The Last Ride

The Last Ride 

      By

       Joan Fiddle-Ferder

“I AM GOING TO CUT OFF YOUR BREASTS!”, she screamed at the top of her voice. 

 Irritated that her reading of Catcher in The Rye had been interrupted, Fiona looked up from page seventy-four of Holden Caulden’s exploits in Manhattan to see a woman, who couldn’t be more than thirty, hovering over her, threatening to cut off what little Fiona had on her grown on her chest after twenty-five years. It was the “dancer’s curse”. 

“Get out of my face, woman”, Fiona hissed.  

The Latino guy sitting a few rows down from them, who had been asleep, yawned and told them both to shut up, and then started whispering into his bottle of Blue-Sky vodka. It was just another 6:30am ride on the #1 IRT train, another early morning adventure with another homeless human who lived between the station stops on the way into and out of Manhattan. They hadn’t even pulled out of the first stop at 242nd Street, and the show had already started. You could always count on the $2.75 you paid to enjoy New York’s fastest mode of transportation to provide you with a personal performance that was a cross between a vaudeville act and the Twilight Zone. If it weren’t for the fact that Fiona was running late and needed to get to an early morning class at the Nikolais Dance Theater on 34^th Street by 7:30am, she would have taken the 6am MTA Express Bus, but she had just missed it. Dark, heavy rain clouds threatened so waiting for the next bus wasn’t an option. She headed for the subway.

“The start of a glorious day”, she murmured aloud to herself as she ran up the steps to the southbound track.  

Fiona was a subway rat. She rode the rails starting at a very young age, and knew how to engineer moves at each stop. When she was no more than five years old, her mother took Fiona, and her sister, on the IRT train downtown once a week in order to see her therapist so that her mother could confess to him that she didn’t want to be a mother, and then out of guilt, took them all to Howard Johnson’s for fried clams and Orangeade at Columbus Circle. Insisting that each trip be a social and learning experience, her mother got the girls dressed in black patent leather shoes, white gloves, and checkered coats that their grandfather had made for them. Once on the train, her mother rifled off questions over the noise from the rattling rigid rails.  

“What stop are we at, Fiona”?  

“The first stop. 242nd Street, Mommy.” 

 Fiona had her pencil poised in her hand, ready to write on the piece of paper that her mother pulled out of her handbag. Her sister, a year younger, was spared the tutorial.

“Write the number down, Fiona, and show it to me. What’s the next stop?” 

 “231st Street, Mommy”. 

 “Write it down, Fiona, and also write down what street stop has stairs to an elevator that connects to the A train”. 

 “168^th Street stop, Mommy.” 

 “Show me what that number looks like”. 

 Fiona was finding it hard to write neatly while the train was in motion. 

“Mommy, writing while moving is hard.” 

 “So is surviving, Fiona. Now, what car do you need to be in to get to the stairs at 168^th Street?

 “The middle car, mommy. Then you walk up the steps and around to the big elevator which takes you up to the Express A train tracks.”  Fiona was beaming.

 “Very good,” her mother bristled.

Twenty years, and hundreds of rides later, Fiona was bored and oblivious to what used to be a magical world to her. The theatrical screech from the woman in front of her was nothing new, and neither was her smell. It was the smell of a life gone wrong for the whatever the reason, and she was dressed in it. On this hot, rainy day, she was wearing at least three ratty overcoats that must have weighed twenty pounds, black wool fingerless gloves, a pair of hot pink Adidas sneakers that were melting off her feet. Her dark molding skin crystalized by the sun, had probably not seen a shower since 1963. The odor made Fiona gag.  

“Death smells better than this”, she thought.  

She gathered up her dance bag, and backpack, pushed past the rotting woman, and darted out the subway door, slipping into the next car which was completely empty. The train doors closed with a “ding-dong” just as she slid onto the orange bench at the far end of the car. The first six most northern stops of the 7^th Avenue local ran outside the tunnel on a wooden elevated double track directly above Broadway, starting at Van Cortland Park. Fiona had ridden the entire length of the 7^th Avenue line down to Battery Park so many times that she had memorized the graffiti on the old red brick buildings the train passed on its elevated legs, and on the fading walls of each station underground. Her car was still empty, except for one man who got on at 225^th Street, stepping in wearing what looked like new, blue foil shiny high heels, and a baby blue feather boa wrapped around his neck. 

“Obviously, he has no taste”, Fiona thought rolling her eyes back to her book. 

Clip-clopping out the automated doors at 200^th street, he could barely keep his balance as he stepped onto the platform. The train roared from sunlight to darkness into the tunnel at Dykeman Street. She was alone again. Shutting her eyes, Fiona took a deep breath, exhaling quietly. A wave of exhaustion hit her, and she allowed her eyes to flutter slowly to a close, her body relaxing to the constant hum of the metal wheels. A few minutes later, the train stopped, again, but the silence was sliced by a high-pitched laugh. 

“DUDE, that was HYPE! I can’t believe you did that. I ain’t never seen no one do that before!” 

His loud voiced pierced the emptiness of the car, like a crow about to attack.

