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Show Moon - 145 On the subway ride back to my midtown hotel there's a fire on the tracks. We're stuck underground for almost an hour. The smell of smoke filters into the car. There are strange clanging sounds on the track, shouts. No one faints or starts screaming and banging on the windows. The restraint of New Yorkers is one of the great unsung heroisms of our age. To keep myself in check, I take an interest in the press of people sharing the car, as if they're a book I've been given to read: men rummaging through briefcases or bent to copies of The New York Times, which are neatly folded into the crisp half-page width that is the trademark of New York newspaper readers. A young black man with intimidating dreadlocks thrusts his feet out, and dares anyone to defy his right to take up so much space. An old woman holds a kleenex to her face against the smoke, a little teary-eyed, looks around, as if hoping for pity. A pretty young woman fusses with her hair. I catch her eye, and we smile and shrug; in that small gesture more is said than you get to say to some people you've known for years. There are no children in this subway car, which is probably a good thing, for a child might have voiced the fears about the fire we were so carefully keeping silent about. It occurs to me that you can go for days in New York and not see any children. One reason Josh and I wanted to leave New York was to find a better place to have children. But the children never came. I think Josh is sad about this, though he's never said so. And now my body is dried out, empty. Even the strange heavy bleeding hasn't come back, not even in its normal time, and I don't know where my body is. |