Train Snack

I arrived home this evening to cheese on my stairs. And broken balloons; these two things lead me to believe that I was not invited to a party someone threw for me.

On the train, I noticed a nebbish sort reading the Real Estate section of the Times next to a graying woman reading The New Yorker. Feeling inclined to join the club without making aware my infiltration, I stood over them and read each upside down. There was a gap between the two readers where the rest of the man's Sunday Times lay. I watched helplessly as the fat woman from the next stop sat upon it. The man ran his hands through his nebbish light brown hair; he was mourning the loss of five dollars and copious amounts of untapped knowledge. He never complained. The fat woman did not realize she was sitting on paper instead of a seat. The woman with the New Yorker was too busy reading the blurb about Madeleine Albright's fine brooch collection to notice the debacle, or even her incidental subway-intellectuals-club membership, or even that I was reading upside down over her.

I felt an affinity to the nebbish man. I felt it first when I noticed that he wore corduroys, and second when I saw he read about apartments he could never afford, and third when I empathized for his loss of five dollars and copious amounts if untapped knowledge. The fourth and most important moment was when, at the stop on 59th street, the woman with the tiny head and the gigantic puffy coat came on. The puffy coat, it was a Northface, it made her tiny head look even tinier. I had to stifle a laugh. I noticed him do the same.

He left the train, then, and I silently wished him well. He left without his paper, which was still underneath the fat woman. He is probably a writer, as he was equal parts nebbish and observant. I have noticed recently that one moment you realize you feel an affinity for someone is the moment when they walk out of a room and you feel you still have something left to say.