On the New York City subway at 1 o’clock in the morning, I am standing between jazz and the maniac.
The maniac is keeping himself occupied with something small and crinkly that he has produced from one of the pockets of his large and greasy polyester overcoat. He is wide-eyed and rocking back and forth, but his body is stiff except at the wrists and ankles. I can hear them creaking.
By jazz I mean a man in a corner with a dented trumpet, which gleams under a cobwebbed light in the corner. He can play but he’s drunk, and his breath is slipping. He is shaggy and bald but not old—maybe forty. Next train in three minutes.
There are others on the platform, but they’re quiet. It’s a Sunday night, and nobody is drunk or flushed with after-midnight excitement. They all angle away from Jazz and his trumpet. I’m somewhat sober but haven’t slept, and I’m foggy and dry-mouthed and maybe a bit manic. I commit the New York sin of looking in one direction for too long.
Noticing this, the maniac lurches off his creaky ankle-hinges and shouts something in my direction. I look away quickly, back at my phone, and he settles back into his steady rocking. A few people look up for a moment, but Jazz keeps playing. I try to look busy, and my phone tells me faraway stories: there’s been a structure fire in Manchester and a crash on the M6. It’s late at night here and only the European news outlets are tweeting. I feign interest, squinting a bit theatrically at the headlines, and the maniac quiets back down.
I make it to Grand Central in time for my train. There are four or five pigeons milling about in the station lobby, and a few people sitting on the stairs—there’s usually nowhere to sit in the city but the ground. I stand on the platform and wait for the doors to open. A few people wait with me, and I wonder why the hell anyone would be headed to New Haven at this hour on a Sunday night.
The train leaves Grand Central and shudders east. The trains are slower than they used to be, I’ve heard, and they lurch like hell. I check my bank account and realize that I have seventy fewer dollars than I did in the morning, and I try to remember what had compelled me to go to New York. I save six dollars on the train by only buying a ticket to Fairfield—they don’t bother to check. By 3:30 a.m., I’m asleep in my bed in New Haven and I don’t remember any of it.
