Knowing others can smell your trepidation does not keep you from moving forward into the large cavernous guts of the city.  In your own town the caves are made of stone and the mountains are made of the earth’s sweat.  Here traipsing like a hiker through footpaths worn by angry hurt tired boots of fine Italian leather, sweaty boy shoes, and razor sharp woman heels you hear the constant hum of motor mouths making meals of mousy minions on mini cellular phones.

     A woman helps you buy a ticket to a place in Brooklyn you’ve never known.  Pushing all the buttons to connections in dubious outer planets.  Your apprehension trickles down the ledges of your collar bone and feeds into the icy cold reservoir at the base of your spine.  Hoping no one notices, you move forward into the non-stop stomping. stomping feet, stomping onward to destinations untold. Everyone knows where they are going, except you.   

     Fear keeps you moving, to be still means being lost and being lost leaves you vulnerable to unfathomable outside forces.  Looking at your ticket you see you’ve bought a ticket from point B to point C.  A man behind a glass of tall shimmering light speaks through a microphone to announce to the world that you don’t know what you are doing.  Cringing, you have asked for help and are told that you cannot get there from here.  Must start all over.  Can’t get your money back until later, sometime later, not now. 

      The man points westward, downward, into the caves, as your steel gray limo waits.  Your vehicle contains hundreds of special people just like you, with interior to match the insidious green pallor of most of the occupants.  It rushes within like a snake caught in a jar.  As the token kerplunks into the slot and the revolving turnstile hits you in the thigh you realize there is no turning back.  Caught in the forward motion of the city, caught in the ever circling rhythm, caught on the back of the serpent. 

     The platforms are virtually empty.  Great concrete slabs filling space and time.  A mother comforts a crying child.  People start to filter in.  All is still. The air is short here, fumes and furnaces burn the eyes.  A rumble begins in the outer core of the Earth.  A rush of wind.  You stare into the wormhole and see black.  People moving quickly to your left, a mad dash down more steps into the unknown.  A or C, there is no B.  Hop on the ride that arrives first, as the music stops.

     Your heartbeat and feet match the steady tempo of the tunnel.  You find a seat and soon your body starts to sway as the mother car rocks her babies in the womb.  At each stop you warily watch for signs hoping this train is pointed in the right direction.  Doors burst open, incoming youth.  Exclamations.  Move to the side.  You want to make yourself into the dirt speck imbedded into the hand rail.  The slow ebb of tension which was flowing into the curl of your toes now rises to your neck.  Boom box down in center, music blares.  

High rolling gymnastics, flying feet, and clapping hands engulf the car.  Mouths turn upward as a new beat invades.  The black music warriors perform leaps and bounds with the sway of the car and the music.  The entire car puts their hands together, and separate as they dip into pockets and purses.  The youths exclaim it is a full days’ work for a Saturday. They as quickly leap from the car, entertainment, city style.  The car, the ride, the kids all part of an ending which never begins.

     You have arrived.  Moving up the stairs you see it is raining. The world is as it has always been. 

Debra Zucco lives in central Pennsylvania and works as a test administrator for the Federal government. This, her first published essay, is about her first experience on the New York City subway.