Double Vision

Double Vision

We met at Astor Place. I said hello, she said hi. Her face was the same as I remembered. It was a Sunday afternoon in autumn, and the wind made her cheeks rosy. She smiled curiously. Looking back, maybe it was less the wind and more the circumstances. It had been quite sometime since our last encounter, two months, if my memory served me.

“Shall we,” I said leading the way.

Down the stairs of the subway station we passed through the turnstile, I first, then she.

Subway’s no way for a good man to go down, rich man won’t ride and the hobo he can drown.

Waiting for the 6 train I began to fidget, as Elton John’s lyrics bounced back and forth in my mind. She attempted to talk over the roar of the uptown train. “How was your summer?” she loudly inquired.

And I thank the lord

“Is that what you really want to ask?” I shouted back.

for the people I have found.

She turned her head and nodded, as the train rolled to a stop. The doors opened and the people poured out, filling the platform. Her body backed into mine, and a faint, familiar fragrance swept through me. Time stood as the aroma lingered. A heartbeat later we were fighting our way through the entanglement. Entering the passenger car, we managed to find an empty seat.

The smell of her hair. I remembered that, I remembered the morning after finding my face softly nestled in a pillow of blonde, breathing her in. She had yet to wake, and the sun rising through her barred apartment windows painted crisscrossing patterns on her exposed back.

“14TH STREETUNION SQUARE. THIS IS A BRONX BOUND 6 TRAIN, NEXT STOP 23RD STREET.” The mechanical voice stole me back to the present.

Gathering myself I apologized to her. “Whatever for?” she asked. “I’m not quite myself today, I, um, I seem to have lost my words…” I trailed off watching the child in the seat across from me wriggle in the arms of his mother, fighting for his freedom, the mother’s face a picture of exhaustion.

“Don’t give it a second thought, sometimes it’s nice to be alone, alone with someone else,” she said.

Through the reflection in the window in front of me, I stole a glance at her face as she spoke those last words.