City of Strangers

"I'm just a someone in an old museum. I'm far away from home as someone can go, but the beauty is I still meet people I know. Hello!" -- from The Light in the Piazza

Not long after I started work at my new job and began commuting to clinic every day, I noticed that some of the faceless straphangers in the subway system started to look familiar after a while. After a couple of months (and because I don't caffeinate myself until after I get to work, yes, it DID take that long), I realized that I must share a commuting route with them. We're "the regulars" -- if I catch all the right trains at all the right times, I can guarantee that I'll share a friendly nod with at least one of them along the way. There's the lady with the pig-nose and the awesome shoe collection, the gent who prefers to ride the first car of the train and might be cute if he wasn't only about 5'1", the woman who crochets a lot more slowly than I do, the impossibly tall goddess who was definitely a model in a past life, the two men with spackle-splattered boots and tool belts who would definitely be cute if they weren't such dirtbags. They're my familiar faces in a city of strangers, and I have no idea who they are.

Lately, the last leg of my morning journey has been graced with a new familiar face. He's loud and he wears his arm in a sling, and every time I see him, he loudly announces to half of Manhattan that he's wearing his arm in a sling. He announces it when he plants himself between me and the platform edge even though I got there first, he announces it when he shoves me out of the way to get on the train before I do, he announces it when he wedges his way onto said train while people are still trying to exit it, he announces it when he jostles old ladies and small children and tired commuters to find a generously proportioned place to stand, he announces it when he's not given enough room around the handrail to wrap his entire free arm around it.

Today, after he and I exchanged our usual greeting -- he yelled at me and shoved me out of the way and I cursed him out in Italian under my breath -- I entered the train behind him. A few moments before we pulled into my stop, he oh-so-quietly slipped his arm out of the sling, held his briefcase with it as he used his healthy arm to rummage around for a tissue, blew his nose, and oh-so-quietly slipped his arm back into the sling. Sad; I thought I knew him.