He would have liked to signal to them somehow that he was on their side, a supporter of graffiti in general and largely in agreement with their message. But they would never believe that – he was too old, and despite his current slept-in state too respectably dressed, outside of their world, a stranger. It didn’t stop him from privately wishing them luck.
The train pulled into the station, and he and the young people got into different cars. He had managed to walk into the morning rush hour, so there was no chance of a seat, but he was pressed so tightly against the people around him that it seemed almost relaxing, as if he were not wholly responsible for supporting himself, and he closed his eyes, one hand on the metal bar, a dark velvet blanket of exhaustion surrounding him. The train swayed through the tunnel, hot and close and filled with intimate bodily smells; and though he had not really decided if he was going to change at Yonge or stay on until Bathurst, he found himself conveyed almost automatically out with the wave of other passengers at the Yonge/Bloor station, onto the narrow platform of the east-west line. He blinked, his eyes watery, and looked up and down for the sign pointing him towards the southbound train, got onto the escalator, wanting to sit down on the metal steps and see if he could sleep for the few seconds it would take to travel upwards.
The boy with the goatee and the green-haired girl got off at Yonge as well, and moved quickly through the crush onto the north-south level, then up another flight of stairs and through the turnstile into the mall. Near the drugstore, in front of a large poster advertising a new perfume, the girl turned and raised her eyebrows interrogatively. The boy frowned, doubtful, but she nodded her head, and he slid the marker carefully out of his pocket and into her hand, taking up a position in front of her as she slipped the backpack off and he hooked the straps over his own shoulders. Holding the marker below chest level, she began to slash it across the glass case that housed the poster, moving it in quick rapid strokes, but then the boy’s hand shot out and grabbed her arm, and she stopped, the marker uncapped in front of her, the letters FE scrawled on the glass, and a security officer a few feet away, his mouth opening in a sharp command.
They both knew what you did in this case. You dropped your eyes, you handed over the marker, the spray can, you apologized, possibly cried a bit if you were a girl. You went with the officer, you said you’d never do it again. They both knew this. So there was no explaining what the girl did next, why she suddenly grabbed her marker and ran, the boy coming after her, encumbered by the backpack, the security man chasing both of them. She dashed down the stairs to the subway level, and then reached the turnstile, launched over it with her hands and landed in a neat crouch on the other side, a transit guard appearing out of a booth as the security officer fumbled with the gate and shouted, ‘Stop her!’ The girl bounced up and ran for the escalator, and the transit guard followed.
‘Sasha, come back!’ called the boy, as the girl leapt from the bottom of the escalator into the mass of commuters on the platform, colliding with a man in a duffel coat and then springing away, dodging into the crowd, head down. The man’s briefcase crashed to the tiled floor and he made a grab for the girl’s arm but she was long gone, her swift feet skating over the fake marble, people pulling away from her on either side. As the boy reached the bottom of the escalator the transit guard overtook him.
She was weaving now, through the mass of bodies, putting them between herself and the guard, her rainbow legs and flying hair darting in and out of sight. The guard moved fast and heavy in a long-legged run, reaching for her as she sped along the edge of the platform. ‘Leave her alone!’ shouted someone, while someone else tried to take hold of her arm, and she jumped sideways, away from his hands.
The lights of a train swept through the tunnel in the distance as it swung in towards the station. And the girl was going the wrong way, one long leaping step threw her onto the yellow line, and her own momentum was moving her forward.
‘Jesus, stop, stop!’ yelled the transit guard, throwing his hands out towards her. Her lead foot crossed the edge of the platform.
‘Shit, oh shit, oh shit!’ cried the guard. She tried to turn but the turn itself threw her off balance, and she was rocking on the edge, her arms spiralling, her green hair fanning out in the wind of the approaching train, and the lights of the train were washing her out in a haze of white, her mouth wide open and soundless. And now people were running towards her, a dozen people had realized what was happening and broken into action, converging on the girl from every side. A man in a knitted Rasta cap reached her first, jumped out of the crowd, grabbed at her wrist, and pulled.
A man in a dark coat pushed past Alex, holding a package wrapped in brown paper. He looks like the doctor, Alex noted, a quick twitch of fear, but the doctor was imaginary, of course. Like most of his problems. His own imagination and his own damn fault.
That man’s going to drop the package and poison us all, he thought. He was thinking this on purpose, wasn’t he? A weird variant on punishing himself, and he reached the top of the escalator and walked onto the platform.
The PA system was explaining that delays on the Yonge line had now been cleared but that normal service might take some time to resume. Passengers might experience longer than usual waits between trains. All right. He put his head back against the wall, retreating again into something near a dream, only his commuter reflexes still awake, attending for the sound of a train arriving.
Then everything fell apart.
He heard a shout, somebody screaming, and his head jerked up. The mass of people on the platform had fragmented, beginning to run in different directions, and an alarm going off. Emergency.
The man with the package. For one terrible moment, only half awake, Alex believed that he had done this, somehow he had done this, he had thought it and it had come to be.
A wave of people parting at the edge of the platform. Uniforms at the edge, on the stairway. He held the camera bag against his chest, and as he tried to step forward the glare hit his eyes and obscured the space ahead of him. He blinked again, dizzy, shook his head, and he saw a series of frozen pictures, like screen captures flashing in front of him. The man with the package opening his hands and letting it fall. An old man with a baseball cap, his eyes wide with terror. And then he saw her, the green-haired girl flying forward towards the edge of the platform, and this much he understood, that whatever else was happening this girl was in danger, and someone at his shoulder began to run an instant before he moved forward himself.
At the edge of the crowd, a woman sprinted to the wall. She was a woman who worried, her brain wired for anxiety, a woman who watched for pay phones and emergency buzzers wherever she went, and she knew the location of the subway’s red button, she knew how to cut the power. This was the moment she had waited for all her life. She slammed her fist into the button, once, twice, finally useful, finally justified.