Yoko

On Tuesday, I’m sure it was Yoko in the subway. B line, A line, call it what you will. She caught my stare. I have to say embarrassing. What was I to do? Under the circumstances the best thing was to come clean and reveal. Partially. I slipped my sunglasses down and saw the dawning in her. The depth of our acquaintance, buried as it was, previous, in the mushroom compost of time itself. For we are nothing if not nostalgia. Not for you? Certainly me.

I can’t speak for Yoko.

We sat back, faced across the carriage, shopping plastic bags scrippling our knees, jolting with the convergence of the trains ramble, subterranean as it was, our eyes wormed to meet, banishing the log leg sway between us, thick in the knowledge of our rich pasts. The both.

I longed to speak. A few times my mouth opened as an involuntary sound leaked from my throat. The fat thighed man beside me squirmed. Some how distance and that space across the carriage could not be bridged, until again, as I prepared to speak, the words fully formed into a sentence, I looked up to perform, just as she turned aside the open slam runway doors, squealing into station; Squirrels in line, that twin silver ribbon through black, down the spine of Central Park.

I shook my head, babbling, rabbling, the squirm besides, eyes big popped; it gouged my cavern mind, that this was the logical stop for her to alight the carriage. Where else would she get off?

I was left to ruminate the lost opportunity, it being seventeen years since I last saw her in the subway. What I could have said. What I could have done. Hand out my glove. ‘Its been?’ or ‘Jeeves, Jeeves Cranbourne.’ And she would have smiled that thin lip line. ‘Why of course, John’s smoking buddy. How could I forget.’ How could I forget evenings on the balcony. The city, buzz and rumble. Striking the sky with our chins. ‘Chin up old boy.’ He’d call. ‘Chin up.’

It’s only five hundred yards from the station to my apartment, yet that evening my steps pondered as the full extent of his absence infused my body once more. No! Not for the first time. Each time feels like that first moment of his death, his passing. That’s what I caught in her eyes, across the carriage. The B line. Certainly the B line.

Tuesday, late, colour bleached from sky, falling down bricks, into rainbow streets, running to river, Hudson.

‘Chin up. Chin up old boy.’