The bottom left monitor of the four that Willis K. McDaniel was responsible for watching was the only one that held his attention. He leaned back in his chair, absently stroking a scar high on the left side of his forehead. It was the result of a minor injury from climbing the wrong tree as a child, and had only recently been revealed when his hairline receded past it, a small white slash that marked where the gentle bump was. Willis had always tapped that spot on his head when he was deep in thought, and now that he realized what its significance was, it only irritated him. He'd stop, reach for a cigarette from a pack that was no longer there, and grunt. And several minutes later, find himself tapping that spot again.
Ricky was on the platform this morning. He knew where the cameras were, and knew how to play them. He'd stroll around casually in front of them, stand as if he was waiting for the 9 train just like anyone else. Occasionally he'd switch his outfit: hats, no hats, different coats, different shoes. But even if Ricky wasn't wearing the old baseball cap that was his favorite, Willis would have known him in a second. Watching all these screens day after day, you got to know the regulars, saw how they clustered together in the same groups, saw how they walked, how they jostled for position, and how -- as Ricky did so often in the off-peak hours -- they just stood, waiting.
Which was what Willis was seeing in the bottom left monitor, the back of Ricky standing. Behind him, closer to the camera, was someone else. Tall. Medium-colored hair in spikes was all Willis could see. He tried to tell by the way the head turned to the right and left, looking up and down the track, whether it was a male or female someone else. Then the head turned far enough that he could see sunglasses -- underground? -- the only kind that Willis thought of as "shades." They were a quirk of an old acquaintance of his, though Rosalyn's had been well-loved and the mirrored surface was well-scratched, and though these were the exact same style, they looked brand new.
Then the owner of the spiky hair stepped forward, and Willis saw a jaw moving -- working on some gum, or maybe talking. A female jaw. Asking Ricky the time, giving him his opening. Though if that head belonged to Ros, if the head was attached to that body, with her talents ... Willis had a feeling Rick had more than he could handle with her.
Willis rediscovered the lack of cigarettes in his pocket and on the desk, and tapped the top of his head. He wanted to meet whoever decided that his monitoring booth was a public place, and thus smoking was prohibited. It wasn't exactly as if he could take off and go to somewhere less public, was it? So what if at the end of a long shift it was filled with smoke, who was it going to hurt? If anyone wanted to come into this place and share it with him, they could so at their own risk.
On the screen, Ricky was turning to the spiky-haired head. Willis could tell what what was going to happen. They nearly collided, the backpack slipping off of Spiky's shoulder, as behind them the train rattled into the station and the doors slid open. Spiky hefted the pack again and dashed for the door while Ricky quickly moved on in the other direction, out of the frame. Willis would have to catch up with Ricky later and see what he got.
Most days I found myself nestled between Bekah and Springer, but occasionally beside Lars and his receding hair, 5'9" and 210lbs., and brown eyes. Corrective lenses mandatory in the State of New York. From different angles, though hardly here in the dark, flat and glossed, you could see Lars' security hologram; Bekah was a forgery, supposedly 25, red haired, 5'6" and 105lbs. and with green eyes, but you could tell that the backing was separating from the foil, the lamination, and the photo between. I'm not sure that Bekah was her real name. I'm certain she was a minor.
It's a bloated world these days, crowded in here, and against Springer I feel like a frotteur -- we share the same pocket, slipped in together these last days or weeks, hardly new arrivals -- though she never talks to me, the silent type, Springer, tall but heavy and plain, a brunette with canine black eyes and veiny skin in the light of her mug shot. But I know that photographs lie.
It's usually the back pocket for us. His lithe but grubby hands forgot that today; they handled us less gently than usual, rushed and intense, needy.
When I joined the collective those weeks back along with Springer it was a bit less crowded, as I've already said, a real commune, though as I've also already said, some inhabitants, like Springer, were a bit less forthcoming, talkative, social if you will. I think for the rest of us it was a type of Stockholm Syndrome, and although we were dislocated -- out of place in the parlance of our less literate times -- we bonded, came together, had something in common, and began to feel that this new captivity was our rightful home. Springer didn't do that; she always behaved as if traumatized and lost. I told her, "Springer, we're your home, your family." She didn't identify with us; she was used to being the sign, the identification, and standing on her own, out in the world, it frightened her.
