The L Train
Our living standards are not standard.
“Stand clear of the closing doors please!” Bill mimicked the voice silently, partly out of resistance to the repetitive annoyance but also due to acceptance of subconscious conditioning. Bill unfurled himself in his seat to begin his mechanical morning routine.
Step 1: turn on water kettle, step 2: measure cubicle, step 3: activate deodorizer. Step 1, done, good. Step 2, 70 centimeters. 70 centimeters? My allocation is 80 centimeters. Look for the scratch marks in the bench to see which side is closing in. Left side. Partition doesn’t budge. File complaint with 311- let them handle it. Why else would I pay taxes? Check the time.
With the morning tasks out of the way, Bill had a full three minutes to himself before the morning commuters embarked. After finishing a bowl of oatmeal, he grabbed a tablet to update his LinkedIn profile with an AI-generated, inspirational non sequitur. With thirty seconds to spare, Bill detached his cubicle partition from the grab bars overhead and folded his belongings into a suitcase, as he did every morning. After years of practice, he had timed his packing so well that he was zipping the suitcase as the doors opened at Union Square and the day’s first commuters boarded. It was a good habit to be punctual with cleanup and Bill was especially lucky today because the city’s stench inspector with the requisite handheld sensor passed by at that moment, tracking one of Bill’s unfortunate neighbors.
As the sun-dwellers squeezed in to absorb the empty space of the car, Bill checked in with his workplace. Bill skillfully placed his work-provided headset on his face one-handed, the other hand stabilizing him within the car, and joined the morning meeting to start the clock. As usual, Samantha droned on about how much work she had achieved the previous day, denying others time to raise issues. Bill added a side note in group chat that a client was calling him and he logged off without feeling guilty about the lie.
After passing Jersey City, the crowd in the train thinned enough for Bill to enjoy his second-most favorite activity of the day. After chaining his suitcase to a grab pole, Bill snaked his way through the subway-goers and slipped through the emergency exit between train cars. Unfortunately, Steve from accounting was already there. Bill and Steve did not enjoy encountering each within the subway car and even less so in the intimate space between cars, but the subway noise drowned out any opportunity for sarcastic niceties.
Tablet in hand, Bill squatted across from Steve and dropped his pants while straddling two platforms bouncing over the tracks below. Over the years, any subway pooper would become naturally talented at balancing between the wobbly platform between train cars and Bill was no exception. The awkwardness of watching someone poop, however, could not be trained away. The two men, bombarded by the clacking of train tracks, avoided eye contact despite their faces being lit occasionally by electric subway sparks. After all, they both knew that insisting on “private time” was a good way to get kicked off the train by the other inhabitants- there simply was not enough bathroom space for everyone to have such a privilege. This was hardly a romantic moment, but the advantage here over a normal public restroom was that the track noise obscured any other noise. The next user was already banging on the window of the exit door in a vain attempt to free it up. Neither Bill nor Steve could hear the banging, but could see the angry face of a fellow subway dweller yelling despite the noise. Bill finished unloading last night’s spaghetti dinner into the rattling tracks below, cleaned up using the toilet paper roll attached on a string to the grab handle, and pushed past the waiting passenger back to his refuge inside the car with no time to spare, as his manager was ringing him to join a meeting.
First things first, Bill ensured that his suitcase had not been touched. OK, all good. Bill swiftly reapplied his headset necessary for meetings and joined the meeting in progress.
“Bill? Bill? Is that you?” spoke a disembodied voice into his ear.
“Yes, Ron, I’m here.”
“Bill? We’ve got a client call about your performance. We need to have a serious conversation- did you decline his three o’clock meeting request?”
“Yes and I explained why.”
“The client was not happy with your explanation. Can you tell me?”
“Well, I... uh... told him 15.15 is my daily-mandated sunshine time.”
“Yes, Bill, the company appreciates that and certainly wishes to ensure legal compliance with the sunshine law, but the client must take priority. Can you reschedule your sunshine time?” ordered Ron.
“Well...”
“OK, thanks. I’ll check back in after your call.”
