homeless, rallied by Emer’s speech, goaded by their queen, their very own Miss Subways, had now fully recovered their nerve. They joined the alligators in a shrinking circle around Anansi.

  “Look at your timebound minions, deformed losers and reptiles!”

  “You sound scared.”

  “The deathless cannot know fear.”

  “Maybe that’s the problem right there. How can you love without fear?”

  Emer knew that as she could not die, Anansi’s deathlessness was the key to her misunderstanding. For a moment, Anansi’s head tilted and her eyes refocused, like a dog hearing a new word, a new command she could not quite fathom. Just a moment, though, and then the familiar superiority returned to her gaze.