Chasing Windmills

Sebastian | One: Chemistry

This is the part that's going to be hard to explain: How can I tell you why two people who are afraid of everything-other people, open places, noise, confusion, life itself- wound up riding the subways alone under Manhattan late at night?
   Okay, it's like this: When everything is unfamiliar and scary, your heart pounds just getting change from the grocery store cashier. That feels like enough to kill you right there. So the danger of the subways at night can be much worse. All danger begins to fall into the same category. You have no way to sink any deeper into fear. 
   Besides, consider the alternative. Staying home. 
   That's enough about that for now. I need to tell you about her. 
   She got on the Lexington Avenue local at. . .what was it?. . .I think Union Square. Funnt how a thing like that can be so damned important, but you don't it's important until an instant later in the big scheme of time. Then you go back and try to retrieve it. You tell yourself it's in there somewhere. But it's really in that no-man's-land of the moment before you woke up and started paying attention to your own life. 
   I'm pretty sure it was Union Square.
   At first we looked at each other for a slipt second, but of course we looked away immediately. It's part of what makes us like the animals, I suppose. Ever seen two dogs circling to fight? They look right into each other's eyes. It's a challenge. So when a dog doesn't want to challenge anybody, he looks away. In case I haven't made it clear by now, we were two dogs who weren't looking for a fight. 
   But then, after we both looked away, we weren't afraid of each other anymore. We both knew we didn't have to be. I mean, except to the extent that we were afraid of everything. 
   There was no one else in the car. It rumbled along again, with that special rocking, and the clacking noise, the lights flashing on and off now and then. And the heat. It was only May, but the heat had started early. It was after midnight, so I guess you'd think it was all cooled off by then, but it wasn't. A little bit cooler up on the street. Not so much down there. It was stuffy, like more air would be nice. 
   Every now and then we'd hear a noise that could have been somebody opening the door from another car. And we'd jump in unison, and look up. But it was never anybody. Just the two of us all the way to the end of the line. 
   Once I looked over at her while she was looking away. Her hair was dark and thick and about down to her shoulders. Her face was thin, like the rest of her. I couldn't figure out if there was something angular about her face, or something almost delicate. Maybe both. 
   I was trying to get a bead on how old she was. Older than me, that's for sure. I mean, she was a fully grown woman. But young enough, I guess. But maybe old compared to me. Early twenties. 
   Every inch of her was covered. Except for her face. Jeans, boots, some kind of shawl thing wrapped around her. Seemed like too much to wear in that heat.
   And a hat. She was wearing a hat over all that dark hair. A gray felt thing with a big brim. So all she had to do was dip her head an inch or two, and she was gone again. She could break of eye contact just like that. It seemed like such a great plan. I wondered why I'd never thought of it myself. 
   And on one cheek, a dark spot. Not exactly a bruise, but someting like one. Like a shadow. Like she'd had some sort of accident. 
   I think I remember feeling it was a lovely face, but maybe I'm adding that in after the fact. It's hard to go back and describe what you thought of such an important face the first time you saw it. The memory gets colored with all those other things you felt later on. It's hard to seperate them out again. But whatever I thought about her face, I noticed it. And it held me. 
   Then she looked up and I quick looked away. 
   At the end of the line, we both waited. And neither one of us got off the train. 
   You see, it says a lot about someone when they don't get off at the end of the line. When they just sit there with the doors open until the train starts back the other way. Right back to-or past- where they started out in the first place. That says a lot. 
   After the train started back up again, she looked right into my eyes. She didn't look away and neither did I. 
   Something happened in me. I'm not sure how good I'll be at explaining what it was. But is was an actual physical something. Something in my body. And I'm not going to go into any personal information about certain body reactions, because some things I'm just not comfortable discussing. Some things a gentleman doesn't talk about. Or, anyways, that's what I believe. But something solid turned into water. Hot water. In my arms, too, around my elbows. And a little bit down my legs. Especially around my knees. I remebered hearing an expression about being weak in the knees, and I guess I understood it for the first time. And there was a tingling associated with all this. A kind of all-over tingling, but mostly in my face. Which felt a little hot, like it might be turning red.
   Then it was too much and we both looked away again. But not the same way we had before. 
   We rode like that for another hour or so, and never looked at each other after that. I wanted to look, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. 
   Then I woke up-which was weird, because I'd never felt myself go to sleep- and I was on the subway car by myself, and she was gone. I looked at my watch, and it was after three.
   All I could think was that I wanted to talk to Delilah about this. About what had just happend. But, what had just happened? What was I supposed to say? There was this woman on the subway, and she looked at me. But in the few weeks I'd been talking to Delilah, every time I told her something I'd been feeling, she seemed to know what that feeling was. It made me seem almost. . .normal.