Subway Love (8 page)

“No,” she answered. “I live upstate. I’m just visiting my dad. My parents are divorced. Oh, God, did I just say that?”

So she wasn’t wary. She wasn’t from New York, that’s why.

Jonas laughed. “Mine are, too. No worries. I’m —”

Still, if he got off when
she
got off, if he, oh, just coincidentally, was going where
she
was going, then she might start to worry. But he needed to do something quickly, and the Facebook thing hadn’t worked last time.

“Can I text you? You want my cell number?”

She crinkled her brow. Her eyes were brown and her lashes short but dark, and there were so many of them.

“Your what?”

“My number? So you could call me. Or I could call you?”

“Oh.” Laura smiled. “Sure. At my dad’s?”

That caught Jonas off-guard for a minute, like maybe she was one of those religious girls and she needed her father’s permission, or she was just screwing around with him. Yanking his chain, pretending to be interested. Pretending to be nice. Several scenarios ran through his head, but you can’t pretend to be so pretty, so he said, “Yeah, your dad’s house is good.”

She stood up. “Is this the Fifty-ninth Street stop?” She was nervous.

It made him feel good to answer. “Yeah, Fifty-ninth. And Lexington. Between Park and Third.”
Good God, stop talking.

For a second Jonas racked his brain for a reason he could be getting off here, too. He put his hand on his camera bag. He hoped she didn’t think it was a man purse or anything.

“This is a camera,” he said.

“I know,” Laura said. She started out the open doors. “So you want my dad’s phone number?” And she gave it to him, area code and all. Just like that. He had her name. And her phone number, albeit her
dad’s
phone number.

She got off the train, and as fast as he could, he pulled out his phone and keyed it in.

New contact:

Laura.

HE
tried every configuration. He must have typed it in wrong. Reversed a number or something. It had to be.

“I think she was just dicking you around,” Nick said.

“No way.”

They were at Nick’s house because there was a chance (or a hope) you needed a landline to call another landline, and Jonas’s mom — to save money — didn’t have one.

“OK, then, maybe it’s a 718 number,” Nick tried.

“I tried that,” Jonas said. They sat in the kitchen where the oldest phone in the United States was attached to the wall. It was olive green, all but the warped and tangled cord that had somehow turned greenish brown over the years.

Jonas’s mom had been exclusively cell phones and Internet for quite a while now, even though she was completely tech-challenged. She had to call Jonas every time she wanted to record a show on the DVR. She asked Jonas to set up her cell phone. She hardly used the computer at all, and if she wasn’t phobic to it before, she was now.

Jonas couldn’t have explained, even to himself, why he had begun printing out his father’s e-mails. He hadn’t printed the first one he discovered open on his dad’s desktop, but after that, Jonas had to hack into his father’s AOL account and search for them. Was that why he started printing them? The sheer effort?

It took only one guess to find the password:
KELLY
, his father’s first and only family dog. Jonas, of course, had never known Kelly, but he had heard the stories. They all had. His father talked about Kelly often, whenever they watched a dog movie, or whenever they met someone on the street with a similar-looking dog. There was even a picture on the refrigerator of Jonas’s dad as a little boy with his arm around his beloved beagle mix — or rather, there used to be.

And now that he had the password, all of his father’s e-mails — new, old, sent, and saved — were there for the viewing. And he had her name: Lorraine, otherwise known as [email protected]. Each time he logged on, it was like a game Jonas was playing with himself not to get caught. It gave him an odd, thrilling beating of his heart. It reminded Jonas of playing hide-and-seek when he was little during summer vacations on Long Island. Someone would hide their eyes and count backward, while everyone else went running, terrified, looking for a place to hide, listening to their time running out.

Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .

Knowing he had willingly put himself in a position to be hunted down and caught, but hoping he wouldn’t be, Jonas would hide under a bush, or inside the shed of their summer rental, his heart pounding with fear and excitement.

He was careful to clear his search history so his father wouldn’t see that someone had been in his e-mail. At first Jonas read only e-mails that his father had read, but the more he read, the more daring he got. He began reading e-mails his father hadn’t yet read, carefully highlighting “mark as unread” when he was finished and leaving everything as it was. His father would come home from work, kiss his mother, say hello to Jonas and Lily.

“I’m just going to check my e-mails before dinner,” he said.

Jonas watched as his dad put down his briefcase. He watched his calm, steady gait, like nothing was up, as if nothing were different, as he made his way into his bedroom, where he kept his laptop. Jonas kept his eyes down on his math book, or his novel, or his history notes, but his thoughts were focused on his father, on the e-mail Jonas had read earlier that day, on knowing something his father didn’t yet know. Knowing that he could have deleted the e-mail, that he could affect this secret relationship. He could even write back and tell Lorraine it was all over, then delete the sent mail.

But he never did.

What he
did
do, however, was print out the e-mails and hide them in his room, at the very back of his desk drawer, instead.

“Let me try,” Nick said. “What’s the number again?”

Jonas had it memorized by now, but Nick still had no luck. When they called the number Jonas had in his cell phone, they got some old lady who told them if they called again she would report them to the police. Other configurations yielded fax machine buzzes or other wrong numbers.

“You must have heard wrong, then,” Nick tried.

“Yeah, maybe. Or she’s dicking me around.” But somehow Jonas didn’t really believe that.

LAURA
couldn’t stop thinking about him, Jonas, the boy from the subway, and she was glad her brother hadn’t come to New York with her. She found herself staying inside, listening for the phone to ring.

“We have to go out to eat,” her dad said. “Besides, you’ve been in all weekend.”

“I can make us eggs,” Laura said.

