Good Times With Subways

The next morning arrived without any fanfare. “We Have Japan at Home” Phase II was still a go - time for their trip into the city. That meant a drive to the train station, which meant Regina would pick up Lucille, which meant Regina ultimately controlled the schedule and therefore arrived at Lucille’s house half an hour late.

“Goddamnit,” Lucille mumbled when she saw the red color in Regina’s eyes. Her friend bade her a good-natured good morning, and then the two were off, the black car heading down the streets of their suburb. The original Reginamobile from high school had met an unfortunate end when it went from having barely-functioning brakes to non-functioning brakes, and those were somewhat of a requirement for a working car. The Reginamobile and all the memories within its hallowed - if grimey - interior were now likely rusting away in a scrap pile somewhere.

As for Regina’s replacement car - it didn’t even have a name. It wasn’t the Reginamobile II or known by anything like that - it was just “Regina’s car”. The loss of all the little things that display the innocence of adolescence made Lucille stare at her ceiling sometimes at night. Comiendo techo, the Spanish (allegedly) called that feeling. Lucille’s only source for that was a forum post she came across during college. She had no idea if it was true or not, but it stuck with her all the same.

And speaking of those little things - the two agreed last night to make a quick pitstop on the way to the train station. This extra destination took them out of the way, all the way to the other side of the suburb, but they didn’t mind - it’s not like they had anywhere to be (especially Lucille, who was unemployed). Even though it had been five or six years, Lucille felt amazed at how the old sights still felt so familiar. The little crooked sign where Regina turned off the main street. The freshly mowed lawns surrounding the industrial buildings. And, of course, the little road that would bring them to the industrial lot from their early days.

Regina stopped too early, before they could make it to the promised lot. She and Lucille sat in silence for a moment, staring at a space they could never enter again. In that fix or six year interval, the local PD solved their problem of not being able to patrol every lot by erecting gates across their entrances.

A new metal barrier separated Regina and Lucille from their childhoods. They could see into the lot, all the way to where they used to do donuts, all the way to where the fence overlooked the highway, but they could no longer reach it themselves. Sure, technically they could just walk around the gate, but entering the lot on foot felt like the equivalent of entering a Japanese home without taking your shoes off at the door.

“Goddamnit,” Regina mumbled. She spoke in a gradually weakening voice. “That’s not fair. And think about it. The kids today won’t get to hang out in the lot like we did. They’re gonna miss out. They’re just…they’re just gonna be on their phones and stuff all day now...”

Lucille looked up from her phone, which she had immediately pulled out once the gate came into view. “Huh? Oh, oh yeah. It sucks.”

For the briefest of moments, when Lucille freed herself from her phone, she saw Regina looking away, wiping her eyes with a sleeve. Lucille didn’t say anything after that, and neither did Regina; she just mumbled, “I can’t believe it…” a few times and drove back down the road, back toward the present. Every so often, Regina sniffled; Lucille kept her eyes down at her phone, since sometimes looking down felt far better than looking around.

…

All things considered, the train station looked pretty nice for something built in the 1970s. In Lucille’s humble opinion, brutalism sucked ass (humanity already perfected architecture with the neoclassical style), but the insides of the concrete monolith seemed decent. There was even a little convenience store and a little breakfast shop where Regina and Lucille stood in line before the train came. Regina got a bacon, egg, and cheese; Lucille got a muffin. Regina left them a few dollars extra; Lucille, without any hesitation, hit the “NO TIP” button on the screen.

The cashier eyed Lucille as she walked away. Regina just let out a chuckle. “No tip?”

“I tip,” Lucille corrected. “But I’m not tipping for that. All the cashier did was spin the iPad around.”

“Your sophomore year politics at work again-”

“Enough of that,” Lucille interrupted. “Look, at a restaurant, I’ll tip. A server provides me a service for like sixty to ninety minutes. I like supporting people and things like that. But we’ve gotten crazy these past few years. People expect twenty percent like it’s nothing! We don’t tip fast food people. You don’t get any tips at the grocery store you work at. So why do I need to tip the cashier who merely punched in my choice of muffin? In Japan, tipping isn’t even a thing.”

Regina finished her sandwich and wiped her hands on her sweatshirt. “You’re going to justify your greed by saying they don’t do it in Japan?”

Lucille just shook her head at her friend’s smirk. “You know that’s not what I’m saying.”

“Well, here’s what I’m saying.” Regina raised a finger. “I think that, in order to receive, you have to give first. You see, if I give you something, and you give somebody something, and that somebody does the same, eventually, it’ll get back to you.”

When Lucille tapped her card on the gate to the station platform, Regina tailgated right behind her so she wouldn’t need to pay. The two women slipped through at the price of one right before the iron jaws of the gate shut behind them. When Lucille looked back at her, Regina just gave her a cheeky grin.

“Give in order to receive, huh-”

“I lost this in Fallujah.”

A mere ten feet onto the station platform, Lucille and Regina already came into contact with their first homeless person. He sat on an overturned bucket, a plastic cup full of coins in front of him, a stump where his leg used to be. He held a cardboard sign that read “HOMELESS VET - ANYTHING HELPS.”

