Joey stands alone in the downtown DeKalb station with a hundred other people milling around and waiting for their trains. A man with a baby strapped to his chest stands to the left, checking his watch every fifteen seconds. A woman with a small dog in her purse paces back and forth to the right, also checking her watch at rapid intervals. Several groups of Brooklyn Tech students stand around each other, talking loudly and eating one-dollar pizza they got above ground off of paper plates. There hasn't been a downtown train for an entire fifteen minutes.
"Where is the train," Joey grumbles under his breath. He walks up to the yellow edge of the platform and peers into the tunnel, searching for the telltale headlights of the approaching train. He sighs when he doesn't see them and backs away from the tracks. He looks down the other end of the platform and sees a rat walking along the railing. He watches it for a few seconds, walks back to the platform edge to look for the train, and still sees no sign of it. "Ugh, where the fuck is the train?"
It's possible that he would feel less impatient if he had his friends to talk to while he waited, but all of them live uptown in relation to him. Occasionally he'll bring someone to his neighborhood to hang out, but since most of them live in Manhattan or the Bronx they usually go where more people won't be inconvenienced by the long trip. Most of the time, he's riding the downtown train completely alone.
Which is why it's surprising to him when he sees Duke walking up the platform towards him, clutching his school bag under one arm and a paper bag of churros in his other hand, mouthing "oh my god where is the train" to himself and staring at the floor. Joey waves to him and shouts his name, happy to finally have someone to talk to on the way out of school on a day besides Friday.
"Hey Dookie, what's up? Why ya headed downtown, don't you live in the heights?" Joey asks. Duke looks up and grins in acknowledgement, takes a bite out of one of his churros, and swallows it before replying.
"Stop calling me that," he says. "Yeah, I do, I'm not going home right away. I have to go to Coney Island for something, but there hasn't been an R train in a decade."
"Tell me about it," Joey sighs. "I didn't know there was a churro guy, where are they?"
"Follow me." Duke turns around and leads Joey towards the closest staircase. Underneath it is a woman standing behind a table, her hands buried in the pockets of her baby blue hoodie, looking bored. On the table is a pile of churros covered in plastic, two pairs of tongs resting on top. Duke approaches her and says something in Spanish that results in her exchanging a bag of two churros for one of Duke's dollars. He gives it to Joey, who tries to pay him for it with quarters but is refused.
"It's just a dollar," he explains. "You can buy me something later."
"Thanks."
"Forget it, man. God, where's the fucking train anyway, is it supposed to be delayed?"
"Hell if I know, I've already been down here for twenty minutes."
It is another ten minutes before the Q train arrives, and neither of them need it, so they wait another ten minutes for the R train that is now forty minutes late. At least, that's how long they think it took; neither of them are wearing a watch right now.