The Metro
By Richard Schreck
Clinging to the nearest seat back for support, Marta Novak stood in the crowded aisle as the metro train descended below street level. Strangers’ bodies pressed in. Cheap perfume offended from somewhere to her left and a smell she associated with wet fur seemed to float down from the ceiling. Typical rush hour in DC. An experience she always tried to avoid, but there she was. She had to get across town. When her shoulder bag jumped forward under her arm, a hoarse voice behind her barked sorry. She held tight to the strap in anticipation of a grabber, but when she felt no hands trying to pull it away she accepted it as garden variety jostling. Without turning around, she responded, “No problem.”
Marta was beginning her final rotation back stateside, her last foreign service assignment before her elected early retirement. Her boss had taken her out for drinks, given her the lowdown on post-9/11 Washington. “People are trying to get back to normal,” Baker counseled, “but everyone is still on edge. Even with 9/11 fading back into the rearview, most people haven’t figured out how to react.”
To Marta, DC felt like just another posting to an iffy setting. With no family in Washington, it was not at all like coming home. People were the same, really, as in Paris or Bangkok. They believed world affairs to be almost entirely irrelevant to their day-by-day until they faced an immediate personal danger. Then emotion took over.
Marta had painstakingly observed their reactions on three continents. Although empathetic, she had battled down any of her own emotions that might rise to the surface, determined to remain dispassionate. Now, with public service announcements keeping everyone on alert, she acknowledged the tension building in the tight-packed crowd.
At Metro Center, many of the passengers exited leaving a few seats vacant. Hoping to sit near the door, Marta allowed herself to be pushed forward with the outward flow and gratefully slid into an empty second row. As an incoming crowd began squeezing onto the car, seats filled quickly, but no one chose the empty first row immediately ahead of her. One after another, entering passengers glanced down at the open seats, diverted their eyes, and pressed past toward the car’s quickly-filling interior.
Curious, Marta leaned forward. A shopping bag lay on the seat ahead of her. She imagined a distraught owner remembering the bag just as the doors closed and the train jerked into motion carrying away her purchases. She scanned the platform, concluding the owner would have little chance of recovery. I hope it’s not too valuable.
Then, in an instant, she was certain …
It’s a bomb.
How could she not have recognized the threat sooner?
But everyone else had been ignoring it. As passengers continued to flood onto the car, she pulled her shoulder bag tight against her side, readied herself to flee out the door as soon as the flow of incoming riders thinned enough for her to get into the aisle.
Would she be overreacting if she evacuated the train? Could she evacuate it? Could she stop the train and persuade them all to leave?
How do you stop a metro train? Don’t they have an emergency cord or something for people to pull?
If I act, I’ll panic everyone.
The car doors slid shut. A young man not long out of his teens—the last to enter—stood holding onto the grab pole, staring down at the bag. Well dressed, suit, tie. Legal intern? Congressional staffer? He returned Marta’s stare, uncertain, then raised his head to scan the car as if anticipating advice. Got none. Marta stiffened, concluding he had read the situation as she had, was about to panic and bring the rest to frenzy with him.
As if to confirm, he stepped back. He pulled his hand from the pole and grasped it again higher and tighter. Marta began to rise as he lifted his foot—flash of black wingtip, black sock—and kicked the bag.
Not a hard kick, but hard enough. Marta steeled herself for the explosion.
Then silence.
The act seemed so spontaneous, so natural, that Marta’s struggle to comprehend the event failed her. The young man slid the bag to one side and took the seat beside it. Marta waited for him to lean down and look inside, but he didn’t. The train rattled along toward Federal Triangle as he opened the Washington Post and began to read.
Marta listened to the sounds of their passage. Washington no longer felt like any other assignment. That the bag and whatever it contained had neither exploded nor showered them with anthrax did nothing to prove it benign. The kick had been absurd, irrational. At another time, in another place, she would have observed it with cold logic. And yet she rode with the others through the tunnel toward her destination giving herself to chance. To her fading dispassion.
Richard Schreck is the author of over 30 pieces and a former publication editor for a large professional association. “The Metro” explores a world he is developing in Brain Game, a novel set in Baltimore and New Orleans. Brain Game stories also appear in other magazines. richardschreck.com Instagram @richardschreckwriting.
