There’s a rythm to working in any city. Each city is different, but the general movements are similar. My mornings and evenings seem to fall into place, each step that was once unfamiliar now passing unconsciously as I devour whatever I happen to be reading in an attempt to better utilize the time. After leaving the house, it’s drive the 7 miles to the park and ride, jump on the waiting bus, arrive at the Metro station, slip through the turnstyle and down to the platform, jump on the arriving train, up the escalator and elevator and onto the street, and finally into my building. The whole process, start to finish, takes about an hour on a good day. I spend every part of it that doesn’t require my eyes elsewhere buried in a book or my Treo, trying to learn what I can in these moments alone. I only notice certain things. I often barely remember changing from one mode of transport to another.
This morning was more or less like any other, except that it’s finally cooling off and we’re getting some badly needed rain. I stepped onto the train car and leaned back against the glass divider, and suddenly I noticed something. The person sitting across from me was wearing a fuzzy pink hat, but the face conflicted with it. It was a man’s face, older, white, with glasses. His whiskers were not immediately noticeable, as if he’d shaven recently, just not today. Intelligent gray eyes peered out from over the glasses, and regarded everyone around him with what looked liked a mixture of suspicion and resentment.
My own eyes took in the scene. The hat was obviously meant for a woman, and his coat looked like it might have been as well. Red and fuzzy, it clasped down the front over wooden buttons, and reminded me vaguely of my daughter’s dress coat. Brown sleeves with tan polka-dots peeked out from beneath the arms of the coat. Simple olive-drab pants, frayed slightly at the cuffs, sat atop dusty brown wingtips.
The immediate thought that came to mind was that this man was homeless. But he had crafted a clever disguise. He carried a black canvas briefcase that he set between his feet like all the office workers do. There were rings on one finger of each hand, though the one that looked like a wedding ring appeared too small and as though it had been fashioned out of something that left a seam. He wore a badge around his neck, suspended in the way so familiar to commuters in this corridor of government, defense and IT jobs, a long string connected to a leather sheath, ready to be displayed or touched to RFID locks when needed. The badge itself showed what looked like a distorted, happier picture of the same man, without the pink fuzzy hat. The credentials read “Department of State”. I couldn’t read the name.
I was moved by this man in a way that I usually am not by the homeless or panhandlers of our city. He was camouflaged for his urban environment, not convincingly but with enough care that it would likely keep him from being hassled off the Metro. He looked enough like a real commuter, albeit one with an eccentric proclivity for strange clothing, that the casual observer might not even notice him.
A man came and sat down in the seat next to him. Suddenly he noticed the hat, looked over, nervously, out of the corner of his eye, then stiffly got up and walked five feet away and stood. The man in the pink hat took note of this, and gave the anxious little man a withering look, then turned and stared out the window.
I found myself wondering about this guy. Who was he? How did he get to this place? You could see it in his eyes that he was bright, that he had been somebody once. He didn’t look underfed or particularly dirty, he simply didn’t fit in, having scrounged together the best wardrobe he could from what was available. He dozed lightly between stops, obviously riding the train for its dry comfort and the chance to get some sleep, however little.
I couldn’t do anything for him but offer a prayer. I wanted to make eye contact, to give him a reaffirming look and tell him silently, “I see your game, and it’s a good one. I wish you well.” But he didn’t want that from me, and I didn’t want to spoil his act.
A young woman sat down next to him, oblivious, like so many others, her telltale white iPod earbuds shielding her from sound, her black cap shading her eyes. He looked over at her, studied her. She was pretty, though not excessively so. Just another young woman on the train. But I had this feeling, as he looked, that he had loved once, and lost that love, and that this chance encounter was the closest he was likely to come to a woman again.
There’s never any closure to these events. They spring up briefly, and before I know it I’m off the train again, moving with the crowd, trying to make it to my desk by 8:30AM and get through another day.
I never know their stories. I don’t know if I’m meant to.