Dawg, you behind the times”. 

“Yeah, but dude, sucking the tokens out of that thing? 

“Just stayin’ in the game, man”. He was jiggling the coins in his pocket as the train moved forward, again.

Fiona opened one eye and saw the two at the far end of the empty car. Both dressed in the same white t-shirts, black skull caps, hoodies, and baggy pants, they were leaning against the car door windows. She knew what they were talking about, though. She'd never seen anybody do it, but she had heard about turnstile jumpers who sucked tokens from the stile slots before getting onto the platform. MTA cops couldn’t catch anybody doing it, and thousands of dollars in tokens were stolen.

“ Crap, it’s those idiots, again” she thought as she focused on her book. Fiona had seen these guys before on her early rides downtown. She didn’t know if they were part of a gang or not but knew they had big mouths, fat egos, and the type that wouldn’t give up a seat to a pregnant woman or cane walking senior. Ignoring them, she reached into her backpack and pulled out a granola bar, banana, and bottle of water. The taller one spotted her eating and strolled towards her. She could see a skull and phoenix tattoo on his neck as he approached her. The panting of the train wheels seemed to grow louder to Fiona as if it were telling her to run, warning her that she was in trouble. 

“Well, lookie, lookie! Who do we have here? Yo, bro! It’s that subway wench! And see here! She wants to share her breakfast with us. Isn't that sweet?.”

Grabbing onto a straphanger, he bent over, grabbed her arm, lowered his head and breathed heavily, dripping words into her ear.

“The start of a glorious day, isn't it?”.

His words made the hairs on her arms burn. Suddenly, the train came to a screeching halt, the lights went out, plunging them into darkness between stations. His rugged body flopped onto her petit frame, and both of them rolled onto the floor. Pinned under him, she heard him hissing like a cobra in heat as he lay on top of her. A bright light from his partner’s smart phone guided him towards their bodies. Fiona started to scream, but a fist grew out of the darkness and was shoved into her mouth, constricting her breathing, her whimpers restrained by a second hand around her throat, holding her down. Her mouth had gone dry, but she tried to form two words under his fist.

“STOP...DON’T…”

She pleaded in an airless whisper, tears rolling down her cheeks as she tried to pull away from her attacker. His breath smelled like the rotting woman. She bit down hard on his fist, and as he pulled it away, she let out a blood curdling scream.

“HELP! POLICE! ANYONE! Someone help me, I’m being...” 

But the second man pulled off his skull cap and shoved it into her mouth. He slapped her hard across her right cheek.

“Shut it! We're gonna give you what you been waitin’ for .”

In the light of the phone, she could see his thumb was bleeding badly, her deep bite marks across the joint. Out of nowhere, his partner let out a monstrous howl like a rabid hyena. Her eyes widened. She was terrified. They were sitting on her arms and chest, grinning in the phone’s light. One raised her shirt, the other pulled down her jeans only to find that she had another layer under her clothing. She forgot that she had pulled on a dance leotard before she left home since she had been running late. Slowing them down, and cursing under their breath, one of them fanned open his knife and sliced the spandex material, exposing her bra and breasts. All of a sudden, bright lights blared, the engine jolted and the train moved forward inching its way slowly to the next stop. A garbled voice split the silence with an announcement.

“Next stop, 168^th Street.” 

The rest of the message was nothing but mangled noise. Fiona’s mind was racing. She had lost track of what stop was next since she had closed her eyes for a nap but now knew where she was and what she needed to do. 

“Bro, this is messed up. She’s gonna get us bagged if we don’t do something to stop her.”

 “Look, I promise I won’t say a thing, won’t scream or call a cop. I promise. Just let me go.”

 “What? You think I trust you, woman?”

Their car was approaching the station platform. Screaming at each other, the two men were pacing the floor at the opposite end of the car, not watching her as they pulled into 168^th Street. Keeping her eye on them, she stood up, grabbed her bags at the sound of the doors opening, then raced towards the middle staircase to get to the upstairs elevator.  Only a few people were waiting for the train and did nothing as Fiona screamed for help racing up the steps while praying that the elevator was there, and others waiting for it. She ran looking behind her, and saw they were a minute away from catching her. As she rounded the corner towards the elevator, she saw the giant elevator doors closing.

 “HOLD THAT DOOR!”, she screamed and threw herself in and on to the elevator floor. 

Just as the door shuttered, she saw them disappear behind the moving metal wall. She was safe. The elevator dropped her on the northside track of the Express train, which head back towards home.   

“Not going to class, today”, she whispered out loud as the train’s doors opened. 

She had out raced them, out smarted them but still Fiona let out a sob as she threw her bags onto the subway seat. This would be the last ride she would take on mass transit for a long time. As the train sped forward, she looked up at an advertisement on the wall across from her. She read the words out loud softly.

“Surviving in this world is not easy. Don’t let this ride called life be harder than it needs to be. It’s the start of a glorious day. Call 1-800-TrainMe, today for guidance. 

She took a deep breath, and closed her eyes.

“Thanks, mom.”