The Rarely and The Never

She was already pissed.  The coffee shop in Astoria, Queens didn't offer soy milk as an option, and dairy is simply out of the question for Alison J. Rockford.  The J. is for Josephine, which she can't stand, so "J" will do.  She likes its imagined versatility:  Janelle, Jaqueline, Johannah.  So, she is undercaffeinated and grumpy.  She wouldn't have been running late except that she decided to squeeze in a workout at the Queens Gym.  Not because she liked the gym so much (greasy guys), but because it is one of the few fitness establishments left that still houses a Butt Cruncher machine.  Most places have given them up with claims of "dangerous," but Alison J. Rockford knows the proper form. 

And suffers genetically from a somewhat (a very)...  Flat.  Ass. 

The Butt-Cruncher is worth a visit to the gym in her sister's neighborhood, which, let's face it, is otherwise kinda lame.  Getting to and from Queens isnightmare.  Always.  No matter what.  The trains to get there are the N and the R, also known as the "Never" and "Rarely," for their lack of frequency.  But, Shayla was "going through it," was in the middle of it, sinking in it, with J. P. moving out, and now dating that insane girl back in North Carolina.  Whatever.  Alison would do just about anything for her sister.  Even a trip to Queens (gag).  On a weekday (cringe).  They shared a bottle of wine and Thai food takeout and Shayla cried.  Alison did exactly what was expected of her, ceaselessly insulting J.P. and The Madwoman of Charlotte, as they've taken to calling her.  The nickname was Alison's invention.

But, this morning, she had to watch five trains go by without boarding.  Each one so full that even skinny little Alison could not squeeze beyond the doors.  Murmurs of construction wafted from one end of the waiting platform to the other.  Exasperated sighs billowed like a crowd doing the wave at Yankee Stadium.  Finally, aboard the sixth train to enter the Steinway station since 8 A.M., and still a little workout-sweaty despite her shower, Alison is sandwiched on the Rarely Train between a skinny teenage boy with a nasty mouth (fuck this train, why don't they fucking fix it then, fuck this) and a woman who is covering her mouth and nose with one hand.  

She has good reason.  

The stench of the homeless man in the corner of the train car doesn't hit Alison right away.  Normally, a person would step on a stinky -and suspiciously empty- traincar, detect the smell, spy the source (usually asleep or passed-out) and prompty flee to a neighboring car.  But on a Wednesday like today--Attention passengers, due to maintenace on the tracks at Court Square, all R, M, and E trains are running with delays-- one has no choice but to stand firm in his or her single square-foot of breathing room, and not breathe.

What angered Alison most was not that he smelled.  No, that's a lie.
What angered Alison most was that he smelled.
For real, dude?  You can't smell yourself?  People on trains to New Jersey can smell you.
What angered her second most was that he'd swung his legs up onto the seat beside him, so that while the rest of working America stood on the train, this dude takes up two -maybe three- seats.  Alison huffed and rolled her eyes as she tried to balance her Kindle Paperwhite in one hand.  Reading would have been so simple, had she been granted a seat.  But when standing, with one hand needed to grip a pole for balance, turning the pages of the Kindle is awkward at best.

Sometimes it really sucks to be Alison J. Rockford.

With a single hand, and another "huff-roll," she slips the Kindle into an outer pocket of her shoulder bag.  Now what am I gonna do?  Think?  The skinny teenager mutters another "fuck," and Alison realizes that the train has slowed to a complete stop.  It was so crowded that she couldn't see out the windows to gauge whether the train tunnel walls were passing by or not.  The answer was not.  Or according to the skinny teenager, the answer was: "fucking fuck!" They were between Queens and Manhattan at this point which means, technically, they were trapped under water.  Alison chose not to dwell on her proximity to the filthy river which not doubt surrounded her and the others on all ends.

The smelly man taking up two seats had come to life a little.  The stall of the train nor the crowd that had formed during his slumbers seemed to trouble him at all.  Rather, he took this opportunity to lift his right pant leg and scratch on, at, and around a constellation of scabs.  Alison would have performed her signature huff-roll at this point, but something sour and hot and reminiscent of Pad Se Ew (ew!) gurgled up in her throat.  A prickling of moisture formed between her shoulder blades and just above her lip.

Fifteen minutes went by.  Alison caught a glimpse of a watch on someone else's wrist, though the face that belonged to the wrist and the watch was unidentifiable amid the throng.  At this point, it was impossible to get her Kindle out again, since an older gentleman and a teenage girl whose music -how does anyone listen to music that obnoxious this early in the morning?- was audible through her earbuds, had shifted position -presumably to avoid the overwhelming smell of rot coming from the corner seat- and now divided Alison's arm from her bag completely.  Her stomach growled.

How is it possible to be hungry and nauseous at the same time?  I am a walking contradiction, she concluded, and killed a good five minutes considering the egg-white breakfast sandwich versus the flax-and-banana smoothie at Donatello's Deli near work where she likes to grab breakfast.  She had not come to a conclusion when her imagination-menu was interrupted.  The woman beside her was panting.  Oh, god, Alison thought.  Of course, my train not only gets The Stinkage Representation of the day, but the Cray-Cray Rep, too.  Her observation was interrupted when the woman --of fifty?  fifty-five?  Alison was not a good gauge of age, especially of the over-forties.  At that point, we're all just old, right?-- the woman's breathing pace increases.  Sharp, unattractive gulps of air begin to draw the attention of the nearest circle of passengers.  Alison's hand was on a vertical pole, which at the time, was supporting a good dozen human bodies.  The hand above Alison's slides over her own, brushing sweaty fingers against the back of her hand.  Simultaneously, the hyper-ventilating lady slithers to the ground.  There was no falling, as there was simply no air space through which to pass on the way down.  Her knees must have just buckled, because where she once stood, she now... crumpled.  There was hardly a thing to do.  Subway passengers are infamously unmoved by emergency situations.

