The Commuter

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.

On this evening, early in the summer and still bright and sunny, I examined her further as we emerged from the tunnel under the East River, just as I had done many times in the past. I tried to surmise things about her, also as I had done countless times, on this occasion as indicated by her clothing. She always kept herself well, neat, coordinated, seasonally dressed and properly made up, given her metropolitan local. I was amazed each time I considered such things for I was taking great liberties with my assumptions, basing most of them on hunches alone, and the results often reddened my face in a warmth of guilt and fantasy. I wondered again how often she had seen me looking.

We must have traveled into the city at different times each day, for I only saw her on the evening train, the 5:54 out of Penn Station. Like most regular commuters, we usually sat in the same seats each night. It was indeed ritual. In addition to the practical reasons, there were others too, like the solace in seeing the same people around you, a subtle, comforting recognition during these post 9/11 days in Manhattan. Routine was welcomed, and the complaining by commuters about lack of air conditioning, late trains or even impolite conductors had all but disappeared, except of course for the matron beside me. It was as if for the time of the commute, we were all dependent on each other for our safety and well being. There was little communication, and yet a quiet understanding of mutual protection and safety.

I fidgeted in my seat, day dreaming about what she might do in the city. Was she a secretary? No, too independent looking, too put together to settle for that. She would read each night, something from a book, or a news magazine or ladies journal. The news magazine was not secretarial behavior. Was she a business woman? Much more likely, though I seldom saw her with anything like work papers either. She could be a sales person, I supposed. She presents herself impeccably well, even on the train home at night. Why? I asked myself, why would she be so concerned with her looks at night?

If she were a sales woman, she might entertain business associates, but on Long Island? When she works in the City? This would not fit. Might she go to a second job? Somehow, the quality of her clothes was above the idea of someone struggling to make ends meet. Perhaps she went out when she got home each night. She wore a wedding ring with a large stone and perhaps her husband was also successful and they ate out every night to avoid coming home and preparing dinner.

I went on like this every night, trying creatively to figure her out. If someone asked, “Why don’t you just talk to her?” I would not have known how to answer. I have no problem speaking to strangers. If anything, I open my mouth far too often. Perhaps I didn’t want to bumble it with this precious gem of a woman. Or perhaps I was afraid that if I did talk to her, she might be friendlier than I desired and we would start something I couldn’t handle. It may even have been a combination of these and other reasons, though I doubted I could ever be sure.

Yet, this one night, after a particularly successful day at the office, and despite the people all around, I got up the courage to finally wink at her when she looked at me. Hey, I could always claim it was a twitch! To my own utter amazement, I instinctively followed my recognition of her with a smile. I suddenly realized I had broken a three year routine, or ice flow, and braced for whatever might follow.

She looked at me intensely, then askance to her left at other passengers close by. Apparently satisfied no one was watching, she surprised me and winked back, also with a smile. Frankly, I was shocked. Could this be? Moments later, she shifted in her seat. Her legs had been positioned in proper commuter fashion, hers between mine. Her tight skirt would never have allowed her to sit any other way. To my great surprise, and some embarrassment, she did however, spread her knees. Though it was not enough to alarm anyone nearby, the action pushed her knees up against mine, and spread her lower thighs at the hem of her skirt a good six inches apart.

She looked nonchalantly back at her obligatory paperback. I was now charged, rather than shocked, and shifted in my seat, causing my lower leg to slide up against hers, calf to calf. She looked up from the book, around again at our fellow, preoccupied passengers, and back at me. Fortunately, we were seated closest to the windows. Unbelievably, she lifted her knee, the one closest to the other passengers, and grasped her ankle with one hand and pulled it over her other knee. I could not miss the intent.

The view was as clear as it was intended to be. Her skirt hiked and rose sufficiently to let her thighs rise and spread. They were clad in dark hose, reaching only midway up her covered thighs, and topped by white flesh merging into red, lacey panties. The straps of a garter belt reached down from the still covered area above and clung tightly to the stockings. Her pussy lips were swollen and moist as attested to by the staining panties, pulled tight enough to demonstrate the contour of her lust-swollen flesh. I pulled my jaw shut and looked back at her lovely face in total surprise.

When our eyes met again, she smiled. She winked again with her right eye, the one toward the window, casually, confidently. Her red, glossy lips curled up and back in a perceptible smile. She looked around once more, and pulled a pen from her purse, and wrote something quickly in the margin of one of the pages of her paperback. Ripping the small piece from the page she reached out and placed it on the side of the knee of her crossing leg, nodding to me to reach for it.

I too looked around to see that we were still not suspected, of what I wasn’t sure, and then picked up the note, failing to take advantage of the opportunity to touch her more firmly. I wasn’t sure, but she seemed to demonstrate some disappointment when I did not. The note read, “Took you long enough. Hola!”

I stared at the note and read it several times, then looked up at her. She was smiling broadly now. In one moment, I realized that not only was this woman just as curious about me as I was about her, but anxious to carry our long awaited acquaintance to whatever length I cared to.

I looked out the window, deliberately avoiding her gaze, as if I had just surfaced from my own reading material and taken an eye break for a moment. I stared blankly out at the passing scenery, seeing none of it. This long time challenge, this gorgeous target of my lust and fantasy, had suddenly told me not only that she was completely open to my advances, but a little surprised at how long it took me to stumble into action. It was somewhat belittling, while it was tremendously exciting. As I came back from that realization of fantasy and refocused my vision, the scenery reentered my mind and I caught a glimpse of the Mineola Motel, next to the station we were stopping at. It was time to stop all the dreaming and childish foreplay, and act.