The response to any encounter with the homeless came robotically. An immediate small wave of the hand - sorry, not interested - and the avoiding of any further contact. The legs picked up as Lucille embarked on a brisk power walk to somewhere else. It was only when two reached the middle of the station did Lucille realize what she had done. The man was a fellow human, just like her, but he was homeless, and there was no guarantee of what a homeless person might do. Most likely, they wouldn’t do anything. But there was a non-zero chance they would do something, and that was enough to make someone like Lucille move away.

Did that make her a bad person? The reduction of her fellow man into someone she automatically avoided without any thought? She wasn’t quite sure. The first time she had done it, she came away with a hollow feeling in her stomach that lasted all day. But she had now done it a thousand times - the guilt, if any, only lasted for a fleeting moment.

And then the train came in. Everybody knows the stereotype of the horse girl, but Lucille occupied a different niche with the same intensity - she was a train girl. Even the mere sight of the “modern” (also from the 70s) train pulling into the station made a sense of giddiness arise inside her, a warm feeling that started from her stomach and stretched all the way into her fingertips. Driving a car always made her uneasy, since cars were two ton death machines, but to ride a train, all she needed to do was step inside. Every car ride meant clammy hands behind her steering wheel and the constant chance of death by car accident, but trains were safe. Well, to be fair...there were such things as train accidents…one of the city subway lines caught on fire last month…not to mention the occasional terrorist attack…

Safer. That was a better way to describe it.

When the train doors opened with a welcoming hiss, Lucille skipped inside, the familiar sights setting her at ease. Most of the seats were already occupied; somebody had vomited on the last empty seat, but that was alright - Lucille didn’t mind standing. The metal pole might’ve been an unsanitary petri dish, but she grasped it without a care in the world. If only she could live in Japan. Then she could ride trains all day, rather than needing a car to go literally anywhere in her suburb. But maybe Regina had a point about them having nice things right here. The train certainly felt nice-

A junkie stepped inside. On the scale of homeless danger ratings, junkies topped the list. Lucille knew right away the woman was a junkie - she wore two pairs of pants, one pair barely propped up below her waist. That was a dead giveaway. Well, that and the constant mumbling about the Lord and the slight smell of urine. Did Japan have a fentanyl problem, too?

Lucille respected anyone who worked with the mentally ill. Just five minutes around a junkie was enough to make her skin crawl. The train plunged below ground; only dark concrete could be seen on the other side of the train’s windows. The junkie was growing restless; Regina continued to give by placing Lucille between herself and the junkie, who had now started thrashing her head back and forth in a violent fashion. Lucille tried to think of any silver linings; maybe it was kind of neat that this was a female junkie when the majority were male. Equality and all that jazz. The equality on display in front of her was absolutely suffocating.

And then the train burst back into the sunlight as the track took it above ground once again. Lucille sighed in relief once she saw the city landscape on the other side of the window. Men and women jogged down sidewalks while others walked dogs and tourists took pictures of the surroundings. Rows and rows of houses lined the surrounding area, and college students tossing frisbees and sitting on the grass filled a green-covered park.

The train pulled into the next station. The junkie got off the train, everyone giving her a wide berth as she departed. Once her ramblings no longer reached Lucille, she sighed in relief, then wondered about it all. Had the veteran or the junkie ever given? They were human, so they must’ve. Everyone gives, in one way or another. And a life like this is what they received in return. Hardly a fair trade.

Lucille shook her head again. Silver linings, silver linings. Her new year’s resolution involved being more positive; she was five months in now with mixed results. She listed some current positives - she was on the train, and riding the train felt pretty nice, and right outside her window, she would see a beautiful park and-

A man took a shit on the other side of the window.

Lucille couldn’t believe her eyes. Another homeless man, a bottle of vodka in one hand and a Bible in the other, squatted in the corner of a nearby rusty bus shelter. He had the decency to throw a blanket over himself, but there was no mistaking it - in that moment, she watched someone relieve himself in full view of the children playing behind him in the park. Lucille was human, and so was this man, but their lives were so incomprehensibly different that her head spun.

The train started up again, but Lucille kept her eyes on her phone. She was done looking at her surroundings for today. Everything she needed could be found by looking downwards at the little device in her hands. Heck, she didn’t even need the other senses - forget the smell of urine, the noise of the junkie’s ramblings, the touch of the grimy pole, the taste of the…well, maybe the muffin could’ve been a little better.

Lucille only needed her eyes, and she only needed to point them downwards.

“Hey, Lucille, check it out,” Regina said. Lucille was done checking things out.

“Lucille,” Regina repeated. Didn’t she get the memo?

“Lucille Lucille Lucille Lucille-”

“What?” Lucille snapped. She sighed. “Sorry.”

Regina waved her concerns away. “Don’t worry about it. C’mon. Check it out.” She pointed her finger at the window; reluctantly, Lucille followed her gaze.

A vast sea of blue spread out in front of them, stretching all the way into the distant ocean where it met the sky. The train chugged along over a bridge, giving the two women a long view of the river that cut right through the city. The blue waves lapped gently on the shore; white boats sifted through the water with ease while green canoes rowed along. Bright parks covered each side of the riverbank, magnificent buildings stretching into the sky beside them.

For a brief moment, time stood still, because Lucille supposed nice things really did exist sometimes. Just take a look at the view.

Not to say that the view was perfect. Lucille spotted a homeless tent city sprawling down a side street and a few rundown, boarded up neighborhoods. But, when she looked outside long enough, when she saw how everything came together…she put her phone down, at least for a few minutes.