Chapter 10. Micah
MICAH
I seize the last seat on the F train before the doors close. The lack of air-conditioning in the first two cars has packed this one with weary-eyed commuters. I check for expectant mothers and old people. Not because I care. I just detest the pressure to give up my seat when I’m writing.
Sitting here on the train, the weight of the day lifts from my shoulders at last. Unlike at the agency, it doesn’t matter if someone here sees me making faces or arguing with the Shadow People. The subway’s a rolling circus of poets, entertainers, and crazies like me.
I run my hand down a fresh page. My pen scratches along, free and unbound.
A ripple of outcries travels from the far end of the car.
Here we go. Some guy in a green shirt shouts the f slur and something else. The receiver of the taunts: a slender, young, androgynous-looking person with bright, red-dyed hair, glittery makeup, and a beard.
Faces tense around me. My fellow passengers sit riveted.
I sigh, forgetting what I was about to write. My pen hovers.
Nothing happens for several minutes. A calm permeates the car. The train travels on, screaming through the tunnel. Commuters return to their books and phones. I resume writing.
Someone shrieks.
I reluctantly watch round two unfold.
Green shirt guy points at the young man. Yells something about God and damnation. He steps toward him and spits.
His victim recoils, his face stretched in horror.
The adjacent onlookers freeze—including that girl Brynn, who’s leaning on a center pole.
The train drags into the terminal. “The next stop is Twenty-Third Street,” a robotic voice announces.
Green shirt guy lights a cigarette.
“You can’t smoke here,” a woman calls out.
The schmuck blows a white cloud in her direction, then aims his lit cigarette at the young man’s face.
A collective gasp sounds.
The doors open.
Brynn stomps on green shirt guy’s foot and pushes the young red-haired man farther into the car.
A few commuters spring to their feet. Forming a sort of scrum, they propel green shirt guy out through the doors and onto the train platform.
More obscenities get thrown.
“Please clear the closing doors.”
Green shirt guy breaks free, attempts reentry.
The doors shut.
His balled-up fist meets the glass, accompanied by a string of expletives.
Brynn rights the young man, whom she knocked down with her initial shove, onto his feet.
I lower my head into my notebook. Someone give that Girl Scout a merit badge.
The theme song from Psycho plays in my pocket.
I decline the call for the umpteenth time today.