Walter's head was throbbing and his stomach ached with enough relentlessness to pull him back to consciousness. A pleasant world awaited him as he found himself lying on the dirty tile floor of a subway bathroom, curled up against a disgusting toilet. A small boy kneeling on the ground to look beneath the stall walls was staring at him with big, curious brown eyes.
Walter stared at the boy for a few moments before the little boy said something to him in Spanish, "¿Qué te pasa? …Ey, señor!, ¿Qué te pasa?"
The boy's father, a short man in dark blue jeans wandered in and took his son's hand to lead him away as if Walter were some kind of hot furnace to curious fingertips. The father was scolding his son in that same familiar language. Walter couldn't help but think that after living with Cynthia and her family for so many years, he would have picked up some words other than, "pinche cabron"orvarious obscenities that ended in, "tu madre".
He gathered his scattered mind and rose up on legs that felt like thick jelly. He felt lucky to be free of severe queasiness, but the thought of the previous night—despite being a blur—brought that familiar taste of bile to his throat. Spotting blood on the floor, he realized that he must have hit his head at some point. He dragged his body to the sink and rinsed the foul taste from his mouth with less-than enticing water. Not even a splash of the freezing liquid to the face brought his throbbing head relief.
As he rose up to meet his reflection, he saw the long gash over his forehead. It stung to touch, and dried trails of blood were stubborn to be rinsed from his stubbly face. As he stood there, something strange came over him. There was something different beginning at that very moment.
Staring hard into his reflection, he only saw a tall, worn-out twenty-nine year old. With shoulder length, dirty blonde hair and weathered hazel eyes, the tired reflection stared back at him. The bathroom was dark… moldy, dirt-stained tile floors and walls, and a putrid scent of sickness and filth. All he could hear was the hum of a flickering fluorescent light overhead.
Something was definitely not the same. It was as if he had been listening to a single calm, down tempo melody for years that was brought to an abrupt end and replaced with one low and foreboding key.
"…what changed?" He whispered.
"You changed."
Walter did not turn. An unfamiliar face stepped out behind his reflection to match a recognizable voice. So that was what the stair man looked like? …A tall, dark-haired man with a torn, scarred face and a long, bloodstained coat?
"You got a body." Walter replied.
The stair man looked down as his tattered, disfigured lips curled up in a smile, "I've always had a body. You just never cared to see me."
"I see you now."
"That you do."
Walter took a deep breath and stood. As the light flickered, the stair man disappeared for a half second of darkness. He reappeared behind Walter, standing just a few inches shorter than he. Walter could feel hot breath against his neck as the man spoke in a scratchy, almost hushed voice.
"You know what to do, Walter? It would be so easy to just kill them all. Why don't you?"
"I… I don't want to hurt anyone. I just want…"
"What do you want?"
"…I-I just want… I want it all to end."
"You want to return to nonexistence. …Something of a deep sleep from which you'll never awake."
"I don't want to die."
"You always have been good at lying to yourself."
"I want to leave now." Walter said, turning.
The stair man was gone. The sinking feeling in his aching gut left him wondering what had just happened. Walter had stopped questioning the state of his mental health years ago, when he found he could take refuge in an almost dream-like state where he met that man on the stairs. Normal people did not fabricate their own little universes unless they lived in padded cells, he knew.
Don't question it. Never question it. You're fucked up enough to begin with; don't go digging for answers that will just make things worse.
Walter left the bathroom and was met with a somewhat busy station. People were boarding trains and leaving in dwindling numbers. It looked a lot like the end of the evening rush hour, after everyone got off of work. A nearby digital clock on the wall confirmed it—7:17PM. When had he passed out?
Body still screaming with pain, Walter made his way to the Garden St. Platform. Cynthia was probably going to have plenty to say about him not showing up last night. Like always, he predicted she would tell a blatant lie about being with some other man. It was always the same lie, followed by an accusation that he went out and "fucked some tramp". The sheer irony of those words coming from her mouth brought slight amusement. She was truly a piece of work.
