3 posts tagged “to be continued”
For Joel and Lilia - two more chapters (and one to go!!), both from one year ago today, May 1, 2006...
Chapter Five: Sisyphus
I got to 4th and Townsend a couple minutes early, bought my monthly pass for May, and boarded the train. Having discovered on Friday, when Michael got on the train and interrupted my conversation with the woman with the hypnotic eyes and amazing smile, that she was going to Point Reyes for the weekend with "John", my Chronicle perusing stayed uninterrupted and unencumbered from trying to keep a seat free to 22nd. When she got on I politely asked how her weekend was, but reined in my award-winning grin knowing that they were in short supply and that I'd need to reserve them for whoever I was foolish enough to envision growing old with in the urban equivalent of a house with a white picket fence this week. Or at least that's how I'd expected my Monday morning to play out as I walked down 4th Street in the sun.
I bought my Chronicle from the little old Chinese man who always tries to up-sell me to the New York Times, freed $139.25 from my bank account for the monthly 3 zone Caltrain pass, and headed out onto the train platform and up to my regular seat. The train remained surprisingly empty for a Monday morning, and I didn't suspect that it was due to a lot of the Peninsula commuters participating the in the "Day without Immigrants" protests and marches. Still at 4th and King as I finished with the front section, I wondered if I still worked in the restaurant if I'd have been taking the day off to stand in solidarity. While pondering that, hypnotic eyes and perfect teeth takes the seat opposite and across the aisle with an extra measure of bounce, and smiles at me.
"How was Point Reyes?", I politely ask over the edge of my paper.
"It was great - one of the guy's mom owns a little cottage up there, and we just hung out having drinks and BBQing all day, and then yesterday there was another BBQ. Lots of eating for the entire weekend. How did the dinner for your friend come out?"
I tell her that it came out fine, and settle back into the paper after an uncomfortable silence. Michael stops by her seat and rests a knee on the edge of the adjoining one, and asks if she was OK on Sunday morning. She answers that she was, that she just needed some coffee to get rid of the headache - he laughs at her, she says no, really, that once she'd had the coffee the headache went away. He removes his knee and heads back to his seat, I head into the Sports' section hoping the Red Sox can pull it out against the Yankees later in the day, and she and I meet up at the crossword about the same time. She seems pre-occupied, almost sad or disappointed, the capped end of her pen pursed between her lips.
I finish the crossword just as we pull out of Palo Alto, put the Classified section's crossword and cryptoquip away in my bag along with my pen, and get up as we jerk past San Antonio.
"Have a nice day," I say. She looks up and says, "See you tomorrow."
Chapter Six: Waiting for Godot (with a beer in hand, on the 383)
I'd planned to leave work at 5:00 to catch the 5:10 shuttle to Mountain View for an exciting evening of dipping into my earthquake preparedness kit, Jeopardy, and Law & Order re-runs. At 5:05 I knew that wasn't happening... let's just say that the reasons I'd taken this gig had passed months ago, and the levels of incompetence flying around made me want to leave pronto. But since quitting on principal wasn't an option after a year of working on my own project and running up the credit cards, I swapped out my usual scowl, and suggested we could revisit issues in the morning. And then I strolled out the door.
Standing on the northbound platform at Mountain View, doing the math in my head as to when my bills would be paid down and I could quit, I watched the train pull in just on time. Once the seven bicyclists got off, I got on, and made a left into the forward-most car, where hypnotic eyes and perfect smile was sitting next to Michael.
"Would you like a beer?", she said to me as I cleared the doorframe into the car. "I'd love a beer," I replied, was given an ice-cold Tecate, and took the seat behind them on the west side of the train, against the window so I could see the sun on her face through the back of the seats. I drank my beer and smiled as she finished hers and cracked open another, and pretended to do the Classified's crossword.
Things learned: Michael's moving to Atlanta to be with his girlfriend; neither of them know that the history of having a lime in your beer was to prevent scurvy; she has a garden and likes Powell's Soul Food, didnt' realize they'd re-opened over on Eddy and Fillmore, rides a purple Specialized messenger-bike style bike, and has a great black-outlined flame tattoo way down on her back.
She stayed on until 4th and King. I broke the Caltrain rules of bicyclists getting off the train after the walkers, letting her detrain before me. We walked together to the terminal, and I thanked her for the beer, wished her luck with her gardening this evening, and said "see you tomorrow". She smiled back with a smile that said more than the absence of words in the din of the train station.
Tomorrow: The Final Chapter!
Here you go, Lilia:
Remnants of the Cold War (on a Thursday morning)
Finishing the Cryptoquip between Mountain View and Palo Alto on the 373 Wednesday night (O equals F, and "QO L ULVUDXX YLF OLCZDC VDCD MLTTDB LMB JSK QM JCQXAM, YD ZQWYK KCP KA WDK ASK AM TLUD" equals "If a lawless hay farmer were nabbed and put in prison, he might try to get out on bale") I read my horoscope. Horoscopes, as a rule, are vague enough to tell you what you want them to about your upcoming day. I'd always found that reading them at the end of the day made them prove their merit. And Wednesday's wanted to: People are ready to go. Why are you riding the brake? Don't let anxiety call the shots. The only way to tell if things will work is to try. Maybe I should have read that before the woman with the hypnotic eyes and perfect smile took the crowded three-top one row up instead of the empty four-top I was holding for her on the 324 that morning. Maybe then I would have eked out more than a "see you tomorrow?" as I de-trained at Mountain View and have gotten more than a hesitant smile in return.
