“I like it ’cause it’s cheap.” He made her laugh while still letting her know her little flight of fancy had registered. “It also looks like the lines on a hand that you could read a fortune with. Where does this train go till?” he asked, while tracing an imaginary route on her palm with his finger.
“Jamaica.”
“Ha! Jamaica.”
“Why is that funny?”
“When I was a kid…”
“You grew up in Manhattan.”
“How did you know?”
“No idea.”
“So I did, I did grow up in Manhattan and I loved dinosaurs. Do you see where this is going?”
“Not a clue.”
“So if you’re a city boy and you love dinosaurs, where do you go?”
“Broadway?”
“No. Funny, but no.”
“Museum of Natural History?”
“Of course, yes. And since my mom’s Irish, actually from Ireland.”
“My dad’s Irish.”
“Whose story is this?”
“I don’t know.”
“So my mom, maybe five years removed from a small village outside Dublin, living on Eleventh Street and Avenue A—taking the subway was always an adventure, like a medieval knight’s quest or the labors of Hercules. If we didn’t end up at Yankee Stadium it was considered a victory.”
“That’s funny.”
“It’s true. So one time, dead of winter, we get on what they used to call the BMT, I was about ten, and of course we make a couple of wrong connections—the D, the Q, the R, or some such shit.”
“Can I interrupt?” she asked.
“Again?”
“Haha.”
“Sure.”
“I’m going to kiss you at the end of this story.”
This was not the kind of thing Emer had ever in her life said or had thought of saying. It wasn’t that it was forward or ballsy, it was just so damn charming. That’s what surprised her. And she realized that this man brought something out in her, her own charm. Yes, he had his own charm that he was deploying in telling this no doubt touching and smart New York City boyhood story, but it was her own charm that spooked the hell out of her. Spooky action at a distance—wasn’t that some recent Einsteinean thing? Charm—wasn’t that a term of the new physics? Or some kind of new particle. New to her, anyway. Charm and quark and spin? The cuddly cute nomenclature of the new physics. Maybe we are just like atoms, she wondered, destined by our own unknown internal chemistry to react to the spin and charge and charm of certain other particles. He was smiling now, and charming as fuck.
“You’re going to kiss me?”
“Yes.”
“Not now, but at the end of the story?”
“Exactly. So take however long you wanna wait. Be as long-winded as you feel the need to be.”
“That’s how the story ends?”
“I don’t know how the story ends, but that’s what’s gonna happen at the end of the story.”
“That was it. That was the whole story. Story’s over.”
“No, it’s not. Come on…”
He stared at her and she stared back. Part of the charm of charm was the mock resisting of charm.
“Okay, so in any case, we are on the wrong train, and after Fifty-ninth Street, it seems the train just keeps going, like it’s never gonna stop—we go through tunnels, we go through bridges, I swear we go through Middle Earth, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes it seems like, we’re like prisoners looking out the windows, helpless, I can see sweat on my mom’s upper lip, and finally, after what seemed like hours, we stop at an outdoor, aboveground station, the doors open and reveal this huge sign that says, wait for it—JAMAICA.”
Emer laughed. “Jamaica, Queens. Is that the end?”
She leaned in to him. The train car had emptied out, as if a magician had made everyone else disappear.
“Nope. So I don’t know from Jamaica, Queens. My Irish mom probably doesn’t know either, and I can see she’s about to pass out, and I say with like this bad island accent, “Oh boy, Jamaica, did we get on the wrong train, mon!” And my mom just cracks up. She has a hard laugh, like laughing cost extra, and she says, ‘Next time we go to the Museum of Natural History, we bring our bathing suits.’”
They kept looking at each other.
Con said, “My subway story. The end.”
Emer moved forward and kissed him. First kisses were always so awkward, like a stranger’s lips and tongue were speaking a different language from yours and you had to settle on some common ground, a shared grammar of tongue and lip. But not this time. It was as if they had kissed before, many times before, spoke the same language, and their mouths had not forgotten.