He had arrived just on time to catch the 7:25 train to Garden St. The wind tunneling in through the concrete and metal station announced the train's arrival. People were lining up around the platform, a small group of six. He saw a tall, blonde woman holding the hands of her two children, a sniffling teenager with a large black guitar bag on her back, a pale, sweaty man with a blue baseball cap and another man in a gray dress suit reading a golf magazine.
Walter joined the group and felt his stomach churn. One of the two adolescent children beside the tall blonde gave him an indifferent look. He glanced back down at the little boy only to see him stick his tongue out. It made him narrow his eyes and stick his tongue out. The little boy flipped Walter the middle finger and giggled.
"Dick." Walter muttered under his breath and looked over to the approaching train.
The heavyset, chalky-skinned man with a face full of pimples looked over with a grimace. He reeked of sweat and grease, and the stains on his striped blue and white shirt added to his almost grotesque appearance. Walter chose to ignore the man's intense stares.
"Jesus, you smell like shit, man." The sweaty man said, shifting away. Walter thought to simply laugh to himself and ignore the man before the teenager gave a hitched scream.
As if everything around him slowed, the sweaty man stepped away and drove his elbow into the crying teenage girl by chance. She slipped forward, arms flailing out to reach for something, anything to catch her balance on the edge of the platform. Walter, standing directly behind the girl reached out and gripped the black guitar bag for her very life. With one strong pull, the teenager was pulled back onto the platform and escaped a very certain death by train.
It would have been the same death that Walter remembered himself working for the night before. Death had come very close to taking the wrong soul in that moment. If there had ever been a god of irony, it would have certainly had a spiteful sense of humor.
The teenager, a frightened girl with short brown hair and a black hoodie looked up at him with the most beautiful olive eyes he had ever seen. Not even realizing she was still pressed against his body, he found himself staring at her like an entranced man beholding an artistic masterpiece. She only looked back up with him with a mix of wide-eyed confusion, gratitude, and curiosity. Tears still trickled down her freckled cheeks as she regained her balance, still clutching at his arms with a degree of clumsiness and confusion.
"Tha… thank you." She breathed, still working to gather her composure.
Walter found his mind running blank. There was a tidal wave of emotions crashing down on him—he had never been very good at speaking to women. To make matters worse, beautiful women very easily made his thoughts crash into hypnotized nothingness with just a kind smile or offhanded glance. He could only imagine that in his nervous anxiety, he looked like a mouth-breathing fool.
The green-eyed teenager boarded the train and was quick to take a window seat near the middle of the car. Walter followed, barely managing to tear his eyes away from her as he took a seat near the back. He had been so distracted by the girl that he hadn't even thought to find that sweaty, obese man in the baseball cap and make him apologize. Looking around and seeing only the tall blonde with the two bored-looking children, he figured that man must have gotten on a different car.
The doors closed and the train was moving.
He found himself once again under that girl's unintentional spell, staring at the back of her head and admiring the way her short mahogany locks curled up against her jaw line. Why was such a pretty young girl crying? When she began to turn his way, he averted his gaze and found a blotch of black gum on the floor to feign interest in.
Why are you even looking at her? She can't be more than sixteen or seventeen, you asshole. He scolded himself. Of course, it wasn't just her beauty that captured him—those eyes… there was something about those eyes… the way they were just slightly almond shaped and lined with long, dark lashes. They were such a vivid shade of green.
She made a sniffling sound with her nose as she wiped some salty tear streaks from her cheek with her wrist. Her heart was still beating hard and fast in her chest and her nerves were still tense after that short brush with death. Inside, she was still thanking whatever higher power existed that there was such a quick man behind her to pull her out of harm's way. She glanced back over her shoulder and saw the man staring at the floor, looking exhausted.