Bill ended the call with more disgust than usual. He didn’t feel that he asked much of the company- it did provide him with access to an air-conditioned train- but Bill felt slighted since he had just recently paid for the upgrade to the 15.15 sunshine time slot. Like many times before, Bill felt the impulsive anger to throw his headset against the train window. He redirected his attention to the small, regularly-spaced lights passing by at thirty miles per hour just a meter from him. No matter how many times he passed those lights, he had accepted long ago that he would never be able to distinguish them. Some days, the train would be forced to stop between stations and he could see the lamps up close, but the lights were uniformly placed and identical, so there was no way for Bill to know the distance from or to the closest station as counting them at full speed would have been enough to make the strongest man mad.
Still, he was thankful that New York state law prevented the MTA from charging him daily for his space- as long as he did not leave the system, he could not be charged additionally. Yes, focus on the things for which you are thankful, Bill. That’s what his HR-provided therapist said. Bill knew he would cave to the demand to shift his sunshine time- this would force him to switch train cars, probably for a worse seat. But, a small sacrifice now leads to big rewards later- Bill repeated his HR-provided therapist’s mantra.
Over the course of the next few station stops, Bill shlepped his suitcase between cars, always just before the doors closed on his feet. The subway system never implemented a proper warning system before the doors closed, frequently trapping people between doors, much to the subway conductor’s delight. After all, all of the train dwellers, commuters, and MTA workers were trying to each find their own small joys in the life underground.
After about twenty stops and twenty cars between him and his last seat, Bill checked the train’s timetable. The car in which he now stood was more run down than the previous one and also with shadier-looking people- perhaps the stench inspector had not made his way back to this car- but at least the timetable confirmed that he could enjoy his five minutes of sunshine time here without pissing off the client. Thankfully, the air conditioner in this car, while louder, seemed to be functioning normally. That year without air conditioning was a sacrifice Bill was not willing to make again.
Speaking of which, his client call was coming up in just a few minutes. Bill did his best to dry his sweaty face after his mad dash with his suitcase. With his headset on, Bill put on the friendliest face he could muster and joined the call.
“Bill? Rocco, here. We’ll need to reschedule. blong”
Rocco hung up before Bill could conceive of a response. Confused, but used to the banality of office life, Bill checked the time on the subway overhead display. Mercifully, he had a few extra minutes to prepare for his sunshine time. His old car’s position in the train was already experiencing the New Jersey skyline, so Bill was happily distracted from being on-the-clock work-wise. Bill removed a well-worn but still functional sun reflector. Seeing Bill unfold his reflector, his fellow subway dwellers prepared their own reflectors, some made from discarded aluminum foil.
Finding an optimal position for sun absorption from his subway seat, Bill prepared for his favorite time of the day. It was a time for reflection, both figuratively and literally, and Bill had no desire to waste his today.
Finally, on schedule, the New Jersey industrial swampland appeared on the subway’s path to Newark Spaceport. Bill paid no attention to the 120-year-old AirTrain at Newark from which New Jersey was still squeezing life. Instead, he reveled in the swamp grasses and abandoned tractor trailers- the subway dwellers knew to open whichever windows worked and the car’s inhabitants breathed in the diesel exhaust, swamp gas, and industrial off-gasses from the industrial zone below. Whatever the quality of the air, it was better than whatever the state pumped underground. While a bank’s middle manager wouldn’t be caught dead praising this skyline, Bill and his cohort breathed in the air, each trying to get as close as possible to the tiny slice of window that actually opened.
Suddenly, there is was! As the track clanked below, the sun seemingly cleansed the train’s inhabitants of all of panic and despair. An audible rush of glee and awe filled the car, even from those positioned on the wrong side of the train. Everyone was consumed with adjusting their reflectors for maximum benefit- all of the painfully aware of the costs of darkness. After all, who worships the sun god more than those who have least access to him?
Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the sun was blocked by another tunnel. The subway dwellers naturally pretended that the car was still sunlit for a few more seconds before becoming resigned back to their jobs as they donned their headsets. The government-mandated sunlight time had passed as the train stopped at the Newark Spaceport station.
Bill finished his work for the day and cooked a small, re-hydrated meal from his suitcase using a travel battery. After throwing the container out the window, Bill prepared for sleep by putting up his partitions, as did the others. It seemed that there were no further commuters in this car and Bill had replaced a man who had died from deep vein thrombosis just the day before- such were the rumors.
But regardless of Bill’s circumstances, he slept well curled up into a ball on the hard plastic seat, knowing that at least he was not on the R train with the refugees down below. Bill was going places.