I jotted a message on the backside of hers, looked quickly at the closest passengers to see they were all distracted, and leaned forward sufficiently to slip the note onto her stocking covered leg, and slide it up and partially under the hem of her skirt. There was no reason for this, other than to tell her I was finally ready to add boldness and action to my persona.

She smiled again, more broadly, and nodded in a “Touché” kind of way. Then she slowly, deliberately reached down to the hem of her skirt, lifted it more than enough to slide the paper out into the open on her leg, and peeled the note free to read it. I looked around and no one seemed to have noticed. I also looked at the chasm between her thighs, freshly lightened by her temporary lifting of her skirt, and went the rest of the way to a full blown hard on.

Her red panties were clearly wet. How the hell did she get so wet so fast? I was at a loss to answer my own question until I was reminded by my burgeoning cock that I had experienced the same reaction. Are we that equal, male and female?

In my note, I had asked her what train she takes in the morning, and ended the question with a simple question mark. She got the point clearly and more aggressively jotted down another note on the margin in her book, this time just handing it to me.

I read the note and smiled at it. She had simply written the time of her train, and placed an arrow below, pointed right at the motel outside our window at that moment in the station. The train began to move, and I looked up, first at the Mineola Motel, beginning to glide by, and then over at her. She was reading her book, as if I weren’t even there. Had it not been for one more nudge of my leg with hers, spreading hers another couple inches and letting sufficient light under her skirt for me to again clearly see her lacey, red and very wet panties, I would never have realized she had just consented to meet me on the train, and get off at that stop for a “short stay” at the motel.

Chapter Two

My personal reading material the next morning, on a different than my usual train, was a large boating magazine. It served well to hide my window side hand as it ventured underneath and slowly eased the stretching cloth of my pants and briefs. The anticipation of my morning was more than a match for the mere distraction of another of man’s greatest hobbies. I shifted in my seat to facilitate and obscure my move and hoped I could get the little guy down before having to get up at the Mineola station. But then again, the Buxom Latina with the red flowing hair, and the perfect hour glass figure, the red lipped, full figured whole woman who had attracted me all these commutes, was no where to be seen. Normally, she would be on the train when I got off on the way home, indicating of course her stop was further west. But this morning, I was sure I counted the cars correctly and sat in the same relative seat as the night before. But she was no where to be found. We began to slow for Mineola.

I was near panic. We were seconds from stopping, and I could not see her. Do I get off anyway, assuming she is just on a different car? Or do I assume she was simply teasing me and nowhere near the train she had intentionally misled me too? None of these seemed correct in light of the way she handled herself last evening’s encounter.

Suddenly, she appeared in the vestibule of the car, not ten feet from me, and without even looking in my direction. She was dressed to kill, very short, black leather skirt, red, four inch spike heals, a loose fitting silk blouse puffed out at the waist of her skirt, and her flowing red hair, brilliant in the sunlight streaming through the train’s doorway windows. I didn’t see her face yet, but the body was unmistakable.

The train stopped, the doors spread open, and she stepped off the train. I was so entranced by her looks and the prospect of spending a day with her, I nearly forgot to do just that. I leapt from my seat and ran to the door, briefcase waving behind me. I just made it. The doors began closing even as I was half in and half out, but failed to trap me as I pulled my briefcase through. There could be no connection made by anyone on the train. A sharply dressed, exotic Latina Woman steps comfortably and purposefully off the train as the doors open, and moments later a frantic commuter tempts the fates once again and rushes through at the last second, putting his life in the hands of the safety features of the railroad’s train doors. And once again, the man’s life is spared, and absolutely no credit is recognized for the hated railroad. Though I had no idea at the time, that would be only my first failure of perception of the day.

Chapter Three

I looked toward the rear of the departing train. There was no sign of the woman I was chasing like a rabid dog. She had disappeared. Had she merely gotten back onto the train, in the car behind the one I had just exited? My paranoia was growing faster each time it cycled, thanks to this wicked wench. Why was she playing with my brain this way? And then I spotted her. She had just reached the top of the stairs to the cross-over and commenced crossing the tracks. She didn’t even look to see if I was following. I skipped up the steps two at a time, tie and jacket flying, trying desperately to catch up.

Upon reaching the top, I saw her turn to descend the stairs on the other side. I noticed her purse was not a purse, or even a “bag,” as most women were using these days. It was a full sized carpet bag of black leather stripping and black cloth panels with some barely perceptibly design, perhaps a foot or more thick and two feet long and just as high. It was carried on a shoulder strap and seemed not to bother her walk or stature at all. Perhaps it simply contained a fresh set of clothes. Surely she would not go on to the office at noon in her current exotic outfit. Nor would she go home that way of course, for there would be no doubt that she had been up to no good. She did not turn to look for me as she disappeared down the stairwell back to the other platform.

When I reached the top of the stairs it became apparent to me that she was intentionally moving quickly, maybe even timing her distancing so that I would not close the gap in time to talk with her. She and I reached the motel lobby doors just in time for me to reach in front of her and pull one open.

She merely looked at me, not with a smile but with a stern, dark stare. When she stepped in, I followed, somewhat concerned about what was happening. At the front desk, with her beside me, I plunked down a secret credit card I owned, one with only my business address associated with it, and boldly requested a room for a morning meeting. All right, I was new at this. The clerk offered a conference room they frequently rented for business purposes. Hey, that’s what I asked for, isn’t it? When business folk in New York City would venture to Long Island to meet someone, such accommodations were often utilized. I was sure however, the desk clerk knew what I meant and was just making it difficult for me.