Kiss

1

She was standing at the center of the subway platform, waiting for the uptown train to come in, when the man stepped up to her and punched her.

She felt shocking pain and then immediate outrage, how dare he? And then she remembered that this was the city in which she'd been born and bred, and in this city crazy things happened, and when they happened you tried to protect yourself. So she stepped back and away from him-a glimpse of red, he was wearing a red woolen hat-and was swinging her handbag at his head when he shoved her toward the edge of the platform.

He's crazy, she thought, he's a lunatic, and she said out loud, "Stop it, are you crazy?”

but he grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the very edge of the platform, trying to throw her over, struggling with her. She screamed, she pulled away, tried to pull away, heard her coat tearing up the back when he reached for her again.

Each time she moved away from the edge of the platform, he shoved her back again. The red hat, a brown jacket, blue jeans-she saw all these in almost subliminal flashes. He was only an inch or so taller than she was, but he was much stronger, and when finally he put all his strength into what seemed a last, desperate shove, she lost her balance and fell backward onto the tracks. In the moment before she went over, she saw his boots. Brown leather boots with a white- A train was coming.

She heard its thunder up the track, and from where she was crouched on her knees she turned to see its lights in the distance. She scrambled to her feet, tried to get back onto the platform, it was almost waist high, put her hands flat onto it, and tried to hoist herself up as if she were in a swimming pool and bouncing up out of the water. But there was no water here, there was no buoyancy to help her, there was only the high platform and the rattling sound of the train coming closer. Help me, she said to no one, Oh dear God, help me, and grabbed the edge of the platform with both hands, the train rumbling closer, thrusting herself up from the elbows, swinging one leg over the rim, scrabbling for purchase, the other leg over and up now, she was on the platform now, the train not thirty feet away and screeching out of the darkness.

Her pantyhose were laddered, her coat split up the back seam. She was wearing only a light wool dress under the coat. Shivering from the cold, or her fear, or perhaps both, her eye throbbing where the man had punched her, both hands bruised from trying to cushion her fall to the tracks, knees scraped raw and bleeding, she lay flat on the platform, hugging the platform, sobbing, sucking in great gobs of air.

She did not know how long it was before a Transit Authority policeman came to her.