Lisa P Writes

I left work a couple hours later than usual. My boss asked me to stay to finish a project that he, in his round about ways, blamed me for the inconsistencies. I blamed him. He stayed late to avoid his kids and wife, and he dragged me into it. They paid me well and I rarely stayed past five, but I was too tired to look at it in a positive way.

My coworkers left for the day so I resigned to take the Chicago “L” train. A cab would have been about twenty dollars, too expensive. Three of us took turns driving to work to avoid the dirty underground train filled with various loony and business commuters. The train had been my transportation up until this year, but now I felt spoiled that I didn’t have to ride it. No more lousy sitting on the tracks, pushing back my arrival time, or men in dingy clothes preaching the gospel shaking a tin cup. No more fart smells or overbearing lemony clean scents. No more catching colds from those sneezing and coughing on or around me . . .

“Come out tonight,” my coworker Jessica, pleaded with me. She wanted me to meet her new boyfriend. A group of her friends met at the same bar every Thursday night. Jessica was introduced to the guy on one of those Thursday nights. I used to go out with them all the time. All I wanted to do lately was to sit in front of my television and let a movie take me away. My boyfriend and I had been broken up for six months. “Maybe, depends on how late I’m stuck at work,” I told her.

Mike, my ex-boyfriend and I dated for over three years. He was the one I was going to marry. Things had not gone well from spring until Thanksgiving. We were pulling apart. I denied it, putting on a happy face at his parents’ for Thanksgiving. After that weekend, he said, “We should split up, see where we end up.” I shouted at him that if he didn’t want to buy me a Christmas gift, that was okay, but we didn’t have to break up. I had already purchased an I Pod, two sweaters and a new leather wallet for him. I gave it to him at Christmas, but that didn’t help. He gave me nothing. He offered to give back the gifts, but I stormed out. I cried to him for two months and then stopped calling. He called me a couple of weeks ago, but I didn’t pick up and hadn’t called him back. I had no idea what I would say.

The pressure from my parents started. “Sweetheart, you’re running out of time,” my mother hounded me about my biological clock. She wanted me to come back home to live. In twenty years of living away from my parents, brothers and their families, I had always thought that one day I would end up back home. At least I had moved closer in the past seven years. Now it was only a three-hour drive versus a three-hour plane ride.

I stepped outside, into the fading light of the day. The stress of work started to lift when I breathed in the cool air. My mind circled around that project. Hopefully I fixed what needed to be. Too late to worry about it, my boss had sent it to the client as I walked out the door. I buttoned up my light suede jacket, it felt colder leaving later that day. Spring had a hard time coming around. I slammed my hands in my pockets, big leather bag dangling from my shoulder and head down on the way to the subway.

I dug deep into my bag in front of the turnstile at the train station, swearing I would purchase a bag with pockets instead of an endless pit. I felt the rectangle card and stuck it into the mouth of the turnstile. It beeped at me, my card had a buck fifty on it and the machine wanted a buck seventy-five. I grumbled and pulled back, bumping into the people piled up behind me. Huffs and puffs rolled out of their mouths as I had added about three seconds to their commute. To add money, I had to insert the card into a vending machine. I once again, dug to the bottom of my bag trying to find the quarter I fingered a moment before.

I made it to the bottom of the steps only moments before the train arrived. I had no desire to stand in the cavernous underground for too long. The advertisements pleaded with me from across the tracks as the train screeched up and blocked the view. I was tired and just wanted to get home. My television grew cold without me.

A set of train doors opened in front of me and I hunkered on, looking for a seat. I couldn’t believe that all the seats were taken at that time of night. Maybe everyone got stuck at work late. What a relief, no foul smells, I thought to myself. I walked forward from the door and stood by the opposite door, hanging onto a pole as we pulled away. There weren’t many people standing.

The train swayed back and forth. Various scraps of paper scattered the floor up the aisle. I turned to look at a guy who stood a few feet from me towards the back of the train car. He had a pile of newspapers on the seat beside him. What a jackass, hogging the seat, not offering it up.

The guy wore jeans, a button down shirt that hung below his gray wool sweater and trendy sneakers with diagonal lines on them. I kept looking at him from the corner of my eye because he was nice looking with his crew cut brown hair and bright blue eyes. He looked around at everyone, bright and cheery and caught me looking at him. He reached down and grabbed a couple pages of newspaper, standing with his legs shoulder width apart to hold his stance in the train’s rocking.

Uneasiness moved through me, I felt like moving to the other side of the train car because I thought the guy unpredictable. Who makes eye contact? What was he going to do with the newspapers? He’s not going to involve me, is he? I looked at the girl who leaned against the pole by me and raised my eyebrows. She had noticed the newspaper guy too and I saw her rock from one foot to the other and pull her bag closer. A guy in a dark suit carrying an expensive briefcase stood nearby and glanced our way with a furrowed brow. It was as if we were in this together if the guy decided to go crazy. The people sitting nearest him completely ignored his actions, except for one girl who wore a long flouncy skirt and big hoop earrings. She stared mesmerized by what he would do next. The headline, Reality TV Not Real? glared from the page that he held up and then folded. He creased the newspapers in precise movements.

To be continued . . .