For a moment I forget what the hell I'm doing - and considering I'm standing on a subway platform looking up at the indicator board, it's a wonderful testament to my declining faculties. One day I'll work out which brain cells to get rid of and be ridiculously happy but knowing my luck I'll have already forgotten what I'm trying to forget. Hey, ignorance is bliss - that's what blindfolds were invented for, am I right?
At last the train is here. If I'm honest, starting to think maybe I shouldn't have slept in on top of Robbie. I won't be too late to get to Peaches and the twins, but it's kind of a dent in my professional ethics. If I had any. Ah well, Peaches'll forgive me. You could keep the contents of an overnight bag inside her empty head, but she's not a bad person and certainly not the worst mother in recorded history. She might lack maternal instinct, empathy, common sense, an attention span and basically everything money can't buy, but she knows the twins need caring by someone who loves them and I am awesome at that.
Aren't I?
Wierd. Don't normally doubt myself this early in the morning while sober. Must be out of sorts since Malibu Barbie Channing turned up to steal the tips from a poor waitress' fingertips. It would actually be less work and stress for me to do her job for her and also get all the cash for me. Still, she'll be gone soon enough like the others. Why do I even bother to remember their faces?
Don't get attached, people of the world. Do not get attached.
Oh, finally! The stupid train's here! The doors peel back and for a moment I think someone's punched me in the face, but no, there is a stink in that train so powerful it should be tested for drugs. The Lance Armstrong of funky smells. Oh, well, Max. You've smelt worse. And dealt worse - especially during that time working at the burrito place.
I step onto the train, but no one else is getting into this carriage. I look around as the other noobs and hipsters clamber onto the rest of the train, but avoid this one. None of them seem surprised by the stink. Maybe the 9:52 train is notorious for its smell. The gentrification of Brooklyn will probably put a bronze plaque somewhere - JFK crapped on this train, smelt it, threw up on it and then so did Jackie. No one's wanted to clean the carriage ever since. A monument to the never-ending American dream of total bowel control.
The doors close. Just me and the smell.
I remember back at school, in Hope, at the edge of the playground there was a dumpster on a slab of concrete and every Monday a huge truck would pick it up and empty it into the garbage compactor. I used to wonder if a triceratops had mated with a trucker to create this huge horned metal thing that ate garbage. The rest of the time the dumpster was a stinking metal box to hide from the teachers behind. All the garbage smells seemed to fuse into one rank smell... and the thing was, it didn't seem so bad. You'd sniff it, go "Hey, that could use some scented candles" and shrug it off but after a while you felt sick.
The smell of wrongness.
That's what I'm smelling now.
This is all wrong.
The carriage is empty, just me. I can wander around, even swing from the handles like a kid if I wanted to. This would be awesome if it weren't for the sense this is all wrong. Some part of me says I shouldn't be on this train. I should have gone to work earlier. Now I've missed something. Something important.
Still, what do I know? That's the kind of gut instinct that leads to bulk buying pregnancy tests and stocking up on antibiotics that insist you shouldn't have sex till you've taken them all. Stupid sexually frustrated chemists, trying to make everyone suffer.
But I check out the rest of the carriage. Lot of graffiti, apparently from the same moron who's artistic power peaked with the word "WHY?" over and over again. It's a good question, maybe Johnny will know about this. I smile at the thought. Robbie's body and Johnny's everything else. The perfect man. If it weren't for that smell!
One end of the carriage to the other, but nothing. It must be getting close to the next station so I just decide, "screw it" and head back to the forward left-hand set of doors to get off at the next station. But as I turn around I can see that there's someone else on the train, sitting in the furthermost corner, surrounded by some bags and a suitcase. The cream jacket, tan trews and pearl necklace are all dirty and dusty. The long blonde hair is unwashed and almost greying. The pale, colourless face is pinched in silent pain.
I know this person.
Her eyes crack open. Bloodshot, almost too big for the rest of the face. Her dry, chapped lips creak apart and a threadbare, papery voice wheezes, "Why-y-y-y-y?" It sounds like a three year old girl whining. Or a lamb bleating. But it's too weak and frail.
Oh my god.
This is Caroline.
She was on the train. The train I missed because I slept in.
I never found her on the subway.
No one helped her.
She never got away. She stayed here, alone and lost in the smell of wrongness.
Part of me wonders how the hell I know this, but the rest of me is almost curling up with horror as I see what I've done. Or haven't done. Whatever. It's all it took, one selfish snuggle and now my best friend, the most important person in the whole world, the girl I need - DAMMIT, NEED! - to be around isn't there. How could I let this happen?
"Why?" sobs Caroline, but she slumps back. She's starving. She's alone.