When Walter glanced back up at her, she grinned and turned around. He sat there with his hands in the pockets of a drab green army coat, with long, unkempt hair. His expression reminded her of a deer caught in headlights.
Walter felt his stomach hitch up nervously—it wasn't very pleasant considering the way it already ached in synch with his agonizing headache. The girl picked up her things and stood, walking over to him and taking the seat right in front of his. The teenager hunched down in a playful way, leaning her arms on the back of her seat and nestled her head atop her black sleeves. At that point he was absolutely trapped by those alluring green eyes as she tried to conceal a smile on her tear-stained freckled cheeks.
"You kinda look like Kurt Cobain." She broke the silence after what felt like ages.
His voice couldn't be summoned no matter how hard he tried. For a long time he just stared, before finding quiet laughter. He must have looked like he was having an unnaturally delayed reaction. That low laugh was almost like a long-awaited exhale as he clutched the little doll in his left pocket. It soothed his nerves.
"…thanks, I guess." Walter replied.
"You guess? What's wrong, you don't like Nirvana?"
Shaking his head, Walter was quick to answer, "No, no, I like Nirvana. I… I just usually get called 'Jesus' before 'Kurt Cobain'. I guess it's because I don't have the beard going on."
"Well, you've got something going on, so you're almost at the Jesus thing." She said with a wide smile.
Walter felt himself smiling. It felt good.
"I could almost say I got saved by Jesus today. But I'll have to settle for Kurt Cobain instead."
"I could say I saved an angel today." Walter thought aloud before realizing just how corny that must have sounded. As the girl's jaw dropped with a slight grin, followed by a chuckle, he turned his gaze back to the dirty floor. He couldn't kick himself hard enough for not thinking before speaking.
"I'm no angel. Just Eileen." She said.
Eileen… Eileen… Walter repeated her name over and over in his head. It felt familiar. Amazingly familiar, but he could not pinpoint where. He had probably just heard "Come on, Eileen" over the radio and thought nothing of it. Yes, that had to be why the name stuck out to him.
"Eileen… you should stay a little further from the edge of the platform next time."
"Yeah. I'm pretty sure I've learned my lesson." Eileen said.
Eileen tilted her head a bit to get a better look at her stubbly savior with the painful looking cut on his forehead. After a moment, he glanced up at her, and then looked away again as if he were a child that had been caught breaking some important rule. It was then that she realized he was either annoyed by her presence or just extremely shy. It must have been the former—she was not exactly a knock-out. Even the most desperate guys at her school didn't have such a hard time just looking at her.
Eileen could take a hint. She began to turn, opting not to pester her savior any further.
"Sorry to bother you. Just wanted to thank you again."
Walter shook his head, "You're not bothering me. …I…"
He was met with great interest in her olive eyes as he searched for something to say, "I'm just… not feeling too well."
"I kind of thought you looked like… like you partied too hard or something."
If only that were the case, Walter thought, "No… I… well, something like that."
"That sucks. Hangover?"
Walter nodded, "A really terrible one."
"…I heard that having a Bloody Mary is actually really good for a hangover. The celery has a lot of really good vitamins."
"I'm just going to take a bunch of aspirin."
"No, no! That's even worse!" Eileen said, "Aspirin's a blood thinner and you're gonna feel even worse."
"Do you do this often?" Walter asked. She didn't look like a wild party girl. But maybe that was because he expected party girls to look like the scantily clad Cynthia or her sisters.
Eileen shook her head, "No, I don't like to drink or anything. Two of my friends do though, like… nonstop. Lindsay even told me about this one remedy with like, egg yolk and pepper but that just sounds like it would make things even worse."
"I've tried that before…"
"Yeah? Does it work at all?"
Walter shook his head, laughing, "It didn't stay down very long."
"Well, you live and you learn." Eileen shrugged, "…I hope you feel better soon."
"Thanks."
