I'd made the commute from Stamford to Grand Central Terminal five days a week for three years. More than a thousand round trips. In that time warp of madness, I got to recognize my fellow travelers well. The old fellow in tweeds, summer and winter, who disappeared into the New York Times as soon as he sat down. The kid with a dripping nose who resembled a college student or a serial killer. The two women who applied mascara, eye shadow and lip gloss until they arrived 50 minutes later.
Knew them all, except I didn't. I'd never said more than "Good morning" or "Looks like rain." Never a name in all those days and months and years. I might've run up and down the aisle butt naked without getting a reaction.
Instead, I visualized the pink vibrator in my nightstand and kept my eyes on the olive-skinned fellow who finished the crossword puzzle in ten minutes using a ballpoint pen. The stranger who read and then stared dreamy-eyed out the window. I always sat kitty-corner and glanced at him surreptitiously for 50 minutes. I wondered if he was Asian-American, or perhaps Latino. He smiled if someone said "Good morning" or "Is this seat taken?" And, yes, I even daydreamed what having sex with him might be like. Not the size of his junk, for God's sake, but his style. Was he rough or gentle, calculated or generous, self-satisfying or altruistic? And right now, staring out the window, was he daydreaming of humping a girl who looked like a Victoria's Secret model, sticking it up her bum while she moaned and rolled her eyes?
He had no wedding ring, but perhaps he calculatedly left it on the bureau. Of he might be a brute and kicked his dog and drank too much. Worse, he was a bourbon drinker, a whiskey that nauseates me. I learned long ago that the drinks and cigarettes and toothpaste a person chooses signal our secret affinities.
I'd lost a few pounds and felt extremely fit. This made me so confident that Maureen, my girlfriend, kept asking, "What have you done? Botox? Different hair dresser? New trainer at the gym?"
I said, "It's a guy I see every day on the train." But that was a lie. I became good looking — not "very" good looking — but pleasing, I knew, and it was coincidental to introducing myself to this man.
"Don't piss in the well if you're going to drink from it," Maureen growled in her parental voice. "You gotta ride that train and you don't want to have a relationship that'll go bad and you're stuck facing a jerk till you retire."
I spent weeks wondering how to open a conversation, but I needn't have worried. The cars lurched as I was sitting down and I almost fell into his lap. I felt his hand on my thigh under my skirt, and then his thumb began inching toward my crotch
"I am so sorry," I cried, brushing my hand across his jacket and deftly swinging my hips away. The warm hand slipped down to my knee and fluttered away like a frightened bird.
"Not a problem. I like having a lovely woman fall into my arms at eight o'clock in the morning." And he smiled, showing perfect teeth. "How long have you been making this run?"
It seemed as though the floodgates had opened as we sat together. Words gushed candidly from our mouths, as we searched for commonalities. He was Edward Loewe, a systems engineer who also wrote poetry that had actually been published. His mother was Filipino, his father English.
"It's good that you work in corporate communications," he remarked, nodding several times. "If only all people could communicate."
"I'm afraid what I do is public relations," I said. "Propaganda," and I gave a little laugh.
"Listen, Agneta. I'm free for lunch and we work just two blocks from each other. Would you let me treat you to lunch?"
"Today? I'm not sure..."
"It must be today or you may go out of my life and I'll never see you again." A small laugh, but in nervousness, not humor.
"That's silly. We'll always be on the same train, but alright," and I mentioned a bistro on Lexington Avenue.
"The dining room at the Winston Hotel," he counter-offered.
* * *
To be honest, I got to the restaurant early and waited nervously. I shouldn't have worried. Edward — he asked to be called "Teddy" — was there at the stroke of noon.
"Agneta," he said, holding both my shoulders in his long, thin fingers. "I have to confess. I want to skip lunch. I booked a room here where we can just...talk. Have I been presumptuous?"
Maureen's words haunted me. Was I going to piss in the well and regret it? Instead, I simply nodded. And let him lead me forward. This was the moment I had to face my fear of involvement or let it push me over a cliff of desolation.
Inside the bilious green room, his hands gripped my arms as he leaned down to kiss me, fully and sincerely. "I've wanted to meet you for months," he said," but I didn't know the words to... Was it fate that threw you into my arms?"
"Fate. Maybe it can bring two people together. Spiritual magnets or something."
Deftly, he slipped off my jacket and laid it carefully on a chair, then unbuttoned my blouse. I think at that point I closed my eyes to let the experience — whatever it would be — kidnap my mind and body. Only in New York could these things happen and I wanted to enjoy it. I would be hostage to his moves for the next hour.
Maureen had told me repeatedly, "Agneta, you have a terrific body, beautiful hair and face, stunning personality. Twenty-nine years old and no boyfriends! What's wrong with you?"
Well, now there was going to be nothing wrong. I knew it when Teddy and I were both lying nude on the coverlet, thigh to thigh and belly to belly, stroking each other. Me, with his cock in my hand and him with his fingers exploring the lips between my legs.
He whispered, "In a city of eight million I found one very special person. Imagine the odds."
"Teddy, I'm not a lottery ticket. There will be differences..."
But he was right...in a way. How could I be so lucky to find a guy with a buff body, gentle humor, and easygoing personality, courtesy? Well the courtesy part came when I spread my legs wide and invited him to enter me. His entrance was gentle and the weight of his body was no more than a feather's touch. He slid his dick inside me with persuasive motions that opened my heart as wide as my pussy. Both heart and vagina had been waiting for this moment to be convinced.