And it's all my fault.
"Caroline! I'm sorry!" I shout, but that sounds stupid. Pathetic. I was bitching about a smell, while Caroline was going through this? The smell of her... dying?
"No!" I shout. I want to grab her, but she's too fragile. She'll break in my hands. "No! You do not do this to me! Not ever! Not even for Oprah topless in a cut scene from Magic Mike! Caroline!"
Her eyes open again. So sad. So disappointed.
"Why, Max?" she sighs.
And then she's crumbling away, collapsing to dust and ash like a vampire skinny-dipping in holy water. I could have stopped this. I should have stopped this. But like everything else, I've ruined it from top to bottom. The one good thing, gone.
I'm crying, but the dust is sticking to my face like mud. The stink gets worse, but I don't want to fight it, because it would have been worth it. I close my eyes, but I can still see the empty couch on the train and I've lost everything.
Someone's screaming. And so they should.
Caroline Channing is gone and Max Black did nothing to stop it.
I cover my face with my hands but my nails are too long and sharp and slice into my skin...
Max's eyes snapped open as the ginger tabby whacked her upper right-hand paw across her cheek, breaking the first layer of skin. She twisted on the bed, jolting her cat across the blankets as she instinctively raised a fist clutching a crumpled scrap of pink material.
"Nancy?" Max panted, looking around the dim room in shock.
The ginger cat gazed up at her and made a low noise that sounded like "Hello."
Max scooped Nancy up into her sweaty arms and hugged her tight. "Oh, Nancy, I totally owe you a bong full of catnip," she shuddered. "You woke my up from the worst dream ever. Yeah, even worse than that version of Sharknado with all the sharks replaced by clones of Han! Oh, thank you, Nancy, thank you."
Nancy purred and licked at Max's scratched cheek.
"Hang on, red, I got to check on blondie," she said, putting the cat onto the warm mattress while she padded to the doorway to the rest of the apartment. It was night. There was the gentle snoring from Chestnut in the yard, the faint hum of the refrigerator and from upstairs Sophie was having another party with her girls.
Max forced herself to check Caroline's bed last.
The huddled form - looking impossibly so small and delicate in the bright red bedclothes - didn't seem to be breathing.
Max's heart hammered against her ribcage.
People breath slow when they're deep asleep. No panic.
Caroline was totally motionless.
What about that disease where people forget to breath when asleep? What's it called? Scientology?
But Caroline was lying on her side, which Max was sure meant that couldn't happen.
So why isn't she breathing?
Caroline made a faint muttering noise, then rolled over, snuggling deep into her pillow.
Max sagged with relief, and grabbed the kitchen bench to stay upright. Nancy scampered from her bedroom and starting dancing around Max's odd-socked feet in a furry, purring figure-of-eight. Max closed her eyes and breathed deeply the cold air.
"Just a dream, Nancy," she said softly. "Just a dream."
"What's was?" mumbled Caroline, eyes still closed and apparently still asleep.
Max was surprised, but too glad to hear her voice to care. "Just thought for a moment we'd never met and I was still a swinging bachelorette who didn't have to keep both you and your horse alive at great personal cost," she said, too casually.
"Sorry to disappoint," Caroline replied, sliding back into sleep.
"You don't," Max said instantly. "You really don't." She tried to sound cool again. "Not that I have particularly high standards, so it was something of a no-brainer. And the fact I can instantly imagine three years of my life without you clogging it up with your hair extensions, Wharton degree and puny boobs tells me something."
Silence.
Max blurted it out before she could stop herself, "That I wouldn't actually have a life and it would be worse than anything Hell and Satan have to offer, because I completely and totally love you and just the thought of losing you is enough to freak me out so much even Nancy gets worried about me and bitch-slaps me awake like the pussy pimp she so awesomely is. And given the choice, I would always want to have found you on that subway train because there is nothing that can possibly make up for not having you around."
She caught her breath.
Caroline was fast asleep.
Max scooped up Nancy. "What do you think? You think she heard any of it?" she asked her cat. "Stupid nightmares. I mean, Nancy, why can't I just have homoerotic dreams about her like any normal person would?" She turned and, cat in arm, returned to her bed. "Don't look at me like that, Nancy, as if I'd ever actually sleep with her. Hey, cat, it's your word against mine and we both know you got a criminal record..."
Max climbed back into her bed, checked the knife under the pillow and pajama scrap in her hand. Nancy circled the bed, then curled up in the crook of Max's legs behind her knees and went to sleep. Max thought of Caroline, safe and sound in her bed, and she finally relaxed enough to fall asleep herself.
This time, there were no nightmares.