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Is this the train to Jamaica Plain?
About three thousand words of Aedie and his tribulations today. I have two plot points left to hit, then the coda, and I have about 15,000 words left to do it in. Right on schedule.
I hope to heaven this isn't garbage. Ptrakh, as the Sethin would say.
Today, if you watched the final fifteen minutes of the final World Cup game, you saw ninety thousand of the tensest spectators in the world. When the came was still zero-zero after two overtimes and they were getting ready for the shootout, the cameras panned across the crowd, and some of the people looked like they were going to wet themselves from the sheer stress of it all.
US goalie Brianna Scurry is a large dangerous-looking woman. She always looks so intent - dark eyes always scowling, focused, like she's going to keep the ball out of the goal by sheer force of will. During the shootout, it's between the player making the penalty kick and the goalie. These kicks are very hard to block. When she failed to block the first two Chinese kicks, I thought she was going to burst into flame right there on the spot.
She blocked the third one. Sheer force of will.
The reward was that after the game, I saw her smile. I have never before seen this woman smile.
In the Park Street station, waiting for a train to unload so I can board it. Waiting beside me is a little woman, about ninety years old and five feet tall, with a pinched Slavic face, a vaguely Hungarian accent, a poor command of English, and a hair net.
Woman: unintelligible train something next something?
Me: I'm sorry?
Woman: unintelligible next something train something?
Me: I don't understand.
Woman: (Gives me a "feh" look, dismissing me as a fool)
The passengers have finished disembarking. I get on the train and begin walking to the forward car.
Woman: (following) Hey! Boy! Boy! Hey!
I turn around. She comes up behind me and sits down in the seat next to where I'm standing.
Woman: unintelligible Arlington?
Me: No, the next stop is Boylston.
Woman: mutter Boylston.
Me: Arlington is the stop after that.
Woman: (brightening) mutter Arlington?
Me: Yes.
Woman: (impatient, repeats same phrase) mutter Arlington?
Me: (I realize what she's asking, kinda) The stop after Arlington is Copley.
Woman: mutter Copley mutter. unintelligible Jamaica Plain?
At this point, I realize I have stumbled into a rehearsal for Dogg's Hamlet and this woman is actually trying to teach me her language so she can communicate with me.
Jamaica Plain is in another direction entirely, and if she's on this train because she somehow thinks she can get there by riding it, I hope she's not going to blame me, because I didn't tell her to board it.
Fortunately she's distracted by the fact that the train's now actually moving.
Woman: mutter next mumble Arlington?
Me: No, the next stop's Boylston.
Woman: mumble Boylston.
Me: Right.
Woman: unintelligible?
Me: Arlington.
Woman: Arlington. unintelligible?
Me: Copley.
Woman: unintelligible Jamaica Plain. mutter mumble go up.
Boylston is very close to Park Street. The doors have opened by now.
Woman: mutter mumble Boylston?
Me: Yes.
Woman: mutter mumble Arlington?
Me: The next stop, yes.
The doors close.
Woman: unintelligible Arlington?
Me: (sighing) Copley.
Woman: mutter mumble go up.
We stop at Arlington. The doors open. She stands up, leans out the door, and squints at the sign as if to confirm that I am not leading her astray. Then she relaxes.
Woman: unintelligible Copley.
Me: Yes.
Woman: unintelligible Jamaica Plain?
Me: I don't know.
Woman: mutter mumble go up. Will ask.
Copley was my stop. I didn't turn around to see if she got off behind me. I was not worried. She'd find her destination eventually, leaving a lot of cracked and broken minds in her wake.
I am at a loss to figure out why people constantly stop me and ask me for directions. Do I look harmless or something?
I went to get milk tonight. The grocery store is twenty-four-hour, except for Sundays. It closes at midnight on Saturdays. I had to hurry, so I went in the car.
On the way back from my milk run, I was behind a woman on a bicycle. She was travelling in the lane like an automobile would, so I figured I'd wait to pass her until after the stop light, when there was plenty of room. I don't like to crowd bicyclists, and I wasn't in a hurry anymore.
At the stop light, the road temporarily splits into two lanes, one for people turning left, the other for everyone else. Another car zoomed around both me and the bicycle, screeching to a halt in the left lane.
Now the configuration is: This car on the left, bicycle on the right, me behind the bicycle. I can't hear what the overgrown adolescents in the car are saying, but the passenger window is open and they're definitely saying something to the bicyclist. Judging from the look she gives them as she turns right, I gather it's not something welcome.
I pull up in the space she's left. She turned on red; I have about three seconds before the light turns green, just enough time for the idiots to look over at me and shout "Carrot Top!" and laugh raucously as the light changes and they take their left.
I despair for my species. It's not so much that I mind drunken morons driving down the street and calling me names out their windows. It's just that it's not lost on me that, every time it happens, the culprits are always male. Funny how that works.
I loathe Carrot Top. And I'm not even a redhead anyway.
© Columbine
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