Platforms

I sit quietly on the bench locating the one. The choices are palpable at 5:45 on a Friday evening. The numbers are astounding to the unfamiliar person. How could so many people fit onto one train? You might think that some get on the current train while the others wait for the next, but as the next is still ten minutes away, more will come to await the sardine-like ride home. More for the picking. I look without moving my eyes. Focused on the boards in the platform, one dark brown from moisture, the next lighter brown as if from a different time far before trains. I see shoes and pant legs scrape the ground. I listen for the voices, listen for the tone, listen to their words awaiting my cue. The key to my time here.
I don't need to catch this train. I've been here all day and have no plans to leave.
The man nearest to me grew up in the Soviet Union back when it was the Soviet Union. He's roughly fifty to fifty five with a leather hunters cap with wool insulation visible in the upturned ear flaps and bill. His deep Russian accent indicates years growing up in a country where everyone spoke the same words and the same dialect. The finer intonations and enunciation used in other languages never learned. A vocabulary stifled by a lack of early exposure to other cultures and other languages. Many Europeans understand many languages due to the close proximity of other nations with different languages spoken. The hunter here must have grown up a bit more central and not so border near.
"Come whenever you like. I am still on my way home. I am just giving you permission to enter my apartment. I smell gas." "Permission" comes out with difficulty like a trick question on the brain and a thick tongue. Another language learned later in life yet the accent stays the same. Assumptions made come quickly. Someone else must let this person in to fix the gas. He lives alone. Does he need someone to care for him? Someone to be thinking about him? Someone for him to be able to call and say, if you don't mind, could you let someone into my place? Here's a key. Keep it if you like.
It's rarer than I like today finding someone actually talking. The girl with the long brown hair in the mocha wool hat and multicolored scarf is talking to a guy with black hair, a leather jacket with far too many zippers and an earring that he wants to be seen. He tucks his tufts of uncombed black hair behind his ear every couple of minutes to avoid anyone losing sight of his rebellion.
"Every time I ride the train, I sit next to the same guy that seems to think he owns the raises section between the seat by the window and the one in the aisle. I wind up with half of a seat and get eyed suspiciously when I inadvertently rub shoulders with him like I caused the train to shift when it passed the Chicago stop and planned to take his wallet. He inevitably pulls his long wool coat closer around him like the train car just got colder and glares at me." Another swipe at the black hair that has fallen over his ear while he emphatically mimics the coat maneuver from his story. His audience giggles placing her mitten-ed hand up to her mouth and looks around trying not to be too noticeable with her laugh. She's flirting and he's being friendly. She doesn't realize he think of her as the same as the man that will, on today's train, do just what he explained to her moments before. A man with preconceived notions about people and appearances. The leather jacket is somewhat tattered despite being purchased a week prior. This is how it was in the store as well. Custom made for making people uncomfortable. Just as he liked. Just as he wanted. This coat and the earring are his test for admission into his life. She thinks she has passed the test, but he's not interested in someone that can only get past the differences in appearance for people she finds attractive.
I continue my search. They each have their place. A place they have chosen. A look, a mindset, a personality distinctly theirs. They don't need definition. They don't need guidance. They don't need a guardian angel. They just need themselves. I sit on the bench on the Purple Line side of the Quincy stop when I find her. That's the one, but she wasn't on the side I had expected. The purple line in the afternoon is the busier of the two meaning everyone rushes to one side because, at this stop, the purple line takes a direct shot out of downtown. The Brown line goes around the downtown are once more before heading out in the same direction. Some days I've sat on this bench waiting beyond the rain and wind. Beyond the pigeons wondering the tracks considering the Brown line side. It's a patient side. If you are heading out of downtown, the Brown line, at this point, is less crowded. Someone could easily wonder on at 5:30 in the afternoon and find themselves a seat before the end of the loop brings more travelers.
I can't imagine how it's taken so long to realize that I've been on the wrong side all this time. Three years riding this route and I had always chosen the side of quantity over what I now realize was quality. I begin to look up more as the train here leaves and catch her eyes while she was reading the side of the train. This train had a cola ad on the side. "If this is your train, this is your drink." I realize now, this is not my drink and this is not my train. Our eyes meet for a second and no longer. She looks away as soon as we meet. She does not fear my gaze, but she knows what it can mean. The gaze is not unwanted, but it can be unwelcome. In another time, on another train tine. The same look might bring fear. Today, however, I am not the only one hunting.
I look down tracking the different boards like one of them contains the secret formula for the antidote to a poison I have just been injected with. I need to think. I need to know how to act. How to react. I've been sitting and waiting for this moment, for these conditions, for this setting for six months now and never thought past this point. Panic sets in and fades. Life is not meant to be this difficult. When things are right, they are right. When they are wrong, they are wrong. That's all. I found her. That is right. She is on the other side. That is wrong. I fear I've jumped to a conclusion that is not correct. Waiting patiently, check. Eyes meeting, check. Devastated that things are not perfect, check. Stomach falling through the floorboards as I watch her train arrive before I can make any decisions, check.
An airline advertising more leg room owns the side of this train. I can see through the window as she stands as the train stops. Our eyes meet through the window and this time I look away first. I don't get to watch her disappear from the platform. I don't want to watch her disappear from the platform. I want to look up at my loss and see the bench empty so I wait. The train departs and there is silence. The hunter on the phone is gone. The leather jacket, the colorful scarf, gone. Silence between crowds. The platform is empty on both sides and I go back to my hunt.
A lonely practice, my time is precious to me. Patience is difficult, but it is my only weapon. I, too afraid to make any moves, am a hunter. I am seated stoically praying, pretending I have the power to bring about the end of these days. The end of this search. I sit...and hope.
A creaking door and a tap on the shoulder. Our eyes meet again, now on the same side. That was not her train after all.
When it's right, it's right. When it's wrong, you just need to work a little harder at it.