She and her dad ate in front of the television, which was another plus in coming to her dad’s, but the truth was, she didn’t know whether he had eggs in the fridge or not. She could eat cereal. Her dad bought the good kinds, Froot Loops and Sugar Frosted Flakes. In fact, it would be a dream to eat cereal for dinner and watch TV. That way if the phone rang, she’d be right here to answer it. Only it didn’t, other than a call from her father’s accountant and one wrong number.

This Saturday night, Laura’s father watched
All in the Family
(Laura agreed to watch too if her dad promised to watch
Bridget Loves Bernie
afterward), and they had scrambled eggs with cheese, toast, and bacon. The same familiar sadness came over Laura afterward as she watched her dad doing the dishes. She missed him. He was standing right in front of her, and she missed him so terribly.

When she was a little girl, if they went out someplace, she used to pretend to fall asleep in the backseat of their station wagon on the ride home. Mitchell got to sit up front, right in between their parents, looking out onto the road unfolding in front of them. There was a clear order: daddies drive, mommies sit next to them, oldest kid in front. If Daddy was at work and Mommy was driving, two kids could sit in front. It was a simple age rotation. So as long as Mitchell was alive and living at home, Laura was relegated to the backseat, but if she timed it right, she could look out the side window most of the ride, then settle down, stretch out across the seat, and close her eyes. By the time they got home, everyone thought she was fast asleep, and instead of waking her, her mom would instruct her dad to carry her up to bed.

“Careful, Hank,” her mother would say. “Don’t wake her up.”

And Laura would feel her daddy’s strong arms lifting her right out of the car and cradling her, just like when she was a baby. And even if she couldn’t actually remember what it felt like to be a baby, this felt good, so good. So safe, and weightless. Her daddy was the protector of the whole world.

But now he looked so helpless and alone, laughing at Archie Bunker picking on his son-in-law. Laura could feel her heart breaking in two — two parts — one for her and one for him. He couldn’t protect her anymore. She was leaving in less than twelve hours. Sunday morning she’d be back on the bus to Kingston, and her mom would be waiting for her, maybe her mom and Bruce.

After her father went to bed, Laura snuck out into the living room and called the operator.

She cupped her hand over her mouth and the receiver. “I just wanted to check if this phone is working properly,” Laura whispered.

“Why, yes it is, miss. Are you having trouble with your line?”

“No, I mean, I just wanted to make sure it was working.”

“It seems to be,” the voice said. “Are you all right, sweetheart?”

“Yeah, I am.”

The city noises, sirens and horns, were comforting. Lights moved across the ceiling as cars went by in the street.

“How old are you?”

“Fourteen,” Laura answered.

“Are you home alone?”

“No, my dad’s sleeping.” Then Laura had an impulse to tell this nice woman everything.
I met this boy on the subway and I have no idea who he is but I gave him my number and he hasn’t called. I know that sounds stupid but I think he really wants to call me. I don’t know why he hasn’t. Now I’m leaving and I’m going back to my mom’s house where we live with her asshole boyfriend who sometimes hits me and while I’m mentioning it, my brother’s an asshole, too.

But I really like this boy. He said his name is Jonas.

But of course she didn’t say any of that.

“Are you sure you’re all right, then? Your phone seems to be working just like it’s supposed to.”

“Yeah, thanks.” Laura hung up.

SPIKE
has a real name, of course. It’s Max Lowenbein, but he sure wouldn’t tell anyone that. When he first started doing throw-ups, at ten, he used the tag Slug138. Then he was SuperKool for a while, but that was two years ago. It took him all winter to rack up enough spray paint for his piece, his masterpiece, a burner that would set the city on fire. Every writer, everyone who was anyone, would be talking about it, a full end-to-end train.

He had been planning it for months, benching for hours to memorize the schedules, the routes, every train, every layup, even frequenting art museums and galleries, sketching it all in his notebook. No one had done a whole train before, at least not with style. Spike had been working to perfect his style, and replacing the spray-paint cap with the fatter nozzle from Niagara Spray Starch gave him just what he needed, wider surface coverage and less drippage. He knew in his heart that he was nearly ready. The secret to life is good timing. Timing is everything.

Can’t wait too long. Can’t move too soon.

He had done the Pink Panther car. That was a hit. Some other writers, some dope writers like Snake131 and Lil Hawk, were still talking about it. But not his masterpiece; no, his masterpiece was still to come.

It had to be just right. It would take all night and he would need a crew. The secret to life is good timing, and good timing might require warmer weather.

IT
was a month and a half before Laura returned to New York City again, to a rainy, cold January. There had been flurries when she left Kingston. Here it was freezing rain. Only a few people stood on the platform. Laura read the wall behind her while she waited. It was covered with graffiti, messages left in response to other messages, different handwriting, who knew how far apart in time.

Beatniks are worthless.

(and underneath)

Your attitude is worthless.

(underneath)

Beatniks have been extinct since 1960. Where have you been?

(underneath)

Beat the draft.

To beat is cool.

To beat-cool is not to be beat.

To beat-cool and not to be beat is nowhere.

Laura wondered if it made sense to anyone. She only vaguely knew what Beatniks were, precursors to the hippies, the Beat Generation, underground and nonconformist. Laura wondered how long ago these messages had been written, if the people who wrote them ever came back to see the responses.

She hadn’t stopped thinking about him, about Jonas, but she’d tried. She’d imagined so many stories, about how the boy had called her father’s apartment while she was away. She didn’t talk to her dad between visits, but in her fantasy he called their house in Woodstock, about some issue or another, and then casually mentioned that some boy had called looking for her.