The Ride

The Pacific shimmers along the coastline as most people wind down their days, their weeks, and turn off the lights in the office for an early start on the weekend. The homes and offices and apartments along the tracks are used to the high pitched whistle of the train and the clanging bells of the guardian barriers that lower their red and white striped arms as the engine approaches.
Tonight the train is not even a quarter full, and the eclectic mix of travelers shuffle through the aisles until they find a seat that appears not only comfortable but appropriately anonymous in the fading light of early winter. A woman directs her husband to sit next to the window away from the coast as a pretense to look out over the aisle and the seats towards the radiant sunset glistening on the rolling water and a justification to look away from him. She slouches into the aisle with distant eyes while he leans into the glass to watch the farmland pass. It seems impossible that two people could be so close and yet so separate.
A couple stands leaning on a rail overlooking the water. The meeting of their gaze is electric. In that static moment they are oblivious to the clamor and scream of the train and her passengers they are focused so intently on one another. As he leans in for a kiss, slowly and with an approach that belies that he is dropping his guard, allowing her into his mind, his heart, and his grasp for the first time, perhaps even though they are forbidden lovers, the train blows by with renewed fervor as if it stalled too long to admire the moment that they shared and the end of their story is lost in a blur of motion and streaming light.
The sky is a mix of grays and pinks with strips of bright orange that stream as if from a pallet knife across the canvas of sky. The waves mimic the sky in parallel lines and reflective colors and the sky to water becomes a tablet of lined paper waiting for the story of God. But before a word is written, the clouds fade into the atmosphere and the light that halos the still churning water fades to an occasional glimmer. As the light falters, the window from the train becomes the mind of a schizophrenic, confusing the existing world outside her metal skin with the introspective life inside. As a woman stares outside the window streetlights and buildings slide through her reflection, making it impossible to tell who is real and who the ghost.
As the deep black of evening settles over the landscape, the train becomes comatose with no sense of the outside anymore, no sense of where she fits into that world aside from the never ending sway associated with assumed progress. The halls remain caffeinated with harsh, green fluorescents scattered every ten feet along the length of each of the five cars casting a sickly glow over the somehow instantly weary travelers. The halls reek of a caustic mixture of café junk food and cheap perfume overzealously applied to conceal a missed shower after a night of partying that ended up in a stranger’s apartment. Several of the college students flock together sensing a common bond in academia and flirt and giggle to establish communication. Others tangibly avoid the contact and pull their hooded sweatshirts higher over their headphones to conceal their faces and, with any luck, wink them out of existence altogether.
The rest of the cars are scattered with stories as similar and unique as the train from yesterday or the train that comes tomorrow. You can see the history of it in the wear patterns of thighs, arms, and heads along the browning, blue material of the seats. Some of the texture of the plastic arm rests has been worn smooth, and the metal buttons are shiniest in the middle where countless thumbs have struggled to assist in the elusive comfort of the ride.
In the darkness, the only patches of recognizable light come in the form of the station stops, usually casting an amber glow along the tracks and into the parking lots just far enough to make out the movement or suggestive shadow of life beyond the feathering light. Before anything can be seen and determined, though, the engine kicks into a jerky motion attempting to reclaim its previous momentum only to smother it again in the lights and cacophony of the next scheduled stop and leave her giant metal frame motionless for the allotted amount of time according to the predetermined schedule.
Aside from the occasional brethren of a passing freight train or the boundless energy of Union Station, the life of the train is rote and monotonous, treading along the same inverted grooves and the same schedules day in and day out no matter the character or multitude of her cargo.