Blue Line- CTA- Early Evening
by Brittany Ackerman
The train flies through the tunnel as it races towards Midtown. The silver car is speeding and my suitcase shakes away from me. I pull it in tight up next to the toe of my fluffy boot. The train slows and makes a stop. Irving Park. The doors open. A woman wearing a winter puff coat and a pink beanie spills onto the train. She sits down next to me and opens her phone. It’s outdated, not smart, more like one I had in high school to call my parents when the Bar-Mitzvah reception was over. She slams it shut. I wiggle my scarf up to my lips. It’s colder than I’m used to out on the West Coast, but I’m just visiting. I’m here to see someone. The woman is pretty. She looks to be in her thirties, early thirties, and her mascara is clumpy on her lashes. Her eyes are directed toward the back of the train, facing the abyss of the tunnel as we breach the darkness.
I think about how I should have been done with you long ago, back when you cheated, when you lied, when you became a toxin.
“You need to see him,” the woman in the winter coat says to me. There aren’t many other people on the train, but she looks up and directly at me.
The train veers right and I struggle to keep my balance.
“You’re here to see a man right?” The word ‘man’ strikes me, as I try to define what you are in my mind. I can’t, so I just shake my head yes.
“You need to see him.”
She takes out her phone again. Reads something. Shuts it hard.
“If you don’t, you’ll never know…” she pauses. “Sorry, I know I’m intruding, but it’s for your own good. I went through the same thing with a guy, well, still going through it, but I know that feeling, the ‘what if’ of what could happen or what would have happened. You just…you’ll know when you see him. How long has it been?”
“Almost two years. I don’t know if it’s a good idea. I mean, I’m meeting him, soon, I have to transfer to the Brown Line, get off at the second stop, and I’m meeting him up on the street, like in the movies I guess.”
I can’t help but be embarrassed at my own romanticism.
“That’s great. Yeah, you should definitely go. And once you see him, you’ll just know what to do.”
“Are you married?” I ask her.
“Ha! No. I’ve been chasing this guy for eight years now. He’s a little younger than me. He actually got engaged to someone else once, but then broke it off, and he’s dating now, but he’s also seeing me––I don’t know, it’s complicated, I’m sure you understand. What’s the deal with your man?”
“We left things on bad terms back in Los Angeles. I just want to know where we stand. I want to see if I feel anything when I see him. All my friends think it’s a bad idea...”
“Your friends won’t understand. You have to make that choice though, don’t let anyone do it for you. Of course, I’m just giving you my opinion, but I think you should see him, kiss him, sleep with him, do whatever you feel is right, but only you can decide that.”
I think back on all the times we’ve kissed, slept together, yelled, gone silent, walked away, moved away, took planes, took trains to see each other.
“What do you do?” The woman asks me.
“I’m a writer. You?”
“Me too! Well, I was. I used to write creative non-fiction, but I lost my confidence or something, I think, and now I work in admissions.”
“That’s interesting.”
“No, not really.”
The train stops abruptly. Division. The woman gets up and adjusts her beanie.
“You can get the Brown Line at the Clark/Lake stop. Good luck.”
She exits the train. The doors shut and we pick up speed again, hurtling down the tunnel.
*
The train stops, I put my gloves back on and walk out to the platform. It seems like everyone is pushing toward the stairway, so I shuffle my way out of the herd and tug my bag behind me to the other side. I know I’m the only one that can make choices for myself, that it’s my life after all. I don’t want to be like her though, eight years, the chasing, that’s not what love is. That’s not what I want. But a part of me knows if I don’t see you I will always wonder. I transfer to the Brown Line and wait for the stop.
This time when the train stops, I exit and make my way up the stairs to the street. I see you, before you see me, and you’re smoking a cigarette against a lamppost. Like in the movies. The air is icy and the moon looks frosted over in the sky. You turn towards me and begin to walk. Our eyes meet. I feel nothing, just cold. I want to allow my body to shiver, but I’d have to exhale in order to do it. I’d have to admit I was human, a person made of cells and moving through mud.
Brittany Ackerman is a writer from Riverdale, New York. She earned her BA in English from Indiana University and graduated from Florida Atlantic University’s MFA program in Creative Writing. She teaches General Education at AMDA College and Conservatory of the Performing Arts in Hollywood, CA. She was the 2017 Nonfiction Award Winner for Red Hen Press, as well as the AWP Intro Journals Project Award Nominee in 2015. Her work has been featured in Electric Literature, Jewish Book Council, Lit Hub, Entropy, The Los Angeles Review, No Tokens, Hobart, Cosmonauts Ave, and more. Her first collection of essays entitled The Perpetual Motion Machine was published with Red Hen Press in 2018, and her debut novel The Brittanys is out now with Vintage.