Dan walked after him, into the hot night, screaming inside in a haze of terror, yet walking quietly and silently down the street.
Incident in the IND
"Thank God that's done." Adriann DuBois's voice bounced harshly from the tiled walls of the subway passage, punctuated by the sharp clack-clack of her high stiletto heels. There was a rattling rumble as an express train rushed through the station ahead and a wave of musty air washed over them.
"It's after one A.M..” Chester said and yawned widely and pressed the back of his hand to his mouth. "We'll probably have to wait an hour for a train."
"Don't be so negative, Chester," she said, and her voice had the same metallic ring as her heelsteps. "All the copy is finished now for the new account, we'll probably get a bonus, and we can take most of the day off tomorrow. Think positive like that, and you'll feel a lot better, I assure you."
They reached the turnstile at that moment, before Chester could think of a snappy answer that didn't reek too much of one o'clock in the morning, and he fumbled a token into the slot. Adriann swept through as he probed deeper into his change pocket and discovered that this had been his last token. He turned wearily back to the change booth and muttered two or three good, dirty words under his breath.
"How many?" a voice mumbled from the dimness of the barred steel cell.
"Two, please." He slipped the change in through the tiny window. It wasn't that he minded paying her damn fare — after all, she was a woman — but he wished she would at least say thanks or even nod her head to show that she didn't get into subways by divine right. After all they both worked in the same nut factory and earned the same money, and now she would be earning more. He had forgotten that last little fact for a moment. The slot swallowed his token and went chunk as he pushed through.
"I take the last car," Adriann said, squinting nearsightedly down the dark and empty tunnel. "Let's walk back to the end of the platform."
"I need the middle of the train," Chester said, but had to trot after her. Adriann never heard what she didn't need to hear.
"There's something I can tell you now, Chester," she began in her brisk man-to-man voice. "I couldn't really mention this before, since we both were doing the same work and in one sense competing for position. But since Blaisdell's coronary will have him out for a couple of weeks I'll be acting copy chief, with some more money to match—"
"I heard from the latrine grapevine. Congrats—"
"— so I'm in a position to pass on a bit of good advice to you. You have to push more, Chester, grab onto things when they come along…"
"For chrissake, Adriann, you sound like a bad commercial for crowded streetcars."
"And that sort of thing too. Little jokes. People begin to think you don't take your work seriously and that is sure death in the ad business."
"Of course I don't take the work seriously — who in their right mind could?" He heard a rumbling and looked, but the tunnel was still empty; it must have been a truck in the street above. "Are you going to tell me that you really care about writing deathless prose about milady's armpits smelling the right way from the use of the right Stink-Go-Way?"
"Don't be vulgar, Chester, — you know you can be sweet when you want to," she said, taking advantage of female reasoning to ignore his arguments and to inject a note of emotion into a previously logical conversation.
"You're damn right I can be sweet," he said huskily, not averse to a little emotion himself. With her mouth shut Adriann was pretty attractive in a past-thirtyish way. The knitted dress did wonders for her bottom, and undoubtedly the foundation maker's artifice had something to do with the outstanding attraction of her front piece, but more in underpinning than in padding, he was willing to bet.
He shuffled close and slipped his arms around her waist and patted lightly on the top of her flank. "I can be sweet and I can remember a time when you didn't mind being sweet right back."
"That's a long time finished, boy," she said in her schoolmarm voice and peeled his arms away with a picking-up-worms expression. Chester's newspaper fell out from under his arm, where he had stuffed it, and he bent over mumbling to pick it up from the gritty platform.
She was quiet for a moment after this, twisting her skirt around a bit and rubbing out the wrinkles as if brushing away the contamination of his touch. There were no sounds from the street overhead, and the long, dimly lit station was as silent as a burial vault. They were alone with the strange loneliness that can be experienced only in a large city, of people somewhere always close by, yet always cut off. Tired, suddenly depressed, Chester lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.
"You're not allowed to smoke in the subway.” Adriann said with detached coldness.
"I'm not allowed to smoke, nor to give you a little squeeze, to make jokes in the office, or to look with justified contempt at our current client."
"No you're not," she snapped and leveled a delicate finger with a blood-red nail at him. "And since you brought it up, I'll tell you something else. Other people in the office have noticed it too, and this I know. You have been with the firm longer than I, so they considered you for the copy chief's job — and turned you down. And I was told in utmost confidence that they are actually considering letting you go. Does that mean anything to you?"
"It does. It means I have been nursing a viper in my bosom. I seem to remember that I got you this job and even had to convince old Blaisdell that you could do the work. You acted right grateful too, at the time — remember those passionate scenes in the foyer of your boardinghouse?"
"Don't be a pig!"
"Now the passion is dead, so is any chance of a raise, and it looks like my job is out the window as well. With dear Adriann for a friend, who needs an enemy…"
"There are things living in the subway, you know."
The voice was husky and trembled, it came suddenly from behind them, from what they thought was the empty platform, startling them both. Adriann gasped and turned quickly. There was a pool of darkness next to the large litter bin and neither of them had noticed the man slumped against the wall, seated there. He struggled to his feet and stepped forward.
"How dare you!" Adriann said shrilly, startled and angry. "Hiding there, eavesdropping on a private conversation. Aren't there any police in this subway?"
"There are things, you know," the man said, ignoring her, grinning up at Chester, his head twisted to one side.
He was a bum, one of the crumpled horde that had splattered out over New York City when the Bowery elevated was torn down and light penetrated that clogged street of human refuse. Photophobes to a man, they stumbled away seeking dimmer illumination. For many of them the gloomed caverns of the subways offered refuge, heated cars in the winter, toilet facilities, panhandling prospects, quiet corners for collapsing. This one wore the uniform of his trade: shapeless, filthy pants with most of the fly buttons missing; crumpled jacket tied close with string, with a number of unusual undergarments visible at the open neck; shoes cracked, split, and flapping; darkened skin as wrinkled as a mummy's with a pencil line of dirt in every crack. His mouth was a black orifice, the few remaining teeth standing like stained tombstones in memory of their vanished brothers. Examined in detail the man was a revolting sight, but so commonplace to this city that he was as much a part of it as the wire trash basket and the steaming manholes.