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Derailed: extract

An expanse of thigh – that’s all at first.

But not just any thigh. A thigh taut, smooth, and toned, a thigh that had obviously spent some time on the treadmill, sheathed by a fashionably short skirt made even shorter by the position of the legs. Casually crossed at the knees. All in all, a skirt length that he’d have to say fell somewhere between sexiness and sluttiness, not exactly one or the other, therefore both.

This is what Charles saw when he looked up.

He could just make out a black high-heeled pump
jutting out into the aisle, barely swinging with the motion of the train. He was directly facing her, his seat backwardto the city-bound direction of the train car. But she was blocked by the front page of The New York Times, and even if she wasn’t blocked by the day’s alarming if familiar headline – MID-EAST BURNING – he hadn’t yet looked up toward her face, only peripherally. Instead he was focusing
on that thigh and hoping against hope she wouldn’t turn out to be beautiful.

She was.

He’d been debating his next move: whether to turn
back to his sports stats, for instance, whether to stare out the grime-streaked window, or scan the bank and airline ads lining each side of the car, when he simply threw caution to the wind and peeked. Just as The New York Times strategically lowered, finally revealing the face he’d been so hesitant to look at.

Yes, she was beautiful.

Her eyes.

They were kind of spectacular. Wide and doe shaped
and the very definition of tenderness. Full, pouting lips she was ever so slightly biting down on. Her hair? Soft enough to cocoon himself in and never, ever, come out.

He’d been hoping she’d be homely or interesting or
simply cute. Not a chance. She was undeniably
magnificent.

And that was a problem, because he was kind of
vulnerable these days. Dreaming of a kind of alternate universe.

In this alternate universe, he wasn’t married and his kid wasn’t sick, because he didn’t have any kids. Things were always looking up there; the world was his oyster.

So he didn’t want the woman reading The New York
Times to be beautiful. Because that was like peeking into the doorway of this alternate universe of his, at the hostess beckoning him to come inside and put his feet up on the couch, and everyone knew alternate universes were for kids and sci-fi nuts.
They didn’t exist.

‘Ticket.’ The conductor was standing over him and
demanding something. What did he want? Couldn’t he see he was busy defining the limitations of his life?

‘Ticket,’ he repeated.

It was Monday, and Charles had forgotten to actually walk into the station and purchase his weekly ticket. The time change had thrown him off, and here he was, ticketless in front of strangers.

‘Forgot to buy one,’ he said.

‘Okay,’ the conductor said.

‘See, I didn’t realize it was Monday.’

‘Fine.’

Another thing had just occurred to Charles. On
Mondays he stopped at the station ATM to take out money he then used to purchase the weekly ticket. Money he also used to get through the week. Money he didn’t, at the moment, have.

‘That’s nine dollars,’ the conductor said.

Like most couples these days, Charles and Deanna
lived on the ATM plan, which doled out cash like a trust fund lawyer – a bit at a time. Charles’s wallet had been in its usual Monday morning location, opened on the kitchen counter, where Deanna had no doubt scoured it for loose cash before going off to work. There was nothing in it.

‘Nine dollars,’ the conductor said, this time impatiently.

No doubt about it; the man was getting antsy.
Charles looked through his wallet anyway. There was always the chance he was wrong, that somewhere in there was a forgotten twenty tucked away between business cards and six-year-old photos. Besides, looking through your wallet was what you were supposed to do when someone was asking you for money. Which someone was. Repeatedly.

‘Look, you’re holding up the whole train,’ he said. ‘Nine dollars.’

‘I don’t seem . . .’ continuing the facade, sifting through slips of wrinkled receipts and trying not to show his embarrassment at being caught penniless in a train of well-to-do commuters.

‘You got it or don’t you?’ the conductor said.

‘If you just give me a minute . . .’

‘Here,’ someone said. ‘I’ll pay for him.’

It was her.

Holding up a ten-dollar bill and showing him a smile
that completely threatened his equilibrium.

Of all the things they talked about – and they talked about all sorts of things – there was one thing they didn’t talk about.

Commuting to work? Yes.

I was thinking the other day, she said, that if the U.S.
government was run like the Long Island Rail Road, we’d all be in trouble. And then I realized that maybe it is, and we are.

The weather? Of course.

