WE WERE STUCK IN THE SUBWAY underground. I’ve had a terrifying fear of small spaces since I was five years old, when I was locked in the cabinet under the sink. It was a babysitting-gone-wrong situation. Not her fault, just a game of hide-and-seek and a jammed door. It only happened once, but once was enough.
I was employing the tools I have. Breathe deep. Do not block your airway. Sit up straight. Keep your mind in check. Focus your breath. Understand that it is only a feeling and that you are safe and secure.
This too shall pass.
“Are you okay?”
There were only four people in our car. Thank God. Even though it was early and I hadn’t yet picked up my morning coffee, I had noticed him when I got on. I nearly dropped my tote bag. At first I thought it couldn’t be, but there was no mistaking him. His shaggy hair, ripped jeans, and scruffy chin. It had been four years since Ashes and Snow in Los Angeles, and now here we were on the other side of the country in New York, and it felt like I had finally arrived at the other point of a straight line.
Life in New York wasn’t all that bad. I was living with Jessica, and our college cohorts David and Ellie were there, too. David, now a banker, was always dating older, powerful, unavailable men. He was one of only three black men in his class at Goldman, which he said gave him an advantage. I’d never seen David not excel or get what he wanted—and the men of the city were no exception. Then there was Ellie, who was perpetually single and worked on the publicity scene for a popular jewelry designer. We went out with them often, to off-off-Broadway plays that were usually shitty but cost only twenty bucks. I had a degree. I was working as an assistant for a fashion designer who was planning a big comeback. She hadn’t been relevant since the late nineties, but she was launching a new line of swimwear that was putting her back on the map.
She would hit it big a year after I left, my timing always spectacular, but at that moment, heading uptown, we were working in the back of a cramped storefront. I wasn’t looking forward to spending the next eight hours in sweaty darkness.
But I also didn’t want to spend my day underground.
“I’m all right,” I said.
I looked up at him, expecting recognition, but nothing registered on his face. He was leaning against one of the metal poles.
“The average time for a train to be stuck is three minutes and thirty-five seconds.” He took out his cell phone. “I think you have about two left. Can you make it to two?”
I couldn’t tell whether he was being sarcastic or not. This was often a problem of ours. I wanted sincerity, just not the way he gave it. Not with that much honesty.
I shrugged and gestured to the empty plastic seat beside me. I always figured when I saw him again, he’d know it, too. He’d say, It’s you, and that would be that.
He sat down. “Do you live here?” he asked.
“Not specifically,” I said. His face was blank. “I mean I live in Chelsea.” I gestured absently toward the outside—whatever tunnel we were currently pinned to.
“Chelsea,” he repeated, like the word was foreign. Saffron. Indonesia.
“You?”
“Williamsburg,” he said.
“Sure.” That seemed exactly right. We’d have a lot of arguments over the years about Brooklyn versus Manhattan. It was my feeling that I hadn’t moved all the way here to live outside the city, especially back then, but for Tobias Brooklyn was the city. The only reason he was even on the subway that day, underground on Manhattan soil, was that he had just come from an interview at a gallery and was now headed uptown to go to a photography exhibit at the Whitney.
“Which one?” I asked when he told me. I knew the Chelsea gallery scene. Since I’d heard about Robert’s death, the year before, I had taken to wandering around our neighborhood. It was a thing I did to clear my head. Not that his death should have changed anything—I hadn’t seen him since I was a child—but it did, somehow. Just knowing the chance had been taken away for good.
I’d have dinner at the Empire Diner and stroll down Tenth Avenue, up and down the Twenties, popping into whatever gallery was having an opening. It was a great place to get free wine.
“Red Roof,” he said.
“I hate that place.” I don’t know why I said it. The words just came out. Not that it wasn’t true; I did hate that place. They were always showing experimental art that seemed hyperbolically obvious and simplistic. Nudes made out of candy wrappers. The demise of society at the hands of pop culture. Sugar rot.
“That’s awesome,” he said. “Me too.” And then he smiled and we looked at each other and some coin fell into the slot machine deep inside me. The whole thing got set into motion. I would later look back on that moment and wonder what would have happened if I had lied. If I had told him I knew the gallery and liked it. I’m not sure we’d have been together.
“So why are you applying?”
He shrugged, leaned his head back on the glass window. “It’s a job,” he said.
“You’re an artist.” I knew this, of course, already.
“Yeah,” he said. “I scream ‘starving,’ or something?” I guess it wasn’t a tough thing to intuit. “What’s your name?” he asked me, his head snapping back.
My chest rose then. It expanded so much that I no longer remembered we were underground. There was something about the exchange of a name that made me think—know—that this time would be the start of something.
“Sabrina,” I said.
“Like the witch?”
“Ha. No. Like the mo—”
The train gave a jolt. We started moving again. I was actually disappointed. We were just getting somewhere. But when the train stopped at Forty-second Street he offered me his hand. “Want to get some coffee?” he asked.
“I’m late for work.” I wanted a real date, and we were running out of time. “Here.” I took out a pen. I flipped over his hand. I wrote my number. The doors closed on him. He pressed his palm up against the glass. Don’t smudge, I thought.
He called the next day, and when he did, it was on. It was like I had taken those four years to prepare, and once that time was over, that time of tidying up, sweeping away, clearing, there was all this space. We rushed right in. We filled it up until it was bursting.