Inside the train station, we sat there and watched people—live. That’s how the trains got started. It was light inside the large space, until a sparrow got inside and flew frantically around through the beams before finding its escape. That’s when the dark started to stream in. I had been watching a girl, sixteen or seventeen, with large hoop earrings and long fake nails talking to a boy in the chair next to her. Theo sat next to me—silent. I knew that I wasn’t very alone. But I wasn’t inside him, either.
Why we were there, I can’t be sure. Those things always seem to be uncertain to me. Why I’m anywhere. We had woken up in my house, showered at his, and laughed about how he had planed to take a run in the morning and how the morning comes and those things go. Then I got this great idea to hop on the metro at Beverly and Vermont and take it to Union Station and find people—to watch. It seemed voyeuristic and an appropriate place to do so.
Anyway, sitting next to me, Theo got to saying nothing at all, and that girl had the world to say to that boy—free and loose her mouth moved—and my head got to spinning. Her feet dangled from her chair almost teasing the ground, dancing about while she whispered in the boy’s ear. He laughed. It was their little secret. I looked at Theo. He looked at me. We can do that. We can hold a look for so long that things get blurry, and his brown eyes turn into his coarse eyelashes and I get confused as to whether to focus on the right or left pupil.
A man in his sixties walked right past us, severely hunched over, and Theo said that he could see this man’s spirit giving up. I didn’t see him that way at all. More girls walked over to the boy and sat around him. The girl was still there pushing buttons on her phone—free in her own world. Comfortable.
I thought about work later and how I need the money. Then I thought about how I needed the money last year, and I still need the money. Then I thought about Theo giving up and me giving up and sitting at a table at Gingergrass not saying anything about it at all. He’d look into his beer and I’d look into my white sangria for something to blame. But there would be nothing—silence.
Let’s go somewhere, I finally said.
Let’s, he said after no thought at all.
My dad has a house up north, he said as we walked to a teller. And there is this old dance teacher I’d love to introduce you to. You’d just fall really deep into that stuff, he said buying our tickets. And you’d just love her husband. He was a really famous architect. Oh, I can’t wait to take you to this restaurant. He just kept going on like that for moments, frantically.
Wait, I said, I forgot something on the chair. My sweater. That one that I got from a time I can’t even remember. We both laughed at this.
He said he’d wait right there.
Right here. I’ll wait right here for you, is actually what he said.
I started to walk to the chair where I was sitting. The girl was in my seat. Holding my sweater. Her head moved around searching. The boy sat talking to the other girls. But the girl didn’t mind at all. She just kept looking at the sweater.
We walked up the steps, Theo first. We sat on the uncomfortable seats across from no one at all. Alone. In a tube going north, all alone.
Theo kept talking. Talking and talking, and laughing. Wait, did you find your sweater, he asked?
I shook my head no.
We’ll get you a new sweater. I know this perfect store. Why do you keep looking at me like that, he asked.
I like the way your lips move when you talk, I said.
And then we just looked at each other. For a short time while the train slowly started moving.
Escaping.
