Escape from New York: the Subway Sequel

by Scott Sciortino

     Can you tell I haven’t been here long?  I’m not inattentive, I just am too often attentive to the wrong things.  While I can tell you in great detail about the nuances of the little spat between Indian shopkeeper and the two kids in the store today, I don’t actually know if he gave me the right change.   

     As I walk around here I look at the buildings, I look at the people (Mostly the women, true.) and I trip on the sidewalk cracks, step in the potholes.     

     It’s around eight in the evening and I’m trying to get to the bus station at the George Washington Bridge to go visit my parents.  I looked at my map before I left home. I have to take the red 1 train up to 168^th Street and then switch to a blue train. The A or the C.  I’m wondering on the way to 168^th what God’s logic was when he gave some trains numbers and some trains letters and bestowed various colors upon them. I can’t figure it out for the life of me, and don’t recall it being mentioned in Genesis.  I guess there really are some things we are not meant to know.

      I get off at 168^th and find my way to the platform for the A and the C. There aren’t many people at all. They are all standing more or less on one side of the platform between the tracks and I look up at the sign on that side and it says A and C uptown and something about late nights and some street and ’Til Tuesday and blah, blah, blah. Good enough. I wander to an empty section of the platform. I’m wondering why it just says “late night” and doesn’t specify a time, and just when is late night in the city that supposedly never sleeps, and when does late night become early morning anyway, when a train pulls up on the other side of the platform and a few people get off, but I’m not really paying attention.  The train is just sitting there, something I haven’t really seen before. I read the sign for that track.  A and C, uptown. Hey, it’s the same thing. I look at the sign one more time. Yes, uptown. So I start for the train, when suddenly the doors close.

       Damn!

       But then they open again. Aha! I leap in.

       As the doors close quickly behind me and the trains starts rolling I realize that I’m the only person in the car.  I quick peek back and forth doesn’t reveal any passengers in the adjacent cars.  I begin to suspect that something is not quite right.  As the train moves toward the darkness an MTA worker on the platform points an accusatory finger at me and I feel my hair stand on end.

       What? What did I do? What did I do wrong? A train came, the doors opened, I got on. Okay, okay, there was maybe something a little odd, a little out of the routine about the way it happened, but that is what you’re supposed to do right? A train comes, the doors open, people get on.

       In the darkness of the tunnel I think, well it’s got to be going somewhere, so I’ll just get off then, just some lost time. It occurs to me that this train might or might not be moving out in the same direction as it was upon arrival, but I don’t really know about that since—as I believe I mentioned—I wasn’t paying much attention, and it wouldn’t necessarily provide me with any intelligible data if I did know. I find the transition between above and below ground completely disorienting. The trains keep coming from the opposite direction that my geophysical intuition tells me they will approach. When I exit a strange station I will unfailingly walk one block in the wrong direction. It also occurs to me that I can’t be the only soul on this train. They don’t just drive themselves do they? No, not even the ones with that well-spoken couple making all the announcements. Yes, I figured out they’re not really onboard. There has to be a conductor or an engineer or a driver or an operator, whatever they call him or her, who is driving this thing. But do they have to be in the front car? I mean, what is the front if it just changed direction, and every car has that little booth thingy and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen trains operated by people not in the front car, so do I have to knock on every door? They’re like little confessionals aren’t they? I’ll find the right one, confess my sin of being on the train, request penance and—most of all—redemption: a way out of this underworld.

       I’m thinking all these things when, right there in the dark tunnel, my Ghost Train comes to a halt.  Now I’m thinking about what enormous space in the universe is occupied by my own ignorance. Do trains go to bed?  If so, where do they sleep? This can’t be “late night” surely, but there weren’t many people on the platform, so maybe when things slow down like that some trains go to bed early. Maybe it’s going to go to sleep right here. Maybe there’s a secret exit and the driver has the key. Maybe I’m going to have to spend the night here. Cinematic memories of subterranean terrors inhabit every follicle on my head. I’ve never been afraid of the dark, but this is different. It’s what is liable to be down here in the dark with me that scares me.

       I begin rushing forward through the cars, banging on the little driver boxes. I’m not frantic, I just figure I’ve only got so long before the lights go out.  For all I know the driver may be behind me, but I’ve only got so much time left and I’ve picked my direction—something I’m really good at. Picking, that is. I’m not frantic because even though it’s winter it probably won’t get too cold in the tunnel and besides I’ve got an overnight bag, I can put on extra socks and stuff and just try to sleep until morning.

       But I won’t sleep. No. I know that. The cold won’t kill me, but they will. Eventually they’ll get my scent and the giant man-eating rats will use their tails, strong as steel cables, to pry open the car doors. My cries for help will be in vain, and the curdling screams of my death throes as rats the size of pit bulls tear at my flesh will echo unheard through the tunnel. They will crunch down my bones, they will lap my blood up off the seats and the floor and even chew up my wallet. No one will ever know what happened. That’s how it goes down here. Rats are incredibly smart and they leave no evidence.  If they did we’d be on to them. There’s a very good reason you never hear about the man-eating rats.

      So all right, maybe I’m a little bit frantic. The only thing more enormous than my ignorance is my imagination. Then, as I enter yet another car and slam my hand against the driver’s box I spy a little fella in an orange vest with a broom and a dustpan in the next car. I slow down. I try to compose myself. My heart stops redlining. He enters my car.

      I don’t remember what I said, exactly. Something interrogative. I wanted to get down and kiss the little fella’s feet for being my Personal Savior. I wanted to say I was sorry that as soon as I got my driver’s license I lied and told my parents that I would drive myself to church when I would instead go to the diner and smoke cigarettes and drink coffee, that I had never been back to church since but I would go to mass tomorrow morning, and every day after that for as long as God allowed me to live.

     What I said was something like, “Excuse me, what is this train doing?”

      “It’s turning around.”

      “Oh.”

     Never mind that I know the train can’t literally be turning around, it can only change direction, I’m not about to discuss anything directional.

      “We’ll reenter the station in a few minutes. You gotta get off and cross back over to the uptown platform.”

       “Oh.  Okay.  Thanks.”

       I sit down. The little fella, with his broom and dustpan, moves on to the next car. I look around and see trash everywhere. In a few minutes the train begins to move again, we reach the station and I get back to where I’m supposed to be, life on track, Jersey in my sights, and I’m paying complete attention.

     My little adventure didn’t last very long, but I learned something very profound, something I need to tell you, something you have to know. It’s now branded into my skull just as deeply as those valuable lessons the nuns taught me in grammar school. So, right up there with stay in line, even ahead of it: Don’t ever set foot on an empty subway car in New York City.

      It’s all right America, you don’t have to thank me, but someday it just might save your life.

Scott Sciortino is a teacher and writer. His fiction, essays and reviews have been published in various places, including The Missouri Review. He is currently working on a book about music in the subway.