Joseph Levens
Rapid Transit
Times Square, 1928: A broken switch causes the derailment of a subway train at the congested Crossroads of the World. The train collides with a wall, killing sixteen people. The switch is known to be defective at the time of the incident. It is determined that the IRT maintenance supervisor controlling operations in the area suffered a lapse in judgment.
Last year, I decided to give up the word no. It was easier than a girl could imagine. I said yes to a future in volunteer work. I said yes to the outdoors, and men. Camping in a thick-wooded park, I met the one on a bench off a dirt road. Seven weeks later, when he asked me to marry him, you know what my response was. The non-no phase wore out quickly after that. We ate the three-thousand-dollar wedding hall deposit.
Bowling Green, 1970: A tunnel fire near the IRT station kills one, a woman who returns to the train to retrieve her purse after all other passengers exit. She dies of smoke inhalation.
Earlier today, in a blitz of heat, I dialed an older man it was in my best interest never to have loved.
Union Square, 1991: Five people are killed when a southbound 4 train derails. Service on the Lexington Avenue IRT is disrupted for six days as transit workers toil around the clock to clean up the wreckage. The motorman is determined to have been drunk, commanding the train thirty miles per hour over the speed limit.
Fourth grade: Anne Suzuki comes over after school one day and we read teen magazines in my room, sip fruit smoothies, watch TV. I develop a fascination with her hair. In the backyard, I lift my skirt and pull aside my underpants and ask her to look. I have a newfound, uncontrollable urge to show her what is there. Fourth grade is when the wreck of my life began.
Blackout, 1965: Eight hundred thousand people are stranded in dark tunnels throughout the city for six hours. A two-hundred-thirty-kilovolt transmission line near Ontario, Canada, was tripped, cutting power to most of the Northeast. Five thousand off-duty police officers are called into service to prevent looting.
Part of me says it is better to stay for a while, in the dark, to savor what happened, steal as much time with the older man as I can. The other part, which will probably lose, says no, no, no, please leave as soon as possible.
Steinway Tunnel, 1973: A twenty-foot chunk of concrete ceiling duct in the tunnel near 1st Avenue hits the first car of a Queens-bound 7 train. One person is killed instantly by a sudden blow to the head.
When we started meeting, he asked if I had a boyfriend, and before I could tell him I didn’t, he followed up with, “Don’t have a boyfriend, please.” I asked if he had a girlfriend and followed up with, “Don’t have a girlfriend, please,” but I didn’t think to ask about a wife.
Roosevelt Avenue, 1970: A motorman operates an empty GG train from the third car, due to defective equipment. The conductor in the first car signals with a flashlight to guide the train along. When a crowded rush-hour train passes from the express track, the disabled train fails to engage the trip cock in time. The impact is great enough to sever the fifth car of the express, killing two passengers and injuring at least seventy-one.
Years from now, I can imagine an art critic reviewing a painting in which, through some slice of freak fate, I am neatly arranged. Written in the review will be the kind of sentences typically in reviews of the sort, like, “The situation is so readily apparent in the body language and gaze, the artist’s integration of psychological portraiture with placement of figures in space, and his orchestration of these elements into an expressive pattern that clearly complements the girl, whose heart is shown bisected down its center.”
South Ferry, 2012: An unprecedented storm surge of thirteen feet sends the East River careening into Battery Park and the streets of Lower Manhattan. At the southernmost tip, the water cascades into the Number 1 train station, consumes the platform, and rises to the tops of escalators that lead to street level.
Storms make us believe things we never would on a sunny day. We accept weather as a defense for almost any crime. Like insanity, you can plead an ex-orbitant wind gust at a full moon. It is easy to believe the thunderstorm was responsible for what I did when the wife was away on business.
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Williamsburg Bridge, 1995: A Manhattan-bound M Train stops near the Brooklyn-side and is hit from behind by a J Train. The motorman of the J Train, on his final run of an overnight shift, is killed. Investigators conclude that the train ran a red signal at high speed, and that the spacing of signals and poor performance of the train’s brakes contributed to the crash.
On my sixteenth birthday, I received my father’s pickup truck. It came with rules. Don’t get your gas at the 7-Eleven at the end of Hayden Street. (I did.) Don’t let kids from school sit in it. (I kissed Bobby Kilkenny, my biology partner, in the back bed after eighth period.) Don’t drive beyond Townline Road. (This rule I actually never violated. I never needed to travel far.) I managed to avoid accidents, at least those involving the pickup.
Pusher, 1993: A thirty-eight-year-old woman shoves two passengers in front of two trains at two different stations over the course of one afternoon. Psychologists say pushers are often escaped or neglected mentally-challenged patients who think they are defending themselves or “helping” their unwitting victims.
I dated this older man because he told me things a boy my age simply couldn’t. He said, “Never apologize for this beauty. Never be ashamed. Whether you know it or not, this is what everything in the universe desires so.” As I listened to this man talk, time after time, telling me this, telling me that, I came to understand the powers I possess, the abilities I have, what things I could do to please him even more.
Malbone Street, 1918: In New York’s deadliest subway crash, ninety-three people are killed when a five-car, rush-hour train travels too fast around a turn near Prospect Park, bound for Brighton Beach. Reasons for the mishap vary. Because of a motormen’s strike, the train operator—who normally worked as a dispatcher—had only undergone two hours of instruction. Switchmen were also on strike, and it is suspected a poorly-trained substitute coupled the cars together in the incorrect order. Mechanical error is also cited as a possible cause. The street at which the accident occurred is renamed Empire Boulevard.
Something they don’t tell you: when involved with a married man, you automatically exist in a secret, unspoken relationship with his wife. You wonder what kind of moisturizer she puts on before bed, if she wears cotton or silk panties, what sales at the supermarket raise her spirits, her favorite after-dinner drink, the day of the month her period flows. Then, one day, the two of you meet.