Bekah was different, and shortly after Springer and I moved in she and I became neighbors, too. Until then Bekah had lived across the way, across the fold, with a few snapshots, a collection of photo-booth candids. We all had that deer in the headlights look, staring down the camera as if it were the barrel of a gun, but in those photo-booth poses the two lovers, folded but still held together frame by frame, looked at each other, laughed and giggled, and, in the first and not the last, cried. They began teary and red-cheeked, hair mussed, Bekah told me. He was mousey but a faint scar high on his forehead partially exposed by a glacially receding hairline showed. She was spikey-haired with sunglasses above her brow, the neck of her leather jacket folded up, her lower lip cracked from nervous biting between her front teeth. The scar, Bekah said, was hard to see at first, first mistaken for a bubble on the film, some dust, a scratch. But frame to frame it was uncovered, a wisp of hair here and there exposing it and concealing it. But in the course of the booth session, Bekah relayed, he kissed her on the cheek and she grinned, her eyes opened.
Lars chimed in, "Turn that frown upside down." He ruined the mood. He always wanted to be part, not apart. We were so close together we couldn't ignore such words, even if they were muffled by the leather partitions and translucent plastic boundaries that separated us in our sleeves. Bekah and I were closer than that, though rarely face-to-face.
Springer actually joined the speculation, asked about ages (both perhaps early 20s) and what they were doing (tickling, pecks on the cheek, hints of joy), who was on which side (he on the left, she on the right as you looked at them), was there any identifying information (just a to-and-from on the back of one). "Each end was snipped," Bekah added, "as if even more crying had been cut out, only keeping the joy."
"The transition to joy," I corrected her. "Where did they come from?"
"I think somebody just collects them," Springer suggested, perhaps thinking of herself. "The discarded."
"Where are they now?" wondered Lars, suddenly solemn. That was some time ago.
Richard Grimm, 6'0", 175lbs., black hair, caucasian and nearly sporting a mono brow was the first to go that chaotic day. We were usually sandwiched in the back jeans pocket, squished and secure, but today -- we could tell by the loose jiggling -- we were riding higher on the hip, perhaps in a jacket pocket, and from time to time our side slapped against the debit and ATM cards and the sleeve into which Wil and Rosalyn, photo-booth sweethearts -- names, Bekah related, on the back and listed as "Will & Rosalyn: October, 2001" -- were slid, now alone but not afraid of the unknown. They had each other.
Light blazed, flickering and fluorescent, buzzing, and aromas both hormonal and less organic infiltrated. Chipped nails, bitten and creviced and attached to whorled fingertips flipped through us, scratching surfaces, picking and choosing. The Abes and Georges and even the wrinkled Andrew were next to go. Those without photos, only expiration dates and security strips, went next. Springer Coulier was pulled from behind me and discarded, but Lars Simmons and Rebekah Banks and I stayed nestled together. Ros and Wil remained untouched, undiscovered, and then darkness closed in again. I heard as we were slipped into a dark pocket and then jostled, bumped, and tossed around.
The noise of people surrounded us, at first muffled but then all-encompassing. In passing we felt the freedom of flight and the bounce and rebound off metal walls as we slid into a plastic-lined bin, now soaked with ooze and sloshier liquids. We settled for some time, occasionally adjusted as other refuse landed on us, and then there was only silence.
Ros bounced down the steps to the station. She was feeling confident today, but very ready to get a load off her feet and ride for a while. The new sandals were cute and all, but, as is the way of new shoes, they were rubbing a blister on her left little toe.
She patted herself down, wondering what she'd done with her fare card. It belonged in the side pocket of her backpack, which was dangling from a bony shoulder, but it often ended up in a pocket, a sleeve, the funky little zip compartment near her navel on the front of her bomber jacket, or wherever.
