Rachel Talbot

The day started like any other: underground. The MTA has yet to respond to my strongly worded letters imploring them to consider adding Transit Counselor to their payroll. I don’t care what the title is. It could be Guru, Sensei, Coach, Exemplar. What matters is that someone’s responsible for shepherding wayward passengers. The warren of subway tunnels, lines, routes, and platforms would test any navigator’s mettle. For now, I perform my duties gratis.

I started at Times Square, the locus of many a befuddled tourist. A band of three seated performers beat on drums. Their itchy beat matched the rhythm of the chaotic station. A disoriented family of five toting what was likely a year’s worth of clothing in one dilapidated suitcase, passed by.

May I help you find your way? I inquired. They seemed puzzled. In such incidences, I recommend a destination.

Go to Coney Island on the N train. Your feet will touch sand and the cry of seagulls will fill your ears. One day, it might become a precious memory, a time before connections severed, like individual train cars pulled apart.

I can only hope they took my advice.

The drummers’ large hands, light on one side, dark on the other, slid and patty-caked, their beat, the only constant in the swirling station. 

An out-of-towner, face beet red, Panera bread pudgy, stood frozen. For him, I recommended my old neighborhood, the lower east side. There, he can feed upon the dying crumbs of a once bohemian bastion. Long gone are the days when I tried to make art and meaning in a low-rent tenement apartment and on earnest gallery walls.

As the morning advanced, office workers and students turned into couriers, mothers and babies, and those with irregular schedules. I encountered a few travelers with firm endgames, if not the knowledge to get there. For them, I offered the more scenic route, the lyrical path, the 7 and G and not the 1 or 2. If you already know your goal, why not enjoy the journey? Even a subway ride can be a work of art.

The morning rush over, I leaned against a column. A lady in rain boots ran down the staircase to the uptown only to re-appear a few beats later darting for the downtown staircase. Her pointy, determined chin reminded me of someone I once knew and possibly loved.

The drummers carried on, their rhythm so powerful, it could have powered the subway itself.

And that’s when a man approached me.

Are you lost? he asked.

What irony! Had I taken on the expression of the very people I’m here to help?

No, I told him.

Although, it’s true I know a thing or two about being adrift. I know what it means to take the express when the local is intended, flying past my intended stop, a captive of a fleeing subway car. I know the existential dread of DELAYED flashing on digital displays. Will the next train arrive in 2 minutes? 5? Sometimes, it’s just NEVER.

I wanted to tell the man that I did not intend to lose my way, to wander alone through a cruel and brutal maze, to veer dangerously close to the third rail. I did not plan to find myself here. But now, eyes like a mole’s, wandering the underworld below the city streets, I know I could do worse than to try to shine a guiding light for others, even as that light is beyond my own timorous reach.