The PA chimed its familiar announcement. “Next Station: Stadium-Chinatown.” The familiar whine that had once – back in 1985, when the trains had first appeared, in part as a show-piece for the upcoming World Exposition – seemed so other-worldly, presented itself as an audio telltale of the coming stop as the electric motors slowed the train just as it centered on the platform.
The doors opened and initiated the ubiquitous struggle between those on the inside of the train who had finished their journey and the commuting throng who pushed inwards to the waiting car.
It was a focused demonstration of incidental mass-hysteria. The same ridiculous exchange was occurring at each station every three minutes of every rush-hour. How difficult was it for the people on the platform to grasp that the space inside the train was finite and that the space outside was, for all practical purposes, infinite. There was only one sensible order for the two things that were supposed to happen to play out. First, space must be made inside the train, then new passengers could fill that space. But unless the crowd on the platform made way for those inside to get outside, the people on the outside would not be able to get in.
Yet the need to get to their destination as fast as possible, and the sub-conscious knowledge that everyone else on the platform had a similar goal created a necessity for competition for those few spaces that opened up on each incoming train. To hesitate was to be lost – or at least to have to wait for another train. The jockeying for position near the entrance could not help but escalate into what amounted to a grand-push that had nothing to do with allowing room for the exodus.
Somehow though, despite all frustrations, ninety-nine times out of a hundred everyone who need to get off managed to get off before the doors closed then in until the next station, and those passengers were rapidly replaced by a new set of riders who, when their turn came, would be put on the defense against a new wave of aggressive ingress.
He could smell the differences in this new iteration of fellow passengers. Generally they were wetter – a fresh rain had caught most of them on their way to the station. Whereas many of those already on the train had got to a station without exposing themselves to the sky by accessing stations in the downtown proper – all of which were sub-terranean. The sheep-skin jacket worn by the urban cowboy in front of him was a particularly obvious odor, but above the olfactory bass-note was another smell, a feminine smell that he found quite pleasant. Not perfume, though remnants of numerous grooming odors mingled in the air - samples of several dozen morning applications of as many varieties. No, this smell was un-manufactured. Biological. To his well tuned sense, full of healthy youth.
He barely had to turn his head to find her, and his reaction, his instinct, was un-suppressable.
Beautiful. Young. So young. Her beauty percolated up through her youth, the promise of its full-blossom being ever more potent than the actualization of it ever could be. And yet… there was something else. He felt the surging desire rise in his veins. His pulse rising uncontrollably as he fought to keep his reaction internal. Consciously holding himself back when he realized he was leaning closer to her, beginning to press against the people between he and she. Luckily his nearly autonomic advance was indiscernible from the natural momentum shifts that the rocking of the SkyTrain car translated to its passengers.
Precocious. That’s what it was. There was a wisdom underneath her young skin. An awareness. An understanding. An old soul. That was the greatest fuel for his desire. Her age compared to him was a given, he’d long since reconciled himself with the notion. Her physical beauty – the long, straight, dark hair, the big curious eyes – and the robustness of her health… the smell… They were all significant, they turned him her way to begin with. But it was the rare sagacity he sensed about her. That was what truly drew him to her.
“Next Station: Main Street.”
She stayed on board, and he knew she was in trouble. His control over his urges teetered on the edge. He feared for her life. He could not draw his gaze away.
Sensing his attention on her she turned and met his eye. Seeing his pleasant countenance, she made the mistake that would cost her everything. She smiled.
Installment iii
Installment iii
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