Union Square smelled of freshly cut grass as I walked through it the next day at 7:30am. Whether it was the spring air or the day before's horoscope or the Negronis and burgers from the previous night, I decided that today would be the day I said something to the woman, be it aloud or via a clandestinely passed note on the airmail stationary I'd tossed in my bag as I left my apartment on Bush.
The short, thin, married woman with the 4 inch Frankenstein platform shoes reading Motherhood Without Guilt, "Without" presenting itself in a self-empowered underlined Sharpie-style font, capitalized and giving the finger to Chicago style, snarled at me as I absently flipped the pages of the Chronicle while looking to see if my recent obsession had gotten on at 22nd. Ignoring my thoughts on horoscopes I found myself in the Classifieds and read A matter that was supposed to be signed, sealed, and delivered is suddenly postponed. Don't react too hastily. This could be advantageous. Somewhere, someone's glass is half-full.
...the story continues:
Horseshoes and Handgrenades
I woke up, muscles sore from having recently doubled my workout, eyes bleary from a three-scotch-and-soda consolation prize for not seeing the woman with the hypnotic eyes on Caltrain 379 last night. As I walked down 4th and crossed Howard and passed the carousel and underused Yerba Buena Gardens, I decided that if she was on the train again today I would actually talk with her, and get her name, and see if she wanted to go out for a drink.
I got on the train and took my usual seat, and by the time the doors had closed at 4th and Townsend my stomach had butterflies and I kept willing the window seat in front of me to stay empty. The train jerked out of the station and the seat remained free.
Caltrain has been conducting a survey over the past week or so, same one both directions, with the usual suspects of questions: where did you get on, how did you get there, where are you getting off, how are you proceeding from there, what type of ticket do you have, how long have you been riding Caltrain for, did some marketing thing that Caltrain did last August convince you to ride more frequently. Part of me would like to believe the surveys are to figure out how to better provide service to those of us stuck on a train an hour each way each day. That part is beaten up regularly by the part of me that knows that the surveys will be used to cut back on trains and stops. Trying to stick up for the part of me that was being beaten up, I took the survey again after telling the woman that I'd taken it the week before, and she explained that they wanted passengers to fill it out in both directions. Screwy, and I'd love to know how that skews the numbers. However, it did distract me for a fraction of a moment.
By the time we approached 22nd the butterflies had evolved into giant Tongan fruit bats, and I looked out the window to see the guy with the short hair, off-the-rack suit, and sneakers dawdling down the stairs as he always did, slowly validating his ticket, taking his sweet time as the train waited for him. I turned my head and saw the woman from the day before come up the stairs to the second level of the car, ringlets of hair playing over her eyes, grey corduroy jacket and light green skirt, a tease of skin just before a different pair of black mid-calf boots. Her eyes met mine and we both smiled. The window seat across from me was still empty, but she opted for the seat directly across the aisle and facing me. She sat and gave me a look that I have an afternoon set aside for, and proceeded to reach in her handbag. She says that she almost didn't make the train this morning, pulls out an iPod, smiles again, and pulls her laptop out of her work bag. Maybe she has to catch up on some work I thought, until she grimaced and put it away, looking at me as if I knew why. My guesses were "dead battery" and "clever ruse to talk with me". While I'm not sure if I was right on my first guess, I knew full well I was dead wrong on the second, as she pulled out the new Wired, put in her earbuds, and started reading.
All of three minutes had passed since we left 22nd and I didn't know what I should do. The train delaying off-the-rack suit and sneakers guy took the window seat, and the survey woman came round again to get the passengers who had just boarded. The woman with the green skirt takes one, as does the guy who's sitting where she should be, and I page through the rest of the paper, not reading a word of it.
When we arrived at Hillsdale my crossword was a mess of black ink and crossouts, and I wondered what day in school I'd missed where they taught how to have social skills. I couldn't exactly force a conversation, and I certainly couldn't just give her the business card I'd subtly extracted from the wallet in my left back pocket to my right back pocket and suggest we go out sometime. But I sure as hell couldn't just let this lie.
As we left Palo Alto my time was running out. My second-to-last ditch chance to talk with her would be when my favorite conductor came through to check tickets: she'd take her earbuds out, and then I could at least talk with her a little, how was work yesterday and your name is and that kind of thing. The one day he doesn't do it, and it's today. The best laid plans of mice and men, and I was definitely a mouse.
My last ditch chance to talk with her was a failure from the moment the train delayer got on at 22nd took his survey. I thought I could wait until we got to Mountain View, and as everyone was getting up and me talking wouldn't pierce the dead silence on the train, I could then say, "by the way, I'm Luke," and suggest going out for a drink sometime. But having glanced at his survey, his destination was San Jose, so he'd be sitting right there the entire time. "Fuck it," I thought, "he doesn't know you, and you don't give a shit anyway." And then she'd be stuck on the train with him for the next 13 minutes, and might feel as awkward as I was not wanting to saying anything in front of this guy. Again, I wondered what day of school I missed.
"Now arriving Mountain View, Mountain View station", and I rose as the train stopped, and she looked up and took an earbud out. I said "I hope you have a nice day - see you tomorrow morning?" She grinned and said so long as she made the train.
