by Warren Adler
So you stood cramped and paralyzed and wedged in amongst the other people and kept watching the pregnant woman trying to hold her breakfast in her stomach and you began to think that she was fighting a losing battle because the half-made life in her guts was pushing and kicking into her flesh and you wondered whether she remembered the pleasure with which she had begotten the pain. The dark black thing was plodding along at a slower and slower rate because other dark black things with other people jammed into it were slowed up in front. You wished that you could get at least one hand free so that you could read your paper even if you couldn’t read but only one page and had to read that over and over again.
Then the dark black thing stopped moving altogether and you could only hear the monotony of the fans and the scattered coughing of the other people and even an occasional voice whispered that it was terrible and that the same thing happened every morning and why don’t the city take care of its subways, and someone would chime in that she was absolutely right and something should be done about it. But nothing could be done because it was the other people who were at fault and you were the other people and you did nothing. But how could you do anything when you were busy watching the sick pregnant woman and hoping that she would get off soon even though you knew that nobody got off until you at least passed under the river and that was still about fifteen minutes away. When you stopped looking at the pale sick woman for a moment, you saw that other people were looking at her too, but nobody could actually do anything because the other people were rammed tight against them and they couldn’t even move their arms.
You tried to think of different things such as your wife or the boys at the office, but that didn’t help much because there was a horrible effluvia passing through the stagnant air and it made you slightly dizzy and nauseous so you looked toward the sick woman next to you and saw that the fresh new stench had not improved her condition.
Then it happened. You had just turned your head a moment when you heard the gut-cry that heralded the sound and smell of vomiting. All the pleasure and the pain and the new life and the stink of menstruation and the medicinal odor of sperm and secretions and the insides of a pig and the flow of a cow and the growths of a chicken and the sweat of a fruit—all in one foul ugly gushing mess, lumpy and pulpy and stinking, rushed out of the pregnant woman’s mouth and on to her chin and her clothes and her hands, and onto the back of your coat and your pants and your shoes and your hands.
You looked at her and you could see that she was sorry and humiliated and sick and she looked at you with red swollen eyes that also seemed to have vomited some sort of fluid and you felt pity, but it was a strange sort of pity because at the same time you also wanted to kill her for making the ugly stink and soiling your clothes and you wished that she had turned her head and thrown up on someone else, the old man with the dry yellow flesh, or the young lad with the horn-rimmed glasses or the young woman who bore the unseen marks of her lover’s closeness, but not on you because you didn’t know what to do now and besides you were terribly shy and had a weak stomach. Everyone was looking at you, and some turned white while others held their noses and you knew that one and all wanted to leave and so did you and the young humiliated woman who felt crucified by the other people’s eyes and who was sorry that she had not fainted because she couldn’t bear the eyes and couldn’t even bear the smell of her own vomit. You could hear her earnest entreaties of sorrow as she took out her handkerchief and started to wipe the slop that her guts had produced from the back of your jacket, but instead she made things worse and it began to run down your sleeve until it was a thick creamy substance with lumps and it made you dizzy just to feel it in your hands. The other people were literally crushing themselves in their effort to push away from yourself and the young pregnant woman who had tried cleaning up the mess with her little pocket handkerchief but instead ended up wallowing in her own vomit. Her face was covered with it because she had forgotten and tried to blow her nose into the handkerchief and realizing her error she tried wiping it off again which only made matters worse. You stood there praying that the dark black thing would move again and quickly reach another station.
You wanted to disappear or crawl into someone’s pocket but it was no use because you were here and just couldn’t stand around as if nothing had happened. Then you remembered the newspaper that was still in your hand, and you used that, and strangely enough you found that you had plenty of room now and if you wanted you could read your paper but you didn’t want to now.
You wanted to tell the other people to close their eyes and they would have, if they weren’t so curious, but it annoyed you to see them trying not to look but looking just the same. The dark black thing began to move again and you heaved a sigh of relief because the stench was becoming unbearable. You knew that the people who had not seen what had happened were straining their necks to see a miserable young woman trying to wipe herself free from the ugly stench and telltale stains and a man with chronic red eyes and a broken nose trying to do the same thing. You wanted to scream at these curious other people and ask them if they thought that their guts smelled any differently, and they probably did, but worse. The black dark thing began to slow up again and you were getting dizzier and dizzier and it would only be a matter of minutes before you yourself would throw up.
You looked at the young pregnant woman and saw that she was crying bitterly and it made you want to move mountains to help her but there was nothing you could do so you said nothing and turned your head away. All you wanted now was to get away from the stink and the people and the eyes and all these things that kept going around in circles, and you knew that if the train did not reach a station soon you would lose consciousness and fall right into the puddle of slop that was seeping into the leather of your shoes and made them slide when the dark black thing pitched and lurched.
At last the train was going full speed again and you breathed a great sigh of relief and so did all the rest of the people who were pressed up so hard against one another that they could hardly breathe. And when all these other people would leave the dark black thing they would curse each other and especially the young pregnant woman for adding to their discomfort, and so to speak, putting salt on their wounds but soon their antagonism would die down and they would feel pity for the poor pregnant woman and later they would think it quite amusing that the man next to her, the one with the chronic red eyes and broken nose, should have been cruelly victimized and they would tell the story for many days among their friends but not all of them would think it very funny.
