Though Newton’s Fourth Law of Motion clearly states that you have a better chance to discover turtledoves crawling out of your buttimus maximus than you do to wait anything under half an hour for a post-midnight Red Line train, sometimes you actually don’t mind the wait. This was one of those nights.
Coming off St. Patrick’s Day — you knew that EVERYONE living in Chicago is Irish on this day, right? — I actually enjoyed sitting on that Belmont platform at 2 a.m. The mood was festive and light, and the fresh air actually felt pretty good. In a detox kinda way, at least. But another fascinating aspect of Chicago public transportation are the people you inevitably come across. And this, my friends, is where our story kicks off.
Sitting on a bench looking westbound over Belmont Avenue, I marveled at the line of cars that still filled the streets at this late hour. There’s always traffic in Chicago. But nothing really seemed too out of place. A handful of other people were on the platform with me. As a gesture of courtesy (read: to make sure I’m not about to get knifed), I generally try to make eye contact with the other passengers around me.
One of these people was Slightly Bulbous. Slightly Bulbous was a youngish, well, slightly bulbous woman with close-cropped brown hair. I gave her the customary view and head nod as she walked by the bench. A few minutes later, a man came up the stairs to the platform and sat beside me on the bench. This man, Cheesy Bread, uncovered two boxes of Domino’s cheesy bread and started to munch away.
After another minute, Slighly Bulbous made her way across the platform and stood between myself and Cheesy Bread. After staring at the man’s clutch late-night snack (damn it smelled good!) for a beat or two, with nostrils flaring like a crack addict, she blurts out, “I didn’t want any, anyway.” She turns her back to Cheesy Bread. Cheesy Bread continues to eat, never looking up.
With her back turned to Cheesy Bread, Slightly Bulbous starts to choke back tears. After a few moments of her crying, which eventually led to bodily spasms, I figured I should do something, seeing as Slightly Bulbous had parked it about 18 inches away from my head.
“Can I help you?” How could I possibly help her? Save from KO’ing Cheesy Bread and salvaging for her what was left of his food, my bag of ideas was empty. “No thanks.” Whew. But the tears kept coming, so I tried again. “Do you want to sit down?” “No.” Negative. Okay, fine, can’t say I didn’t try.
After another long pause, with her still standing there, and still no words exchanged between Cheesy Bread and Slightly Bulbous, she begins to kick his feet, defiantly yelling, “Don’t talk to me! I don’t even know you.” Just as quickly as she blurted out those random nonsensicals, she sat down between the two of us, closer to me than to Cheesy Bread, who had yet to bat an eye at the whole encounter. Just when I started to feel sorry for this poor guy being a victim of some psychotic woman, Cheesy Bread joined the fun.
“You don’t know. You don’t know how I love you. You don’t know how I care for you. You don’t know how I’d do anything for you. You don’t know how I want the best for you. You don’t know how your friends love you. You don’t know your parents love you. You don’t know how smart you are. You don’t know how pretty you are.” It went on like that.
Silenced, Slightly Bulbous sat on the bench, from the looks of it, thinking over Cheesy Bread’s rant. After more silence — and as I estimated how much a cab would cost me — Slightly Bulbous got up, sat next to Cheesy Bread, and put her head on his shoulder. AND STILL NEITHER OF THEM SAID A DAMN THING MORE.
God had mercy on me; the train finally came. I could have easily walked down and gotten on a different car than this deranged pair, but the whole thing was so oddly curious that I couldn’t take my eyes off it. So, I went in the train and watched as their magic continued to unfold.
Cheesy Bread took one of the rows in the middle of the car, put his back against the side window, and kicked his legs up over the seats. Without notice, Slightly Bulbous took a seat alone all the way in the back of the car! Cheesy Bread couldn’t have looked less disinterested in what was happening around him, but from a distance, Slightly Bulbous had her eyes trained on him like a hawk. After a few stops, Slightly Bulbous made her way to the row directly across from her mate (victim? partner in psychosis? torturer?), mirroring his position on the either side of the row. Now the two — again both within two feet of me, were staring into each other’s eyes, still refusing to try out the not-so-new innovation of verbal communication.
When the train reached Bryn Mawr, the two simultaneously stood up and silently walked off the train side by side. As the train pulled away from the station, I could only imagine what the hell I had just witnessed. Was it too late to make last call?
