She walked through the horizontal door…
…and onto the train. Pushing her wire cart with the tiny plastic wheels, which was, of course, overflowing with plastic bags. She turned to her right after a brief pause, then went to the end of the car, which was a legnthy 15 feet away. She said something to the blonde 20-something tourist, who was accompanied by none other than his 20-something tourist girlfriend and flip flops.
He stood up ad moved from his seat and sat next to his lady across the asile. She had asked if she could sit there. His response was typical.
This gave me enough time to evaluate the contents of the wire cart from my safe 15 feet. It looked like this woman was not homeless. It was too organized, too clean-too many of the things in the bag looked like groceries, or shoe boxes, or children’s books to be typical homeless baggage.
“Excuse me, Sir?”
Shit. She was pointing a finger at me.
“Sir!”
What?!? I turn head to the left…eye contact.
“You shouldn’t lean on the door,” she warned.
“No. It’s ok.” I was having the kind of morning where I didn’t care. I didn’t need to say any more. I ride this train every fucking day. That was my attitude this morning.
Thirty more seconds went by and she had now pulled her body out of the seat and was pushign her cart of miscellany towards me. She positioned the cart directly in front of the door all the way in the corner, wheels enabled in motion by the momentum of the train. She wrapped a liver spotted right hand on a vertical rail.
“I just want to make sure you’re safe in case of a malfunction.”
“Sure.” Don’t feed the machine.
“You never know with these things.” Now I noticed the real details. She was in her mid-sixties at least, wearing shorts that terminated just below the knee, which were directly on top of her drug store stockings she probably spent hours selecting to cover up the spider veins.
The subway driver pumped the breaks, thus making her cart rocket forward into the partition that a sleeping middle aged man was resting his head on. I noticed her “Jesus Loves Me” lanyard. She got a big smile. She was clean. Nun?
“I’m so sorry.”
I didn’t take that too seriously. Someone smiling and apologizing? She was nuts.
She then pulled the cart back to it’s previous position, as did the middle age man his head and so did the subway’s speedometer…
It slammed into the partition again, in the exact same fashion, only this time the repsonse was to me. She turned to me after postioning the cart once more and said:
“I guess I’m not being very obidient.”
I want a car.