You no longer looked around you but you closed your eyes and gritted your teeth and hoped and hoped hard. You didn’t think any more of why this misfortune had happened to you, and you just accepted it and prayed that after you got out you would be rid of this miserable burden that made you feel as if you were nailed to a cross and people were sticking knives in your belly. The stink was awful and you could feel the drops of cold sweat on your brow and your throat was parched and your hands were sticky and slimy. You didn’t even care about the other people any more. They were part of the structure of the dark black things like the cold metal and the dirty glass and the yellow straw seats and the dusty emergency cord, and you knew that they were wishing that they were part of the dark black things so they would no longer have to smell the abominable stench that turned their stomachs and made their heads ache.
When the doors opened you dashed on to the station and rushed away from the dark black thing; you knew that you were making a trail with your dirty shoes but you didn’t care and you didn’t even look for the pregnant woman and try to help her. In fact you no longer cared what happened to her. You ran up the stairs and bumped against people who sniffed at you and then turned their heads away and you wished that they would all go to hell. Next to a tattered phone booth you found the entrance to the men’s room and already as you passed through the little corridor you could smell the urinals and the unflushed to
ilets, but this didn’t make you any sicker. There was an old drunken man with a torn blue jacket sitting on the toilet and talking to himself. You were thankful that he didn’t notice you when you came in. The sink was so dirty from the dried spittle that lined its walls that you were afraid to put your hands into it, but you had no choice and had to rinse the foul stuff from your hands. There was no soap and you had to manage as best you could although the very best you could do was to get the pulpy matter off but the smell remained no matter how hard you rubbed. Your jacket was all spotted so you took it off and tried to clean it. In a little while you found that it was soaked through and through with water and you couldn’t possibly put it on again. The drunken man was still making all sorts of hideous sounds and you were thankful that he didn’t notice you because you were in no mood to humor drunks.
Back on the station again you realized that you were in no condition to continue on your way to work; you were nervous, you stank—a dry pungent piercing odor that embarrassed you and made you hide and avoid the other people. Getting into a dark black thing that was going back in the direction of where you lived, you quickly sat down in the most obscure corner you could find, although actually they were all about the same. The car was comparatively empty and that fact seemed to relax you a bit.
To your complete surprise the dark black thing suddenly began to load up with students at the next station and a dark gangling youth with a multitude of books sat next to you, sniffed about him in the obvious way adolescents have, then he changed his seat. You tried not to notice, but it annoyed and irritated you beyond all measure. The students kept coming and coming until a young girl sat next to you but she too changed her seat; then another girl—the same thing. You felt as if all those young eyes were looking at you and many of them were. You could hear some of them say that there was a terrible stink in here or some similar remark. Many were leaving the car and you wanted to call them back, to tell them that it wasn’t really your fault but that another person—other people—it was they, her, that caused the trouble. Please, it wasn’t you, your heart wanted to cry out, please. It was the other people, the other people made the mess. Why should you suffer for them? Please it was the others please please—but nobody would sit next to you.
More Short Stories from Warren Adler
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Also by Warren Adler
FICTION
Banquet Before Dawn
Blood Ties
Empty Treasures
Flanagan’s Dolls
Funny Boys
Madeline’s Miracles
Mourning Glory
Natural Enemies
Private Lies
Random Hearts
Residue
Senator Love
Target Churchill
The Casanova Embrace
The David Embrace
The Henderson Equation
The Housewife Blues
The Serpent’s Bite
The War of the Roses
The War of the Roses: The Children
The Womanizer
Torture Man
Trans-Siberian Express
Treadmill
Twilight Child
Undertow
We Are Holding the President Hostage
THE FIONA FITZGERALD MYSTERY SERIES
American Quartet
American Sextet
Death of a Washington Madame
Immaculate Deception
Senator Love
The Ties That Bind
The Witch of Watergate
Washington Masquerade
Red Herring
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
Jackson Hole: Uneasy Eden
Never Too Late For Love
New York Echoes
New York Echoes 2
The Sunset Gang
PLAYS
Dead in the Water
Libido
The Sunset Gang: The Musical
The War of the Roses
Windmills
About the Author
Acclaimed author, playwright, poet, and essayist Warren Adler is best known for The War of the Roses, his masterpiece fictionalization of a macabre divorce adapted into the BAFTA- and Golden Globe–nominated hit film starring Danny DeVito, Michael Douglas, and Kathleen Turner. Adler’s internationally acclaimed stage adaptation of the novel will premiere on Broadway in 2015–2016.
Adler has also optioned and sold film rights for a number of his works, including Random Hearts (starring Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas) and The Sunset Gang (produced by Linda Lavin for PBS’s American Playhouse series starring Jerry Stiller, Uta Hagen, Harold Gould, and Doris Roberts), which garnered Doris Roberts an Emmy nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a Miniseries. In recent development are the Broadway production of The War of the Roses, to be produced by Jay and Cindy Gutterman, The War of the Roses: The Children (Grey Eagle Films and Permut Presentations), a feature film adaptation of the sequel to Adler’s iconic divorce story, Target Churchill (Grey Eagle Films and Solution Entertainment), Residue (Grey Eagle Films), Mourning Glory, to be adapted by Karen Leigh Hopkins, and Capitol Crimes (Grey Eagle Films and Sennet Entertainment), a television series based on his Fiona Fitzgerald mystery series.
Adler’s works have been translated into more than 25 languages, including his staged version of The War of the Roses, which has opened to spectacular reviews worldwide. Adler has taught creative writing seminars at New York University, and has lectured on creative writing, film and television adaptation, and electronic publishing. He lives with his wife, Sunny, a former magazine editor, in Manhattan.