Con stopped for a moment, pulled back, and said, “I don’t want to make you miss your stop.”
“I don’t give a fuck. And just for the record, I don’t talk like that. I never say, ‘I don’t give a fuck.’ And I never kiss familiar strangers on the train.”
Con laughed. “I don’t give a fuck,” he said, adding, “How long do we have? When do you wanna get off?”
“Jamaica,” she said, charming as all get out. “Let’s ride this all the way to Jamaica.”
HAMMER OF THE GODS
THEY DIDN’T GO TO JAMAICA. They went back to Emer’s apartment. Emer felt compelled along the streets as they walked home hand in hand, as if she were fulfilling the mandate of some unseen string-puller, and yet at the same time, she had never felt so random and full of her own free will. She was not by nature an exhibitionist, and was embarrassed by the high-school-intensity make-out session she had begun on the F train. She was happy to get home with this man. Papa was still on duty and shot her some serious Haitian shade, which she translated as, Two men in one day? Whatever, she was a grown woman, and he wasn’t her papa.
This sense that they were in and out of this world right now, that they were both free agents and pawns, lent the whole night a surreal quality where normal rules didn’t apply. There was no talk of birth control. Or disease. They were on each other as soon as the door closed behind them.
As Con’s hand found Emer’s knee and began its slow, teasing upward journey to her thigh and beyond, Emer flailed and fumbled for the light switch behind her, so they could get up to god-knows-what in the darkness. Con found her hand on the switch, and with his hand over hers, flicked it back on. She looked at him. He was smiling. “I’m in my forties,” she said, and flipped the light back off.
His other hand was already caressing her sex. She felt so wet, embarrassingly so, and wondered why she should ever be ashamed of passion, of the material proof of said passion, and what type of world was it where you’d want to hide that? Her mind started fleeing the scene. His lips knocked the thoughts right out of her again. She saw an image of an eraser on a blackboard wiping a slate clean. His lips were like that sci-fi tool in the movie Men in Black that make you forget everything. If his lips could do that, she wondered, what would the other parts of his body do? He kissed her again and she stopped wondering. His fingers dallied on her upper, inner thigh, which was slick with her welcome. “Sorry,” she said.
He turned the light back on.
“For what?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re sorry for being turned on?”
“I guess.”
He took her hand and squeezed it over the conspicuous bulge in his pants.
“I guess I’m sorry, too.” He smiled.
She got lightheaded with desire and anticipation. “Oh boy, howdy, yeah, you’re really sorry.”
“Not sure I’ve ever been this sorry.”
“You are one sorry guy.”
He switched the light off this time.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m in my forties.”
“I’ve heard. Me, too. You’re forty-what?”
“Thirty-eight.”
“Very early forties.”
“Can we just leave it at that?”
“You
can be thirty-eight as long as you want.” His mouth found hers again. She felt herself opening up in the darkness into a kind of synesthesia; she wasn’t sure where her lips ended and his began, what was his body, his pleasure, and what was hers. It felt like a most benevolent form of insanity, a waking dream.
As he removed her dress from her shoulders, he shook the material down her body rather than over her head, and he had to kneel, and, as her dress fell in a bunch around her feet, he stayed down there.
She felt alone until his lips made soft contact with her belly, his hands reaching around her ass and pulling her underwear down and off to join her dress, like mounting evidence, like a prophecy, at her feet.
She wondered if she’d been working out enough lately, then told herself to shut up and enjoy. His tongue flicked at her belly button, and it felt nice, though she worried that she might have lint there; but before she could make a joke, he had continued his journey south to the last stop on this line. He was kneeling before her, like she was some type of goddess and the prayer on his tongue was making her feel divine. It had been so long, so fucking long. She could almost cry.
