53rd to Knickerbocker
I wake as my right cheek grazes the cold metal of the hand-rail and recoil, scrabbling around the front pocket of my bag for hand sanitizer. Briefly, I consider what the sterilising liquid might do to my skin. Then I think about what the mystery hand-rail germs might do to my skin, and lather it onto my face.
The train stops at 42nd and Times Square and I realise I haven’t even been on for five minutes. Work dragged on for the whole twelve hours, and I watched a silver snake dart out of the station as I arrived, leaving me standing on the 53rd Street platform for thirteen minutes exactly. Now it’s 12:37 and I’m still fourteen stops from home. The man sitting opposite me smiles a toothy smile and I look down at my screen, at the Instagram feed endlessly refreshing without service, gasping for 4G under a mass of steel and concrete.
When we pass through 34th Street, my phone dings with a text from Dearbhla. At 23rd, it dings again; this time it’s Colm. The messages sit there, one on top of the other against a background of my dead dog. Dearbhla is asking if I want to get brunch on Sunday. I can’t, I’m working - but it’s nice of her to ask.
She’s good like that. We didn’t know one another before coming over, but she was a friend of a friend, just like every other Irish person here. From Cork, but went to college with this person and is a cousin of an acquaintance of that person - the one you met in Whelan’s that time. Such a small world, isn’t it?
She arrived over around the same time as me, but she established herself almost straight away, in nearly every respect: friends, apartment, boyfriend (although she brought that one from home). We spent a lot of time together in those first few months, when neither of us had jobs and it felt like a long, sweaty summer holiday. Glistening bodies posing for photos on Brooklyn Bridge and lukewarm cans on the roof .
The toothy man gets off at 14th Street (thank God) and now there are only two other people in the carriage. Anya from work said it was always best to get in the fullest car at this time, or the one closest to the driver, but I’ve absentmindedly sat at the end of the train. I count the stops lit up in orange above the window. 12:44 and only ten more to go.
We go above ground after Essex, up on out of the darkness like the world’s slowest roller coaster. No more texts come in. So, I continue to stare at Dearbhla and Colm; Colm and Dearbhla. He’s asking if I’m done work. If he can come over when his shift’s finished. His bar doesn’t shut until 2am, even on a Monday, but it’s in Bushwick so he can be at mine by 2:15 if it’s quiet and he gets most of the cleaning done early.
The Instagram feed refreshes at last. Dearbhla has posted a photo. It already has more than 200 likes, and I can see why. I’m not half as pretty as her, with her effortlessly wavy blonde hair, straight white teeth and perfect, non-saggy boobs. Not that I’m comparing our differences exactly, just acknowledging them. There’s nothing to resent, because she doesn’t even try. She just is.
I tap into her profile so I can have a proper look. There we are together in last week’s post, smiling in the sun at Mister Sunday. Dearbhla, looking at the camera and grinning, luminous and me, eyes half-closed, forehead shiny with sweat even though it’s the end of fucking September.
The signal drops again in the middle of Williamsburg bridge, giving me no choice but to look out the window to pass the time before it picks up again. The lights of Manhattan twinkle; hundreds of building-shaped constellations. My train trundles on towards home, away from the glitz and glamour, to Brooklyn, where my best offer is a quick, sticky ride and a pat on the back for a job well done. I feel it in the pit of my stomach - the uneasiness, sitting there like bad pizza. My body knows that I’m not a good person, and it’s rebelling against me.
My phone taunts me too. When I lock it, the messages pop up again as though it just received them. My thumb swipes left on Colm’s message and the option comes up to hide it. I go to do the same with Dearbhla’s message, but I swipe right on hers and reply: “Working tomorrow :( but NEED to see you soon!” No suggestion of an actual day to meet.
The train arrives at a stop and I tune into the announcement just in time to realise that it’s Knickerbocker. The doors almost shut on my right foot as I slither through at the last second. 1:09.
The streets of Bushwick are oddly quiet. Raucous street parties with Abba songs in Spanish and brightly coloured plastic cups seem to have ended with the summer. The air is still heavy and warm though. It’s October, but it might as well be June, plus pumpkins and Halloween decorations that are too over-the-top to be eerie. I wade on.
When I get to my building, Colm is sitting on the steps. His bike is locked to the railings, presumptuously. “Got off early.” I stay silent, so he goes on. “D isn’t expecting me home until after two.” The key goes in the door, and he follows me up the stairs. I don’t know why he’s here. I’m not half as pretty as her.
Laoise Slattery currently lives in Dublin, after spending a year in New York (if she hasn’t mentioned that already). She is a graduate of the M. Phil. in Creative Writing at TCD and was chosen to be a Young Writer Delegate for the 2018 Dublin Book Festival. Working slowly but surely towards the completion of her first novel, with short stories published in Sonder and Strange Times magazines.
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