KSHHHHHHH We are being momentarily held at this station while authorities come to remove an unclaimed duffel bag from the train. We are sorry for any inconvenience and will be moving shortly. KSHHHHHHT
And then the ding of arrival. The jarring sound of automatic sliding doors opening and closing repeatedly. But we aren’t moving. We’ve been ‘momentarily’ held at this station for a half hour. I tell myself that inside the duffel bag is a puppy, not a bomb, and what is all the fuss about? I try not to think about a bomb strapped to a puppy as I drink my coffee.
“There is no bag!” yells a man at the back of the train car. “If there was a suspicious bag, authorities would have shown up already. I call bullshit!” He is small, like a survey pencil, and being subdued by a bigger man in a brown leather jacket.
“Taaake it easy, pal” says the leather man.
“You take it easy, pal,” says the mini pencil as he pushes his way off the train.
An attractive older fellow in a business suit sitting to my right makes eyes at me, and we smile at each other as we shrug. I take a bite of the bagel with cream cheese in my lap and suddenly feel self conscious about eating on public transportation. I put the bagel back into the brown paper bag and close my eyes. I think about Baudelaire and fall asleep.
“Holy shit, look at that!” yells the woman sitting in front of me. My eyes open and we are moving. We are passing over the Harlem River Bridge now and gray smoke is billowing from below us like the dirty cotton insides of a stuffed animal. In a matter of seconds, I cannot see.
“Wow,” says the woman to the elderly man sitting next to her. “This is something. I wasn’t here for 9/11, so…Wow.”
“Oh, fuck you,” I mutter under my breath.
“Excuse me?” The woman’s yellow frosted head pops up over the back of her seat to get a better look at me.
I look out the window and the gray fibers begin to pull apart.
“I said, excuse me?!” Her arms push down on the head rest as her upper body lunges toward me, but I ignore her. Through the gray I can see water and I can see fire; hundreds of blue and orange arms maniacally waving at our train, a little too excited to say hello.