There. Right where it belonged. Though she was a bit uncomfortable showing anybody who might be watching where she kept her valuables, and a bit more than uncomfortable rooting around in her navel-pocket in public. The gates opened, she passed through, and stood waiting on the platform within.
There was something about the white of the tiles that gave her a minor headache. Which was not helped by the mild nausea caused by the gently swaying populace of the place; not unlike trees in a thunderstorm.
That jerk over there, in the baseball cap, seemed to be a bit too interested in her navel pocket and what her fingers were doing inside it. He was about her height, dressed as everybody does, and was studiously not looking at her, until he thought she wasn't looking at him. Mirror shades are wonderful things.
She turned about, scanning the ceiling on the other side of the track for a security camera, found one, and glanced away. She wondered if Willis was on duty today, being a voyeur while also watching out for criminals, pickpockets, people bumping other people onto the tracks, and other random thuggery.
Ah, Willis. He'd picked her up, dusted her off, given a lot, and taken even more. Her old leather jacket, a gift. Too bad Willis took it as a surety for something or other. Willis had taken so much. Granted, her promises weren't worth the paper they weren't even printed on, but still, the guy had a mean streak. Wanted a cut of everything she took. Wanted more than that, actually, and at first she gave willingly. After that, not so willingly. She'd been even more alone, with him, than living on the street. There, at least, somebody would watch your back for a little sweet-talking. Or share body heat on a cold night.
The train was arriving. The driver killed the headlights as it rounded the corner, the breaks squealed so loudly that the platform busker, amplifier or no, was mercifully inaudible. The creep chose that moment to strike.
He struck her from the left with a body check that would make a hockey player proud. Her backpack was slung from her right shoulder, and it slid down her arm. He almost got it, but she yanked on the strap as it passed her hand. He came about, more or less facing her, and she put out a hand to brace for impact.
He ran.
Ros stood there wondering what had happened, and if it were possible for her heart to beat any harder. In one hand she held the backpack, dangling from a strap, which was partially torn. In the other, she seemed to be holding a wallet. She'd dabbled in the pickpocket trade once, when she was down on her luck and needed the meager cash people carried. When it got so the cops on the block she haunted knew which trash can to look in when a random passerby reported losing his wallet, she'd stopped.
She boarded the train, as inconspicuously as possible. When the operator started ringing the alarm to close the doors, she opened the pocket, the wallet, and examined the contents. Richard Grimm, said the license, next to a mug shot that would not be out of place on a post office wall.
She had the urge to compare his picture to her own. Rosalyn Gallo. Hair, spiked in her reflection in the train window against the darkened tunnel, had been buzzcut in her license photo. Same height, 6'0". He 175 lbs, she 140. "As if," she snorted.
Wait, wait. Lars somebody. Rebekah Springer. No, maybe that was two of them. There was certainly quite the collection of licenses in here.
Now when she'd been into pickpocketing, she was more into the Hamiltons and Jacksons than the licenses and credit cards. You can do hard time for fraud. You can get a coffee or a sandwich or something for a tenner. Seems Rick (may I call you Rick? she asked the picture) was taking that bigger gamble.
Some of the cards fell between her fingers into the sticky muck left from the morning rush. The Presidents all found their way into her navel pocket, however.
The train came to a stop. She looked up; she shouldn't have been so involved in her acquisition. Rick (May I call you Rick?) could be seen through the windows in the next car.
She looked at him, he looked at her. She moved toward one side of the train, shadowed by him. Waiting til the door began to close, she darted out the other side of the train. Rick, meanwhile, had taken the body-fake, and run out the original side of the train. She tossed the wallet into the trash as the train pulled out.
In the gathering silence of the platforms facing each other across the track, Ros smiled at Rick, showed him her empty hands, shouldered her pack, and ran for the stairs. The platform on his side didn't connect easily to the walkway atop her staircase.
Thank. God.
Later we ascended, rose, were exposed to the light, found, folded again, and pocketed away.