Fall’s my favorite season, she said. But where did it go? Baltimore, Charles answered.

Jobs? Absolutely.

I write commercials, Charles said. I’m a creative director. I cheat clients, she said. I’m a broker. After which she added: Just kidding.

Restaurants dined in . . . colleges attended . . . favorite movies. All spoken of, discussed, mentioned.

Just not marriages.

Marriages, the plural, because she wore a wedding band on her left ring finger.

Maybe marriage wasn’t considered an appropriate topic when flirting. If flirting was what they were doing, of course. Charles wasn’t sure; he was kind of rusty at it and had never been particularly at ease with women to begin with. But as soon as she’d pressed the ten-dollar bill into the conductor’s hand, Charles protesting all the while – Don’t
be silly, you don’t have to do that – as soon as the conductor gave her one dollar in return, Charles still protesting – No, really, this is totally unnecessary – he’d gotten up and sat in the empty seat next to her. Why not – wasn’t it the polite thing to do when someone helped you out? Even someone
who looked like her?

Her thighs shifted to accommodate him. Even with his eyes glued to her heartbreaking face, he’d managed to notice the movement of her legs, a memory that stayed with him as he spoke to her about the banal, trivial, and superfluous – a good name, he thought, for a law firm specializing in personal injury suits.

He asked her, for example, which brokerage house she worked for. Morgan Stanley, she answered. And how long she’d been there. Eight years. And where she’d worked before that.

McDonald’s she said.

My high school job.

She was just a little younger than he was, she was
reminding him. Just in case he hadn’t noticed. He had. In fact, he was trying to think of just the right
word for her eyes and thought it was probably luminous.

Yeah, luminous was just about perfect.

‘I’ll give you your money back as soon as we get to
Penn Station,’ he said, suddenly remembering he was in her debt.

‘Tomorrow’s fine,’ she said. ‘Ten percent interest, of
course.’

‘I’ve never met a woman loan shark before. Do you
break legs, too?’

‘Just balls,’ she said.

Yes, he guessed they were flirting after all. And he didn’t seem half-bad at it, either. Maybe it was like riding a bicycle or having sex, in that you never actually forgot how. Although it was possible Deanna and he had.

‘Is this your usual train?’ he asked her.

‘Why?’

‘So I know how to give you your money back.’

‘Forget about it. It’s nine dollars. I think I’ll survive.’

‘No. I’ve got to give it back to you – I’d feel ethically
impugned if I didn’t.’

‘Impugned? Well, I wouldn’t want you to feel impugned. By the way, is that an actual word?’

Charles blushed. ‘I think so. I saw it in a crossword
puzzle once, so it must be.’

Which got them onto a discussion about what else?
Crossword puzzles. She liked them – he didn’t.
She could make it through Monday’s with both eyes
closed. He needed both eyes and a piece of brain he didn’t possess. The one that provided focus and fortitude. His brain liked to roam around a little too much to sit down and figure out a five-letter word for . . . say . . . sadness. All right, all right, so that was an easy one. Grief. That place where his brain insisted on spending so much of its time these days. Where it had set up house and resolutely refused to budge. Except, of course, when it was imagining that alternate world of his, where he could flirt with green-eyed women he’d just met not five minutes
before.

They kept talking about other mostly inconsequential things. The conversation a little like the train itself, moving along at a nice, easy clip, if briefly stopping here and there to pick up some new topic of discussion before gathering steam once again. And then suddenly they were under the East River and almost there.

‘Well, I’m lucky you were here today,’ he said,
entombed in darkness as the fluorescent train lights
flickered off and all he could see was the vague shape of her body. It seemed like he’d just got on, like he’d just been asked for nine dollars he didn’t have, and she’d just untangled her thighs and paid for him.

‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘Take the same train tomorrow and I’ll pay you back then.’

‘You’ve got a date,’ she said.

For the rest of the day, even after he’d shaken her hand good-bye and watched as she disappeared into the Penn Station crowd, after he’d waited ten minutes for a cab uptown and was greeted with his boss, Eliot, telling him to brace himself just two feet into the office, he’d think about her choice of words.
She could’ve said fine, sure, meet you tomorrow. She could’ve said good idea. Or bad idea. Or just mail it to me.

But she’d said: You’ve got a date.

Her name was Lucinda.