"Mom, I don't have a place yet. All my contacts have fallen through. The world is GOING UNDER!" I yell over the roar of the Burning Train, as all hell breaks loose. 'Stay calm,' says the motherly operator on the other end. A half-eaten train conductor flies by the window, screaming. "Your Father and I are calling everyone we know in New York. Just hang in there a little longer." Then the line goes dead.
Shite. I collapse back into my Amtrak seat. Twenty minutes to the City and I don't have a place to stay. "Here Odelia, thanks for letting me use your phone". She takes it and puts it in her pocket. "They have WyFy at Penn Station; you can use my i-phone if you want." Odelia never says a thing she doesn't have to say, in all the hours I've known her (since yesterday at 4am). She is short and to the point, with curly reddish hair and black gloves that haven't any fingers. She leads me from the train, to a little restaurant in Penn Station.
The Station is Big. It looks like a market place, as I've seen market places look in Seattle or ChinaTown. There are a few Benches, but everything else is Hallways, Stairs, Signs, and People. There is more people here than anyplace. They are all going some where, except a couple of them are sitting, strangly positioned, in the hallways. One covers its head with its hands, another is surrounded by papers and signs and leans diagonally in his scarves. There are men in coats, women with purses, old ladies with luggage. I keep a close eye on Odelia, afraid I might loose her in the throng.
We go upstairs, and I phone home again while she has a smoke. Someone asks us if we would like him to buy us two sandwiches. After he goes, Odelia tells me he's obviously not from around here. I am living in a whirlwind, I didn't notice, everyone here looks homeless.
Mom comes through, again, she always does. I've got a place to stay with her college friend's son (Jake Stevens). I tell Odelia where, and she says that's close to her place. So again, I am in the happy position of having a guide through the labyrinth of Subway tunnels and trains under the City. She makes short, direct work of it, and we are on our way in no time. The trains roar coming in, they roar going out. It is the most delightful music. They click and whine and siiiing. Rythm, but a sad rythm, and an irregular rythm, that I would catch and understand had I time to sit through a few rounds....
The E bus, the F bus, finally, we find our Subway and take it over the bridge into Brooklyn. I watch out the window, astounded by the amount of people. I look in every open, lighted window. There is a lady making a bed, there is another looking intently at something on a table. They go by so quickly, the train slows and speeds and slows. Odelia leaves me with her number and a warning. It isn't the Best neighborhood, be careful, and I will be.
When she is gone, I find my stop and hop through the chilly winter air, under the subway now, on the street. Graffitti of the city, shops and news papers blowing past, the grime of the gutter, black tar scraped onto the curbsides. Metal and Rock and Glass. People go by, a motercycle idles behind a chain fence. Bars on the windows. A mural says 'we have a right to film police officers'. I knock on the door of Jake's place and am Safe unto my Dreams.
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