The Commute
By
Nicholas Falasco
Towers of pale, grey steel stand in front of the Sacramento sun. The air, thick and heavy, forces the lungs to struggle and stick. Wetting the skin, glazed in sweat. In the cracks and corners of the streets rotting leaves sit gathering mold. A fellow, alone, hunched over strides off rhythm under the leafless trees. He passes beneath the naked trees towards the same corner, towards the same red light, towards the same three and a half walls of his barrowed cubical.
Soggy clouds dangle up high. In the distance Bobby hears the bells chime as the blue line train breaks. Turning his collar up the man looks down the tracks. White, square, and plastic, the tram opens. Heat flows through a pair of electric doors. Still hunched over, the man drags himself towards the seat.
Stuffy air clogs the tram. Behind him, the entrance groans closed and the tram car jerks forward. Bobby latches his hand to a bar of polished steel as the spastic motion straitens his hunched spine as he reaches for a rail. He winces as he wonders how hands have touched this?Placing his hands in his lap, he tries to rub them clean. The grime on the hand railing infected with the latest evolution of the common cold. Then someone sneezes. "Sigh", Bobby breaths meditatively and shoves his hands in his coat. Titling his head, he studies the passengers in the train, biding his time on his way to his grey three and a half walls called a cubical.
Four rows in front of him, a head draped in red hair rests on a soft neck. A weathered hard cover the size of the New Testament sits pried open on her lap. Bobby's furrow loses its deep groove suddenly. Pre med, or law school, or maybe biology. Either way she's not dumb. His face softens, but that sublime notion turns on itself. A feeling comes that salts the rubbed-raw muscle celled in his chest. The little grains tumble deep into the crevices of the fresh wound, burning. Succumbing to it, his frown's back.
Behind one row, two teenage Latinas gab. Music oozes from their cell phones, muffling the clickety-clack of the tram.
"Jose and I bumped bellies last night again," says the tall one with pink highlights and a blushing smile.
"I thought you were done with that…what did you call him again?," responds the shorter girl with lime green spandex pants.
"Yeah, well we were at this party, and he was there."
"You said he doesn't respect you." Her demeanor suddenly reminded Bobby of that stoner counselor he had in high school.
"He dumped that DeAngila though and, well, I was wasted."
"You getting back together?"
"We weren't together before 'cause that De-An-gila was still on him."
"Didn't he get her pregnant?"
The little lady crosses her arms. "So! He's into me now."
"Whatever, girl," responds the lime green spandex.
"Whatever? He's going to move here, so that ex won't get in our way." Bobby shakes his head. What a pity.
His focus turns to where it began. That soft, ivory neck. It travels pages of text, focused, and imagining the world made of words within it. Her hands are thick with muscle, which is so seldom. Those twiggy fingers so many women have chained around their yappy toy dogs, the silicone pinching the skin over lean ribs. Eat something! As for her wrists, they're cuffed in a fine coat that drapes around her broad shoulders. The coat makes the arches of her hips swell purple like the sides of a beating heart. The collar is rubbed to a bald softness. Her hair is gathered away from her flush cheeks. Her face is unobstructed but for a few strands, though Bobby's angle hides how the two plotted suspending vines of her hair frame her face in rusty red. Her exoticness shows a worldly curiosity. She assembles herself with creativity as a code of beauty.
Bobby tilts his head curiously, then chuckles. He thinks to himself, Yeah, the jacket's probably a gift from her ex-girlfriend.
"Next stop Eighth and Capitol." Using his handkerchief this time he grips the railing, bracing for the train's stop. Then just above the screeching brakes Bobby hears, "Hey, you think your Jose has any single friends?"