Ben dozes on the Market-Frankford El platform, head tucked into his coat. Below, in the parking lot of a discount food store, a streetlight shines on one lone car.
He’ll sleep here until the first train of the new day erupts into the station. Once seated, he will rewind the evening and begin playback with the moment he, shaking himself out of his coat, saw Sarina Greene. No, beginning with the afternoon phone call when the name Sarina Greene uprooted him. No, beginning way before that, with yellow chiffon and his brother’s majestic Mustang.
In her kitchen, Sarina adds cherries to a bowl of vanilla ice cream. She wants to finish Sunshine the Dragon before she falls asleep. She is almost at the end.
It is cold on the platform but not unbearable. Everyone in the city is dreaming, their refrigerators stacked with holiday platters covered in aluminum foil. It is Christmas Eve, Ben realizes. Tomorrow he and his parents will eat Chinese food and watch television in their slippers. His brother will call and he will tell him he spent the night walking the city with Sarina Greene.
The station clerk appears on the platform and lights a cigarette. “Shouldn’t be long,” he says, about the train.
Ben nods, nestles farther into the coat.
“Look.” The clerk points.
With only a few pages left, a stray thought pulls Sarina out of the book.
Many years before, at a party for something she cannot remember, she and her father are sent to the store for candles. Her father hoists her into his arms and carries her away from the celebration. The bristle of his cheek. The keys rattling in his free hand. Balloons on the mailbox. Sarina feels lucky to have a father who can carry her with one hand. At the doorway, they frown. The day has turned stony and cold. Sarina does not have her coat, but getting it would send her back into the house, sifting through aunts and kids’ toys and junk. Her father says she doesn’t need it.
“But, Dad,” she presses. “What if it rains?”
Even as a little girl, such a worrier.
“If it rains,” he says, “we’ll get wet.”
In the lot below the El platform, a shopping cart rolls down an incline toward the parked hatchback. The cart’s progress is slow but unhindered. It is gaining speed.
The clerk exhales smoke into a cloud the shape of a horse. “That cart’s going to hit that car,” he says.
Ben watches (Sarina closes the book) and can hear the ambition of the cart’s wheels carry it down the broad swath of asphalt. (Sarina turns off the lamp.) “No,” he says. “Everything is going to be fine.”