The Blondes by Emily Schultz Read Free Book Online

thundering.
    Somewhere behind our train, somewhere we couldn’t see, a train was coming from the other direction.
    The guy beside me swore in Spanish. He and I both stared at the tracks. We could see windows through windows, the second train through our train. We could see the shapes of people riding on the train like an ordinary fact. Red shirts, blue jackets, white skin, brown skin, backs of heads, hands wrapped around poles.
    “I had her,” the older man in the suit said as he regained his footing against one of the posts. “She was right here.” He held out his hand to us, peering at it. He looked like any businessman. He had silver hair on his knuckles and a thick gold ring with a tiger’s eye or topaz embedded in the middle.“I had her,” he said again, and he continued to say it, staring at the hand.
    The young guy said something in Spanish again, then glanced around us. “My bag …” He became distressed. He must have put his knapsack down. It was gone, long gone. You wouldn’t think he would care at that point, but he got up and began to jog down the platform, weaving, glaring at those he passed as if he would recover his bag from them then and there. But the crowd—our original crowd—had meshed with the exiting passengers. Some were left, I guess, standing in shock, while others had already boarded the train. I could still feel the guy’s arm around my waist where he had grabbed me to try to help, yet there he went, already disappearing up the stairs, taking them two and three at a time.
    Our train pulled out, and when it did, it left behind the train on the opposite tracks. At first I saw nothing—I guess I was looking for blood—then I saw the thin white string of wire, just a piece of it, twelve inches or so, the cord of the iPod headset lying nearly under the silver body of the train. I couldn’t help it. My gaze fastened to the small round earbud, no bigger than a penny, and the other severed end. That was when I threw up.
    Maybe the acrid smell of human vomit had more effect than violence, because the platform cleared quickly. By then, two cops had swung down the stairs. Beside me, the older man in the grey suit was still saying, “I had her …”
    He was going into what had already become a story. Some onlookers gathered in one area of the platform to talk over oneanother and continue to be part of the scene. Vultures. The high school girls were gone, I realized, in spite of wearing similar uniforms to that of the girl who had disappeared on the tracks. But the submarine sandwich guy was still there—although, wouldn’t you know, the sandwich had vanished.
    A lady cop was bellowing, “If ya witnessed the incident and have something to report, please wait. Otherwise, we ask that ya go about your business!”
    New passengers were arriving, coming down the stairs, people who had no idea and were impatient to get where they were going, asking what had happened—
was it a flasher?
—or slinking with skeptical glances away from the commotion toward the non-puke part of the platform.
    And then I had a terrible thought:
Eventually that train, that train right there, is gonna move
. And probably not even eventually, but soon. I didn’t want to be there when it did. Every part of my body said,
Go
. I found that my purse was still strung over one shoulder, between my breasts, and before the officers even glanced in my direction, I stumbled up the stairs and out into the daylight, saying, “I need air. Excuse me, pardon me. Sorry. Excuse me.”
    Someone said, “Ma’am!” behind me, and it might even have been the lady cop, but I just kept going as if the voice didn’t apply to me.
    I remember walking so fast I was practically running, past dollar stores that sell postcards of the Chrysler Building and coffee cups with pictures of the Statue of Liberty. I stalked through rush-hour intersections like a seasoned pro, and cabsand limos burst forth from one-ways and honked. I flew up my street