“Oh, God,” she said, “oh, God.” Not yet. She couldn’t give in yet. She turned the light back on. He stopped praying for a moment and looked up at her. In his eyes, she could see he was fully aware that he was in a funny position down there between her legs, and she appreciated that.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
“I know,” he mumbled, “we covered that.”
“I just wanted to see what you’d look like with a beard.” And this cracked them both up.
As he was laughing, he rose up and took off his shirt. She was relieved to see he wasn’t in the best shape. He wasn’t fat, but he was clearly no narcissistic gym rat either.
“You looking at my two-pack Shakur?” he asked.
“Hubba hubba,” she said.
“Hubba hubba?”
“I have no idea where that came from. I think my mother used to say it when Captain Kirk would come on the old Star Trek.”
“That,” he sputtered, in imitation of the famously herky-jerky, stop-and-go delivery of William Shatner, “is the. Sexiest. Thing I’ve. Eh-ver … heard.” He kissed her again so deeply and well, she felt like her head was opening up. The ceiling blew off the apartment and you could see the stars. He removed his pants and underpants in one motion.
“That’s a neat trick,” she said.
“I practice at home.”
“Make yourself comfortable.”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
She felt like they were a comedy team, but she didn’t know who the writer was. And it was as if they were trading roles—for a riff, he’d be the straight man and she the fool, and then they’d switch. It was heady and destabilizing in the best way. He reached to turn off the light for her, and this time, trading places, she stopped him. His cock was fully erect and beautiful to her, insistent, like it was pointing out something of interest in the sky. She took hold of it like she was shaking a stranger’s hand. Nice to meet you, good sir.
And she flashed back on a college class she had had on Milton, of all things, and the temptation of Eve in Paradise Lost. Well, not really all that odd, as she dwelled upon it. And she remembered that the seduction of Eve by the snake had begun with his tongue, with words, and that there was a continuum of intercourse, from verbal to sexual. It was intercourse that made Eve fall, that made Eve human. It was all intercourse. And Emer was on her way to human again tonight.
“I’m tired of talking just now,” she said. “Take me to bed.”
He was man enough to do as he was told.
That was the end of the speaking portion of tonight’s program. From that point on, the intercourse was physical and wordless, though punctuated by many a moan. They made love like a longtime married couple who are still in love. Like an old improvisation. It was urgent, but practiced. What had been true of their first kiss was true of all the ways they touched each other, as if each had been schooled in the art of the other. How could this be? Emer stopped asking questions; the answers, if inchoate, were obvious, and she would happily leave them unworded tonight.
After they had finished, she was still hungry for him, but needed sleep. She was afraid of sleeping with him, afraid that her body might emit noises and gases while she was unconscious and make her disgusting to him. She wanted to issue some sort of blanket biological denial. He said, “I have trouble sleeping.”
“I don’t. And I have crazy dreams.”
“Do you want me to stay?”
“Do you want to stay?”
“Of course.”
Both were afraid of seeming to insult the other, their intimacy so quick and intense that it felt almost embarrassing and unwarranted, and therefore suspect. Emer was aware that she either wanted him to stay forever or leave immediately, and she was never going to utter either of those thoughts.
“Can you do me a favor, then?” he asked.
“Maybe.”
“Can you just sing me to sleep?”
“Sing you to sleep?”
“It helps.”
“I don’t really know any songs.”
“You don’t know any songs? That’s not possible. Nobody doesn’t know any songs.”
“I know ‘Kashmir’ on the uke.”
“Zeppelin ‘Kashmir’? I had you pegged for a Depeche Mode gal.”
“My dad loved Zeppelin.”
“On the ukulele? That’s the stuff of nightmares. Anything else?”
She got up to fetch her instrument. He recoiled in mock horror. She played a little of Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song”:
“Ah-ah, ah! Ah-ah, ah! We come from the land of the ice and snow / From the midnight sun, where the hot springs flow…”
“Wow, that’s…”
“Amazing?”
“Sure, but also…”
“Awesome?”