Eileen was silent for a moment, looking out the window at the passing lights of another stop. People awaiting their train were momentary blurs. Her own stop was coming up soon—Adler St. She found herself wishing she had a bit more time to talk with her nameless hero. At that moment she knew she had to at least get a name to that weary face of his.
"What's your name?" She asked.
Walter paused, or rather, froze again. Eileen smiled—he looked like he himself had forgotten. Finally remembering to speak he answered, "…Walter."
"Walter. Well… my stop's coming up. …Thank you. For everything. For being." Eileen said with a warm smile.
He was lost in the comforting gentleness of her voice and the sweetest words anyone had ever said to him. It was a little heartbreaking to see her go, and he wished long and hard that one day he would see her again one day, even if from afar. As the train came to a loud, slow halt, and the doors slid open, Eileen picked up her backpack and guitar bag. She gave him one last smile, "See you around, Walter."
He waved and smiled. She was soon gone, and he watched through the window as she disappeared up some stairs at the end of the Adler St. platform.
He found himself thinking her name again and even said it aloud, just to feel it roll off his tongue, "Eileen…"
When the train picked up once more, he realized that Garden St. was the next stop.
Cynthia would be waiting for him. A very unhappy Cynthia that was ready to reveal the fire-breathing monster that was her true personality.
He sighed and sunk back into his seat, trying to collect the scattered memories of what had happened the night before. After getting off work, he picked up a bouquet of her favorite flowers. It wasn't that late—probably six or seven and he was finishing up a good hour earlier than usual. It was her birthday and he had promised himself to take her out and away from that tiny apartment, even if only for a little while. Any time away from those drug addicted neighbors would be less time she spent getting completely wasted on something.
Of course, what else could he expect coming home an hour earlier than to find Cynthia with another man in their bedroom?
What else had happened, he wondered… the rest was a hazy mess of events, the most prominent was kneeling over a toilet, retching for hours in the men's room somewhere in the subway. After emptying his stomach, he had passed out, probably hitting his head somewhere between hovering over the toilet and hitting the dirty tile floor.
Walter didn't care to think of what would come when he set foot in that apartment. Cynthia would likely either be too high to care, or be waiting impatiently for him to come back. Or even worse, she might have become uncontrollably bitter and let Julie or Catalina something to his car. It wouldn't be the first time.
Two years ago, he had been coming out of the video store he managed on a warm night in May. A drunk driver had plowed into him while he crossed the street on the way to his car. After rolling over the man's hood and being left with a broken arm and a few other wonderfully excruciating dislocated limbs, he was taken to St. Jerome's Hospital. An elderly woman had the kindness to call 911 after the drunk driver fled the scene. After a stay in the hospital, he had taken a bit too much comfort in the left over prescription painkillers.
When Cynthia came yelling at him the day after her birthday demanding to know why he didn't even say "Happy Birthday" or "I love you", he just basked in the numbness and lack of concern induced by his painkillers.
He remembered her telling him that he just smiled at her and let a single ray of light through a wall of almost impenetrable dark clouds,, "Because you're a bitch."
Walter had been met with a ring-laden fist to his already numb face. After she left, he knew blood was trickling past his lips from his nose, but he could care less.
If only I could just tell her that sober.
Julie, who had been visiting Cynthia and instigated that little outburst decided it would be appropriate to go slash his tires, reasoning, "Oh with that arm, you shouldn't even be driving, anyway. Besides, you should learn to treat my sister better, you pinche marricon!"
Although it was too early to say whether Cynthia sent her legion of evil sisters on him, he had to admit this probably counted as strike two in Julie's mind. That girl always found reasons to either mess with him or inspire Cynthia to spend an entire night yelling at him.
As he took his leave on the Garden St. stop, the tall blonde woman's little boy flipped him off again with a toothless grin. Noticing that the woman was more interested in her copy of some Stephen King novel than watching her snot-nosed kid, Walter flipped him the middle finger right back.
Dick.
