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Toby Underhill is attracted immediately to the girl who is shambling toward him across the deserted Metro
platform at 2:30 in the morning. She is hunched in an old weatherbeaten overcoat, her head down over an open book she
is reading as she walks. The heels of her knee-high boots scuff the cement with every step, echoing in the empty
station. She halts a few feet away from him and turns to face the tracks, her eyes still rooted to the pages of her
book. Her curly mud-colored hair covers her face like a curtain, partially obscuring her features.
<P>
Toby guiltily contemplates offering a greeting, but decides against it. He is at the 33rd Street Metro station
tonight only because he and his girlfriend have had an argument, an especially bitter fight which he, as usual, did
not fully comprehend. He'd left Cindy's apartment following an almost operatic exchange of inculpation and
recrimination, and for two hours had wandered the cold, unwelcoming streets downtown. He knows Cindy will eventually
call him and they will make up, as they always do. There will be no apologies, no attempt to come to any real
understanding with each other; they'll simply indulge in make-up sex (which Cindy, with misty-eyed wonder, will insist
on calling "lovemaking"), then turn their backs on one another and go to sleep.
<P>
There is nothing especially unpleasant about this prospect, yet Toby is disquieted by the thought that the
whole of his life will amount to no more than the endless satisfaction of his basest needs -- <i>Sleep, eat, fuck.
Repeat.</i> Something is missing, and he associates that something with someone. Someone he has never yet met, and may
never meet. Cindy, he has come to realize, is assuredly not that One.
<P>
Now he has glimpsed a girl who is alluring to him in every detail, at least those few he has seen (he loves
those <i>boots</i>), and if he approaches her now and introduces himself it will be with a blatant ulterior motive --
to find out if she is ultimately the one whom Cindy is not. In Toby's mind, that would make him a scoundrel and a
betrayer.
<P>
His cell phone warbles at him from his front pocket, but he is in no mood to talk with Cindy yet. The
conclusions he has reached concerning their relationship require further contemplation.
<P>
Unexpectedly, the girl beside him speaks. "Your pants are ringing. You gonna answer?" She's looking sidelong
at his trousers with an exaggerated expression of alarm.
<P>
"I'll ignore it," he says, charmed by her manner.
<P>
She shrugs her eyebrows (how fetching!) and turns her attention to the wall of the opposite platform, where
there is an advertisement for the musical <i>Wicked</i>. She has closed her book, marking her place with her finger.
<i>Jane Eyre</i>.
<P>
Toby's phone presently falls silent. He hates silence.
<P>
"You seen <i>Wicked</i>?" he asks.
<P>
The girl frowns with distaste. "I thought it was lousy."
<P>
Perversely, his lips refuse to form the words he is thinking: <i>Me too</i>. Instead he says, "I'm Toby."
<P>
"Joy," she says, her tone implying an ironic acknowledgement that it is the most inappropriate name imaginable
for her. "Joy Turnbridge."
<P>
She opens the curtain of her hair with a self-conscious sweep of her hand, but the strands promptly fall back
into place. Ignoring it she looks up at him obliquely, chin down. It is a tritely coquettish pose, but she has not in
fact adopted it as an intentional flirtation. Toby grins crookedly, thinking it the most winsome look he's ever seen.
<P>
Joy likes his scrutiny, it seems; she turns her face upward and tucks the most recalcitrant strands of hair
carefully behind her ears. She is pale and lovely to his eyes, but her expression is weary, even haggard. The skin
around her mouth and nose is dry, peeling; Toby wishes he had a chapstick to offer her. He doesn't recognize the signs
of an eating disorder, of bulimia -- wouldn't know them if they were tossed like cookies into his lap. He sees in her
only a magnificent and fragile beauty, and feels a sudden aching desire to possess it, or at least to hold it in his
arms for just a little while.
<P>
His heart gives a lurch, contorting itself into a knot for this girl he has just met and scarcely knows. He is
filled with a dreadful sense of immanence -- or more accurately of imminent immanence, of a moment pregnant with
possibility; a feeling that all the joy and grandeur inherent in life lie just beyond his fingertips, and if he plays
his cards<i> just right</i> at this instant, and the next, and the next, then he will earn the love of his life and
fulfillment everlasting. It is a terrible, oppressive feeling, to know that everything is on the line at this moment,
and that it will certainly all be lost in the next. Instinctively he shrinks from it.
<P>
Joy's eyes narrow, brows drawn together as she watches him, and he realizes that something in his expression
has betrayed the soul-sickness he is feeling at this moment, the sense of tragic loss -- a loss which has yet to
occur, of a thing which he does not even possess.
<P>
"I'm on my way home," he says hurriedly, fumbling for something even remotely interesting to hang a
conversation on. He is drawn like a moth to the luminous brilliance of her eyes, which he assumes must indicate an
astonishing depth of soul. In truth it is a physiological side effect of her medication.
<P>
Her mouth curls ambiguously as she gnaws at the inside of her lower lip. Her eyes remain locked on his,
disconcertingly focused, unmoving. After several seconds she says abruptly, "I'm pregnant." For another moment she
holds his gaze, her eyes challenging him, then she looks away.
<P>
Toby's mind is already reeling, and this revelation brings the entire mechanism of his tortuous thought
processes to a shuddering halt. Desperately he seeks an appropriate response, something offering reassurance and
strength to this strange stranger who has chosen to be so boldly and intimately vulnerable to him. But instead he
simply keeps thinking, <i>This is the moment. This is the moment.</i> The words swirl and echo and tumble and bounce
interminably through his skull.
<P>
"Who . . . who's the father?" he asks awkwardly.
<P>
"An asshole," says Joy. "He'll never know."
<P>
Toby knows instantly what her words mean, what it is she intends to do about her pregnancy. He can think of
nothing to say beyond unhelpful commiseration and meaningless platitudes, so he chooses to say nothing.
<P>
The familiar rattle and clatter of the train heralds its arrival. Toby and Joy both look down the black tunnel
from which it will emerge momentarily. Toby feels the strain of the moment slowly ebbing, supplanted by a vague but
unmistakable serenity. The train appears, rushing toward them with brakes already whining. They are buffeted by a
blast of cold air from the tunnel as the train slows alongside them; Joy's coat flutters open and Toby sees that she's
wearing a baggy red flannel shirt and jeans two or three sizes too large, cinched tight to her tiny waist with a wide
red belt.
<P>
The train settles to a halt. It is almost empty. The doors open with a sigh as a recorded voice, female,
drones a litany of destinations. Joy enters the train with a little hop which seems entirely out of character, but is
not. Toby watches. He knows nothing of her bulimia, her anti-depressants, her previous abortion. Nor does he know that
six months ago she attempted suicide -- no mere cry for help, but a concerted effort to snuff the abiding misery which
consumes her. He knows only that she is a sorrowful, tragic figure in her faded overcoat, clutching her battered copy
of <i>Jane Eyre</i>. At another time, in another place, he would readily leap through that doorway and join Joy on the
Red Line to Anywhere, carelessly entangling himself in her complications. But this is the here and now, and his feet
remain solidly on the platform.
<P>
A chime sounds above the door, and she looks back at him with an expression at first expectant, then
quizzical.
<P>
"Not my train," says Toby. "I'm waiting for the Green Line." It'll get him home as surely as the Red, and only
25 minutes later.
<P>
Joy's lips curl in a remarkably inscrutable way, a wry rictus of conflicting emotions. "Well. See you around,"
she says as the doors rattle closed. She'll be dead in two years, though not by her own hand.
<P>
"Hopefully," murmurs Toby. In another moment his cell phone will ring again, and this time he will not ignore
it.
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