“Sure, that’s a word.”
“You hate it.”
“I don’t hate it, no, you’re like every guy’s dream, a Zeppelin-lovin’, uke-playin’ chick—I’m just scared a mite by it.”
“Wait. I got it.” She reset her fingers on the uke and began to sing him the “Vowel Song.” “This is what I sing to my kids to teach them how to read. My very own composition. Ah Eh Ee Oh Eu…” She strummed along on the uke. Con’s eyes grew heavy.
“That’s beautiful,” he said. “Don’t stop. That’s a hit. That’s perfect. Top Forty.”
“Ah Eh Ee Oh Eu … Ah Eh Ee Oh Eu … Now we say our vowels, now we say our vowels.”
And just like that, the man in her bed, the familiar stranger with whom she had just made love, was asleep.
THE IMMIGRANT’S SONG
EMER AWOKE BEFORE DAWN to find Con up on his elbow staring at her.
“That’s kind of creepy,” she said.
“Right?”
“Do you have to be somewhere?”
“Not really. You?”
“Yeah, I have to be at school in a couple hours.”
“That’s all I need.”
“Haha.”
He reached up to stroke her hair, and found the ridge of the scar on her scalp. Emer pulled away, self-conscious. No one had ever touched her there before.
“How’s the writing going?” she asked.
Con stopped moving. “Writing?”
“Yeah.”
“Why do you assume I’m a writer?”
A very good question. Why did she assume he was a writer? From her dreams, from her remembrance of things that may or may not have passed. None of it admissible in court and perhaps not admissible in casual conversation, even.
“Your Jamaica subway story was writerly.”
“Writerly?”
“Not very writerly of me to use that word, is it?”
Con smiled, but she had disturbed him.
“I’m an actor,” he said. She burst out laughing. But he wasn’t kidding.
“You’
re not kidding.”
“No.”
“Well … that’s amazing.”
“Is it?”
“Sure. I mean, maybe that’s why I think maybe you look familiar or you seem familiar to me.”
“I’m not famous. When I say ‘actor,’ what I’m really saying is ‘unemployed.’”
“Stop bragging, maybe I’ve seen you.”
“I’ve done a bunch of commercials and some weeks here and there on soaps, and I’ve done four Law and Orders, and recurred on The Good Wife as the brother of a sister of a cousin.”
“I watched that show!”
“Did you?”
“Saw it once or twice. I think they shot in my building one time.”
“You don’t remember the famous brother of a sister of Julianna Margulies’s cousin role?”
“Sorry. Maybe?”
He laughed and looked away, sadly, she thought.
“I don’t care,” she said. “And besides, I think I’ve always wanted to be taken advantage of by a gigolo.”
“I’m flattered?”
“I shall call you ‘Sergio.’ Sergio the gigolo.” She was staying light as air, but she felt them descending into a more real world despite her efforts, like a plane through clouds about to land. An actor?
“It’s funny you say that about writing, though,” he said. “’Cause that’s what I would’ve said I wanted to be when I was a kid. That’s what I wanted to do as a man. It’s actually how I got into acting—to see writing from a different angle, I guess. But then…” He seemed to almost say something else, or he seemed to be exhaling a very articulate and telling silence, like he was looking deep down into himself and wasn’t sure he liked what he saw.
“What is it?” Emer asked. Even though she hadn’t been in lover’s company in a while, she was surprised to still find herself so immediately in tune with a man’s easy slide into self-loathing, and the coincident feminine impulse to pull him away from that navel-gazing, self-abnegating male darkness.
He took his time, as men do, used to having the floor. He began speaking at the tail end of a long exhale. “Anyway. I guess I got lazy.”
The “anyway” was the lie, Emer knew. The “anyway” covered all the things he didn’t feel he could tell her yet but would have to if they somehow continued to get to know each other. The “anyway” was the drawing of a curtain.
Miss Subways Page 13