One time, Alison had ridden almost ten stops through Manhattan on the E train while a grown man lay fully stretched on the center of the train's floor.  Several people had tried to nudge him awake, but to no avail.  When someone finally did report the sleeping or unconscious man to the MTA official, traffic came to an abrupt halt and everyone on the train --and the trains behind it-- was delayed by an additional 45 minutes.  Not a huge incentive to report the passer-outers.

So, with a collective turn of the head, the R-train passengers stared.  It was a good several seconds before anyone reacted.  And the reaction was somewhat of a miracle.  With biblical proportions, space happened.  People moved!  Not unlike Moses' was the effect the fainting woman had on the eighth car of the R train that morning.  Alison thought perhaps she heard the sopranic holy tones of angels.

But it was not angels.  It was not singing.  It was a squeal?  A cry.  A cry!  Someone is calling for help.  It is a child.  The fainted woman's child?  Before Alison could discern, the cry became muffled and far-away, and Alison felt herself, too, get faint.  The layer of sweat above her lip evolved into a rush of perspiration under her arms, on her forehead, on the backs of her knees (the backs of her knees!  what is that?)  The divine Parting of the Passengers allowed for Alison to turn and place both hands on the pole to steady herself.  There was a cool spot where no hand had been gripping, and with eyes closed, she placed her forehead upon it.  The gush of perspiration paused, as she took a long deep breath.  And with the life-sustaining inhale came the putrescent air surrounding the Scab-Man.  Alison opened her eyes, and there he was, in an alarmingly close proximity to her face, one hand still gingerly resting under the once-khaki pant leg, and his glaze-y eyes fixed absolutely on her.

In an instant, imagination can take flight.  And in that instance, Alison's did.  She imagined his past, distant and near.  She imagined the source of each stain on the cuffs of his pants.  She imagined him eating half an egg-white sandwich from Donatello's Deli, then putting the other half in his pocket for later.  She imagined a doorway on 14th Street between 7th and 6th where a blanket and a cardboard box sometimes served as his home.  She saw a sister in his past and years of painful upbringing, if one could call it that.  Fights on blacktop playgrounds, gravel patches, and subway platforms.  She saw tiny bugs crawling on his shins wherever he went.  Drugs and needles.  Disease.

Bugs.  Drugs.  Needles.  Disease.
Bugs.  Drugs.  Needles.  Disease.

He was speaking to her.  But she couldn't recognize the sounds as words.  She was in a slow-motion nightmare, trapped on a crowded train, in a cement tunnel, under water, maybe facing her final moments.  She was running and screaming, but able neither to run or scream.  Alison's thick neural pathways perceived no aural meaning, because as he repeated the collection of syllables, she noticed only his hand. 
His right hand. 
His right hand from under his pant leg. 
His right hand from under his pant leg which bore five fingernails. 
His right hand from under his pant leg which bore five fingernails hooding five wide lines of brown filth...

Bugs.  Drugs.  Needles.  Disease.

Which he placed solidly on her arm.

Like moving through thick mud, she retracted her arm from his touch, but he caught her by the hand and gripped. 
He was sick.
She was stuck.  

He was speaking.  

She was deaf.  

He was referring to the woman that had fainted, but Alison misunderstood, and took his two-word, third-person message as a first-person resolution to change the small, mean person she'd become.  His words were no doubt from above, from angels, from god.  Alison was sure of that.

"Help her."

He said help her.  And, being of the Rockford family, it was only natural, that Alison understood "her" to mean "me."  She was the her.  She was always the her.  The train started moving, and behind her someone clamored to the floor of the eighth car on the R train with a bottle of water for the woman who'd fainted.  But Alison was a million miles away, a million miles above, looking down at herself in her pencil skirt and heels, and she resolved to be a better person.  In a second's time, her exceptional imagination saw her volunteering for the city, the country, other countries, the world.  She sold all her designer clothes and cut off her long honey hair.  She stopped wearing makeup and worrying about The Petty Shit.  She met a man and they got a farm and grew organic vegetables and she was satisfied to "live simply so others can live."  From her aerial point of view, she saw herself home-schooling her kids and campaigning for the well-meaning underdog political candidates.  She was taking in orphans and foster kids and keeping them safe from hormone-injected meat and milk...

And then the train jolted again.

They had reached Lexington and 59th.  She wasn't going to die in a subway car in a tunnel under water.  The woman who'd fainted was seated now (someone gave up their seat?  How did I miss that?) and doing okay.  The Smelly Man had released her hand, and Alison came-to.  She expected another meaningful eye-lock with the Jesus/Buddah-Scab-Man-Bum, but he had already fallen back asleep, his scab-scratching hand now limp at his side.

"This is Lexington and 59th Street.  Transfers are available for the 4, 5 , N, Q, and F trains."

People were already filing out of the R train.  Someone had an arm around the waist of the fainter-lady and ushered her off the train car.  The child that had screamed was calm now and followed her weakened mother somberly.  Alison realized with a start that she was in Manhattan, and this was her stop, and she had to get off here and transfer to the 6.  She had to scramble to get out before the doors closed; there were already new passengers already flooding in, taking note of the stench, and stepping back off.  The familiar "bing-bong" sounded, signaling doors-about-to-close, but magically, the skinny foul-mouthed teenager slapped his hand on one side of the door-opening, delaying the closure just long enough to let Alison out.  "Thank you!" she said as she squeezed past three or four bodies.  The boy lifted his chin in an "up-nod"of acknowledgement and said:

"Dang girl, for real, you better wash your hands.  That kinda scratching ain't right..."

And as he shook his head:

"...fuck."

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