Saturday, 10:30 a.m.
There's a man, a boy really, who can't be older than 20. Hispanic, with dark skin and a tight white tee shirt and crisp white shoes that might, now that I think about it, be attractive up close. He has a shaved head and he sits on the bar next to the chairs and doesn't look comfortable even though all the chairs are open. He looks like he's texting. Or maybe, like I do when I'm waiting for something, he's playing Wheel of Fortune on his phone.
When the train comes, he calmly walks away from it. The train pulls up and blocks my view of him. After the train leaves, I see him emerge from behind a large pole and calmly reclaim his seat on the uncomfortable looking bar that's close to the ground, that may have just been installed for aesthetic reasons.
Three middle-age tourists in varying lengths of khaki "travel shorts" stare in wonder at the ticket machine. Obviously this mode of transportation is a novelty to them.
Two young girls with matching long, dark, straight hair wait side by side. Maybe sisters. Maybe best friends. One of them has a backpack on. I wonder if they are running away. And if they only had one backpack to bring.
A man is dressed in blue jeans and a blue shirt. It's so much blue that it makes me think his skin has a blue tint to it. Then I notice that he has bright red shoes on. Why does he want to make a statement with his feet? He looks up and sees me typing three stories above him. I wonder if he thinks that makes me weird, or intriguing.
The black woman sitting on the chairs can’t stop twitching her foot. She appears nervous. She carries a plastic bag from the Circle K and smokes. She gets up, walks past the runaways. They stare at her after she passes. I wonder if they think she is pretty, or if they wish they had the courage to ask her for a cigarette.
She stops by the man who was afraid to get on the train and she takes a drink from the water fountain. She says something to him. He doesn’t answer. She paces back and forth in front of him, hoping he will notice her.
There are several pretty girls on pretty bikes with their hair in pigtails, but they're not together. I wonder if they each thought they'd be the only pretty girl with a pretty bike in the bunch, and then are embarrassed to find out they are wrong. They are trying to be retro-cool, and they're succeeding. It makes me long for a yellow bike with a basket that I would take to the farmer’s market and fill with fresh basil. I know I will never do this.
An man my age is in a motorized wheelchair, zooming around area where people wait for trains. Even from here, I can tell he has an attractive face. Overhead speakers announce the next train will arrive in two minutes. He is on his cell phone, laughing. I wish we were friends.
Red shoes is up, poised, ready for the train. I can see now he is balding on top of his head. That explains the shoes.
The train arrives and a woman who looks like Joan Jett is just getting to the ticket machine. She’ll never make this one. She doesn’t seem to care. That is the attitude of Saturday mornings.
The train stops and blocks my view temporarily of the other side. I bet red shoes got on. Will he think about the girl he saw, sitting on a high up ledge with a laptop, writing? Will he wonder if she was writing about him?
The train leaves and only the man who didn’t get on the first time is still here. I suddenly feel lonely and wish more people would come again soon. But the next train won’t arrive for another 15 minutes, and everyone seems to know this. They are just now leaving their apartments, stopping first for coffee at the café below me or running back inside to get a forgotten post-it note where they wrote their shopping list. Most likely it will have on it things like soap, paper towels, toilet paper and limes. It is a day for cleaning and later, they think, they will open up a Mexican beer and put a slice of lime in it and pretend like they are on vacation. This is their incentive, their reward. And it will make them smile as they scrub their bathroom.
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