Chapter One
The buxom Latina with long, dark red hair and penetrating dark eyes over bright red, lush lips, sat across from me in a facing seat. We were once again on the evening’s “Silver Snake,” the Long Island Railroad commuter train home to Long Island, from New York City. Another day was done, and another short evening was ahead. But my mind was once again not thinking of going home. It was solely interested in drinking in every glimpse I could get of that beautiful woman across from me.
It was not the first time we sat this way. Commuters generally sit near a door they know will stop near their preferred spot on their respective home station platforms. They might do it to be closer to the stairs, or their car, or even the intersection they have to cross to walk home. In my case, it was for the latter of these reasons that I sat in the front of the train.
I didn’t know why the Latina Woman chose that same car, nor why she chose to sit in one of the few pairs of facing seats, since most people prefer the traditional “pew” styled rows. Some preferred the additional legroom afforded by the seats having to be far enough apart to accommodate occupants without forcing their knees up against the next, or in this case facing seat. Others liked them because you could talk normally to the person across from you without having to turn your head, a position that get uncomfortable after a time. I liked the facing seats because I had more legroom, and to open my laptop to make the trip useful. Only here would the lid be able to sit back far enough to let me see it normally.
Most women don’t sit in these seats unless they are engaged in active conversation with others of their sex. Facing each other also makes it easier to converse with their hands and all the other gestures they are used to using. It is also more dramatic to lean in and answer or ask a more secret question.
The Latina Woman was an exception. I don’t recall ever having seen her speak to anyone. She always had a book or something else to read with her. She always sat in the window seat of the three seat row, facing the rear of the train. My own favorite seat was directly across from hers, and one seat toward the aisle. That two seat row was infamous for really only holding one person, for the door opening mechanism at that unfortunate location occupied several inches of the space normally allotted to passengers. Few if any would venture in there.
On this night, I became the exception. I was late to the station, due to last minute work at the office. The doors closed before I even sat down. When I went to sit in my usual place, happy to see my Latina Woman aboard for my viewing pleasure that evening, I found someone already sitting in my seat. The woman was big, very matronly, and with her cane up against the seat.
She was a pain in the neck. Hardly a trip goes by without this woman taking whatever went bad in her life out on the people around her. On the train, this fortunately meant mostly the conductor. But tonight, I decided in a heartbeat, I was going to tempt the wrath of the matronly one, and sit in “no man’s seat.”
The facing seats forced people to interlace their knees. There simply wasn’t sufficient room otherwise. I looked at the matron’s stubby legs locked between the legs of a man across from her and knew I was going to have to step over. I also knew that the matron was not going to like that, but I was not to be denied the view of my Latina Woman. I offered an “Excuse me,” and stepped boldly over the obnoxious bitch.
“What are you doing?” She made as much movement and noise as she could to tell me just how inconvenienced I’d made her, and I was proud of my ability to ignore her as if she weren’t even there. I had said “Excuse me,” and that was all she was going to get. I got through and sat down, squished on one side by the matron, and the other by the box containing the door mechanism. We stared out of the station.
I had seen her many times, hardly able to miss her across from me, but also drawn by her exotic persona. I was curious about her life, what she liked to do, whom she might be found with, what she did with her spare time. My imagination would often run wild.
Despising the waste of an hour each way each day on the train, I used my laptop on every ride, and wrote. I would often prepare for my business day, or sometimes write fantasy fiction, just for fun, or some erotica, just for release. On more than one occasion people would look at me with some trepidation as I had broken out in sudden laughter. On other occasions I would look around to see if anyone was noticing the hard on under my laptop.
Commuters were very private while on the train, though they often “spoke” in other ways. While silence or muffled speech on cell phones were the only non-train sounds one might hear on the ritualistic daily transport, this striking Latina Woman wore a wedding ring that spoke on one particular volume. Yet, if my eyes were not deceiving me these past couple years, she did return my gaze now and then, and there would appear a barely perceivable wrinkle in the corner of her mouth. Her left eye would also twitch, giving me some kind of sign, I was sure. But alas, each night I would avert my eyes when hers caught me looking, and I would return to my private world on the laptop. Such a coward I felt.
And with all this time spent on the train on my laptop writing, my Latina Woman often became the unwitting party to a story. My stories often involved characters from the train. With an hour each way to let one’s mind wander, there was no telling what wild and crazy things had been done or were being envisioned by the hundreds of commuters on any train at any give moment. What was she thinking right then, I asked myself as I gazed once again at her flowing red hair.
