Opening Volley
Part of something I intend to be much bigger. Ungodly sloppy first draft. Hey, I only promised you fiction. I never promised it would be any good.
When I first saw the door, I was 18. Brushed and shaved, combed and polished, desperately hoping that my meticulous grooming would make up for the shabby jacket and suitcase lovingly repaired with brown packing tape.
I stood alone on that subway platform, all of New York bustling around me, waiting for the train that would take me to my first interview, and, according to Mama, the rest of my life. I played with my tie, cleaned my glasses and cleaned them again. My watch was old and embarrassing, but accurate. I was early. Too early. The train wasn't due for another twenty minutes, and that was if it were running on time. And I began to pace.
At first, I kept my wanderings close to the platform's edge, worried that the train might leave me if I strayed too far. But as my anxieties grew (Could I really hope to impress the junior partners? Had my grades truly been good enough? Just who the hell did I think I was, interviewing for the most prestigious accounting firm in the city?) so did the scope of my pacing. Eventually I found myself a good thirty feet from my platform, reading the public announcements with passionate disinterest and making note of my intended stops and connections on the wall's worn maps.
And then I saw the door.
While no one has ever accused the New York subway system of being well looked-after or in anyway clean, the advanced distress and obvious disuse of this door struck me. First, there was no graffiti on it, not a mark, not a tag. The only surface of the station it seemed that did not cry out with the desperate urban frustration to tell anyone that someone was alive. What was more, perhaps, was the obvious age of the door. Far older than the painted steel doors that led to other alcoves and storage areas. And somehow with more character. Those painted steel doors were cold and soulless, but this other...
I glanced down at my watch again, mindful that the train I needed would only come once, and (if it were on time) in about 10 minutes. Reassured that I could not possibly miss it, I continued in my odd examination of the even odder door. The door was wooden and wet, the damp seeping from it condensed in tiny drops and, eventually, ran down its surface. I remember thinking then that it looked like the tear-streaked face of an old man in mourning. I remember the thought because it was the first time in my carefully measured life of sums and equations that I had spontaneously created simile. It was also the first time in my life that I recalled feeling such a deep curiosity, such a driven interest. In anything.
By this point my suitcase had been abandoned at my feet, a misused and disinteresting thing in the face of the anachronism that was the door. I had to touch it, you see. I had to feel the dampness of the wood. I had to place my palm against it, to feel its substance.
I reached out, with the lack of hesitation known only by the young, and pressed against its cool damp. The texture of the thing was wrong. Not spongy the way wood gets after so much time unprotected and ignored. But mossy. And distinctly alive. And though I should have recoiled then, should have picked up my suitcase and hurried my way back to the platform, I stood there, with my hand partially embedded in the door's inviting softness.
I cannot say how long I stood there, feeling the door pulse slightly beneath my fingers. I lost all concern for my watch, my train, my measured sums. The thoughts of my interview, of my future left me standing there alone, hand against this forgotten door like a mourner at the Wailing Wall. How strange I must have looked, a young man in a shabby suit, pressing against this doorway as if it and he were all that existed in the universe. But I doubt anyone noticed. No, I doubt anyone noticed at all.
It was not until much later that the door seemed to lose its power and let my hand fall away. But then it was too late.
My train, the train that my Mama was convinced would carry me to my future, had come and gone. And it had left me behind.
When I first saw the door, I was 18. Brushed and shaved, combed and polished, desperately hoping that my meticulous grooming would make up for the shabby jacket and suitcase lovingly repaired with brown packing tape.
I stood alone on that subway platform, all of New York bustling around me, waiting for the train that would take me to my first interview, and, according to Mama, the rest of my life. I played with my tie, cleaned my glasses and cleaned them again. My watch was old and embarrassing, but accurate. I was early. Too early. The train wasn't due for another twenty minutes, and that was if it were running on time. And I began to pace.
At first, I kept my wanderings close to the platform's edge, worried that the train might leave me if I strayed too far. But as my anxieties grew (Could I really hope to impress the junior partners? Had my grades truly been good enough? Just who the hell did I think I was, interviewing for the most prestigious accounting firm in the city?) so did the scope of my pacing. Eventually I found myself a good thirty feet from my platform, reading the public announcements with passionate disinterest and making note of my intended stops and connections on the wall's worn maps.
And then I saw the door.
While no one has ever accused the New York subway system of being well looked-after or in anyway clean, the advanced distress and obvious disuse of this door struck me. First, there was no graffiti on it, not a mark, not a tag. The only surface of the station it seemed that did not cry out with the desperate urban frustration to tell anyone that someone was alive. What was more, perhaps, was the obvious age of the door. Far older than the painted steel doors that led to other alcoves and storage areas. And somehow with more character. Those painted steel doors were cold and soulless, but this other...
I glanced down at my watch again, mindful that the train I needed would only come once, and (if it were on time) in about 10 minutes. Reassured that I could not possibly miss it, I continued in my odd examination of the even odder door. The door was wooden and wet, the damp seeping from it condensed in tiny drops and, eventually, ran down its surface. I remember thinking then that it looked like the tear-streaked face of an old man in mourning. I remember the thought because it was the first time in my carefully measured life of sums and equations that I had spontaneously created simile. It was also the first time in my life that I recalled feeling such a deep curiosity, such a driven interest. In anything.
By this point my suitcase had been abandoned at my feet, a misused and disinteresting thing in the face of the anachronism that was the door. I had to touch it, you see. I had to feel the dampness of the wood. I had to place my palm against it, to feel its substance.
I reached out, with the lack of hesitation known only by the young, and pressed against its cool damp. The texture of the thing was wrong. Not spongy the way wood gets after so much time unprotected and ignored. But mossy. And distinctly alive. And though I should have recoiled then, should have picked up my suitcase and hurried my way back to the platform, I stood there, with my hand partially embedded in the door's inviting softness.
I cannot say how long I stood there, feeling the door pulse slightly beneath my fingers. I lost all concern for my watch, my train, my measured sums. The thoughts of my interview, of my future left me standing there alone, hand against this forgotten door like a mourner at the Wailing Wall. How strange I must have looked, a young man in a shabby suit, pressing against this doorway as if it and he were all that existed in the universe. But I doubt anyone noticed. No, I doubt anyone noticed at all.
It was not until much later that the door seemed to lose its power and let my hand fall away. But then it was too late.
My train, the train that my Mama was convinced would carry me to my future, had come and gone. And it had left me behind.