There is a man on the 6 train at 7AM. Or there was.
I never learned his name. He boards at 86th, I board at 96th, and for about eight months he has been folding his New York Post in half and handing me the back section like we agreed on this in a past life.
The first time he did it, I almost said no. In Ahmedabad my mother taught me to be polite to elders, but New York taught me to be suspicious of kindness on public transit. He just nodded at the sports pages and went back to his crossword. So I took them.
We never spoke. Not once. He has a gray mustache and reading glasses held together with what looks like dental floss, and he smells faintly of Old Spice and coffee. I started looking forward to him more than my actual coffee.
This is the strange intimacy of the 6 train at 7AM. You don't know anyone, and yet you know the exact people who will be standing where, doing what. The woman who applies eyeliner without a mirror. The teenager asleep against the pole. My newspaper man.
Monday his seat was empty. Tuesday too. By Thursday I had constructed three entire backstories, two of them tragic, one involving a Florida grandchild.
I know how this sounds. I am mourning a person I have exchanged zero words with. But the 6 train at 7AM is where I have done most of my actual living this year, between the apartment and the studio, in that gray hour when the city hasn't decided who it is yet.
My ba used to say strangers are just relatives you haven't been introduced to. I thought it was a greeting-card thing. Now I think she meant the newspaper man.
I hope he is in Florida. I hope someone is handing him the back section.
Save a stranger a seat. You never know who you're keeping.
Love,