Wendy Markham - Slightly Suburban

If you see something, say something—that’s my motto.

Well, not just my motto. It’s actually the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s motto, but I’m down with it.

I spot a couple of candidates who look as if they might be up to something, but they’re probably just your garden-variety street thugs. There’s a woman who’s acting furtive and seems to have something strapped across her front, but then she turns around and I see that it’s a baby. Close call.

At the automated ticket machine, I feed a couple of soggy dollar bills into a slot that keeps spitting them back out again. After many frustrating tries, I wind up waiting on a seemingly endless line at the booth.

Finally, new Metrocard in hand, I’m through the turnstile, where I almost head to the uptown stairs out of habit. Home is a mere forty-three blocks and five stops up the line, I think wistfully. Jack is about the same distance in the opposite direction.

Should I just forget about meeting him? I so wish Mitch weren’t there. I so wish Mitch weren’t everywhere. Lately, he’s camped out on our new (custom-upholstered, a Christmas present to each other) couch night after night, watching sports with Jack.

Hey, if I go home now, I’ll have the couch—and remote—all to myself. I have to admit, E! True Hollywood Story sounds better than anything else right now.

But Jack is counting on me. And who knows? Maybe Mitch will take a hint and leave when I get there.

No, he won’t. He loves us. Even me. Jack is always telling me that. “He loves you, Tracey. He thinks you’re great.”

I’m so great and he loves me so much that a few months ago, Mitch decided to move into a studio apartment right around the corner from us. Thank God there were no openings in our building. He checked.

Don’t get me wrong—he’s a terrific guy. He and Jack have been friends since college and he was best man at our wedding. It’s just that my weekdays (and nights) have become so challenging that when I’m not at work, I want my husband—and our apartment, and our couch, and our remote—to myself.

I guess I should probably stop being so nice to Mitch whenever he’s over, so he won’t want to hang around. Or I should get Jack to tell him we need more time to ourselves. Or I should tell him myself.

Yeah. Or we could just move far, far away.

I trudge down the stairs leading to the southbound number six track, where I sense something is amiss.

My first clue: the platform is a squirming sea of humanity wearing a collective pissed-off expression, and the loudspeaker is squawking. The announcement is unintelligible, but it’s not as if they can possibly be saying, “Attention, subway riders, everything is running like clockwork tonight and we’ll have you where you’re going in no time. Have a great weekend!”

Hopefully it’s just a temporary delay.

I wearily force my way into the crowd, steering clear of the edge of the platform because really, the last thing I need right now is to fall onto the tracks and get hit by a train. Although, I wouldn’t really be surprised. If I lived to be surprised.

“Excuse me, what’s going on?” I ask the nearest bystander, who, if she were any nearer, would be huddled inside my coat with me.

She explains the situation, either in a language I don’t understand—meaning, something other than English or Italian—or with a major speech impediment, poor thing.

I smile and nod, pretending to get it.

Meanwhile, I eavesdrop on the guy whose elbow is pressed into my rib cage mere inches from my right breast. He’s saying something into his cell phone about a derailment down near Fourteenth Street.

Derailment?

Forget it. There’s no way in hell—which is pretty much where I am right now—that I’ll ever make it down to the Village.

I have no other choice but to squirm my way back to the stairs as—wouldn’t you know it—an uptown train comes and goes without me on the opposite track.

When at last I make it up the stairs and am heading toward the other side, I hear another train roaring into the northbound track below. Already? They usually don’t come this close together.

I break into a run, shouting, “Someone hold the doors!”

Nobody does, dammit.

I reach the platform just as they’re dinging closed, and this guy standing on the other side of the glass—some lame guy in a wet trench coat who could have held the doors, because I can tell by his expression that he heard me—offers a helpless shrug.

I dare to glare, hoping belatedly that he doesn’t have a gun, and watch the train trundle off toward my distant neighborhood without me.

Oh, well. Another one will be along in a few minutes, right?

Wrong. So, so wrong.

Twenty minutes later, this platform is nearly as crowded as the other side, and someone near me has terrible gas. I keep trying to move away, but the stink keeps moving, too. By process of elimination I’ve isolated it to three possible people: a guy with a goatee and backpack, an old lady, or an attractive businesswoman who’s about my age and may be trying too hard to appear nonchalant.

I’ve also just been treated to an a cappella rendition of Billy Squiers’s “Stroke Me,” sung by some dirty old man whose fly is down—making it less serenade than suggestion. When I refuse to throw some change into the hat he passes, he tells me to %@#$ Off, with an accompanying hand gesture.

By the time the next train comes hurtling into the station—so packed that the only way to get on is to literally shove past people crammed by the doors, who shove right back—I am wondering, once again, why I live in New York City.

I mean, seriously…what am I doing here?

Yes, my husband is here. And my job. And my friends. And all my stuff.

But…why?

These days, unless one is supremely wealthy—and we’re not—the quality of life in the city seems pretty dismal. Traffic, poverty, crowds, the smell…I can’t imagine it’s that much worse in Calcutta.

Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration. They have monsoon season in Calcutta, right? And a lot of curry. I’m not crazy about curry.

But there’s a lot of curry in New York, too. And this might not be a monsoon, but as I splash back out into the deluge, I decide it’s worse. Whatever’s falling out of the sky has now frozen into sleet, or hail, and it’s pelting my face and head.

Remembering that there’s probably nothing to eat at home, I detour two blocks to the deli. I pick up a loaf of whole-grain bread, a half pound of turkey breast, lettuce, an apple, a diet raspberry Snapple and a couple of rolls of toilet paper because we’re almost out.

“Twenty-seven fifty-eight,” says the clerk.

I blink, look down at the counter and shove aside a big fruit basket that’s sitting there in shrink-wrap. “Oh, this isn’t mine,” I tell her.

“I know.”

Then why did you add it to my bill? And would it kill you to crack a smile?

Wait a minute. The fruit basket alone would have to be at least fifty bucks.

“How much was it?” I ask again, gesturing at my stuff, because I thought she said—

“Twenty-seven fifty-eight.”

Jeez. Can this measly little pile of groceries possibly cost that much?

Yes, it can, and Unsmiling Cashier is waiting for her money.

I open my wallet again, wondering why I’m surprised. I mean, after all these years of living in Manhattan, I know things are superexpensive. Yet every so often, I still find myself caught off guard at cash registers.

All that’s left in my wallet are two ones and a wad of receipts.

With a sigh, I pull out my American Express card. As Unsmiling Cashier runs it through the machine, a quick mental calculation tells me that in my hometown, this would run me ten bucks, maybe twelve. Tops.