A Petal on a Wet Black Bough

I was adrift in Mexico City.  At first I would close my eyes and point to a place at random on the metro map, just to give myself a farcical purpose.  Later I just began riding, not really getting off, just changing from line to line.

 Masses of anonymous people moved through, enroute to somewhere.  Their faces are masked.  How does one act in the in between?  We were neither at home nor at work-- we were in the dark monotony of an underground tunnel, the place between places.  We were in the place that is always changing, always in motion, but always the same in its constant motion and constant shifting of faces. We were in the pass-way to light, awaiting some finality, awaiting death or rebirth, in the canal to arrival.

And I found myself in this place, lured into the underworld by the promise of constant motion in the moist dark air.  Sometimes I read my book; my book was my mask.  Sometimes I watched people, breaking the unspoken rule of the train.  Immense new possibilities like opaque bubbles bumped their edges against the train and receded into darkness before they could be caught or popped.  Time languished.  My past and location dissolved-- I was a private eye sleuthing the city´s secrets, I was a circus performer without my garb, I was foreign author abroad to escape my fame.

And then I saw her.

We were going south on the blue line, about five stops out from its end in Tasqueña.  She was seated, and I standing, my back braced against a pole.  She had on black skater shoes with a splash of pink.  Her eyebrows like the finest watercolor brush.  Her earrings small, round and deep red.  Slender, she swayed with the train and her serenity was complete.

I was the mysterious stranger, the silent foreigner.  I was a clandestine poet, renowned elsewhere, but unknown in these parts.   I whipped out my little notebook and began to write a poem to her.  There wasn't much time.  I had no idea when she would get off.  The poem was only a few words long, mostly just a description of how she looked to me riding along in between destinations.  She noticed me writing. I finished it.  I tore it out and then just stood there, suddenly bashful.

The train lurched to a stop and suddenly everyone got up out of their seats and began to file out.  It was the end of the line! There would be no second chance after this!  There would be no sweeping forward into the dark anonymity of the tunnel!  Gather ye rosebuds while ye may!

I still hadn´t put my email on the sheet.  She was in line to exit.  I couldn´t find my pen.  In my pockets were bills, my pocket knife, phone cards, my copy of Jack Kerouac`s On The Road, but no pen!  Her foot was about to touch the concrete of the station.  She would soon be beyond my reach, one of the many anonymous faces of the metro... but I found my pen, scribbled my email, and folded the paper.  I tapped her on the shoulder.   She turned, startled, and I wordlessly handed her the leaf.  "Thanks," she murmured and then turned and was lost in the flood of people.

For two days I explored the city, eating from the taco stands, watching the clowns in Chapultepec, going to the places we are told to go to.  And then the email came.

Her name was Erika.  She signed it at the bottom with pattern of dots ..::Erika::.. like some encrypted message in Mayan glyphs.  She said she had left the subway with a smile on her face.

So we were to meet outside of the palace of Belles Artes on a Monday at 6:30.  I arrived first. I was wearing my tennis shoes, the best I had, but they were still filthy inside from my adventures in the mountains of Michoacan.  I couldn´t have been more conscious of them if they were on fire. Then I saw her across the plaza.  She hadn´t seen me yet.  I pretended not to notice, with the feeling of stalling before jumping off a tall cliff into cold water.  She was coming toward me. 

"Erika," I said, and greeted her with the typical Latin hug and kiss to the side.  We began to walk. 

She was a dancer and a student of anthropology.  She was working on a project to write down the dances of the disappearing indigenous cultures using special notation so they might be preserved forever, no matter how much Old Time might be a-flying.  She was a skateboarder, shredding through the skate park, and liked alt rock but sometimes listened to heavy metal.  She made jewelry out of bright seeds and jade, but never to sell, only to give away.  And she was a listener.  She sat with intelligent eyes and heard the my stories of adventure, humor and hardship

As we walked she went into a bookstore to pick out a picture book to give as a present to her coworker's kid.  We bought churros.  We took them back to the front of Belles Artes to eat.

"Why did you write me that poem?" she asked me.

"Well, just something about the way you were sitting on the train, serenely..." I was dancing around the issue.

She raised her eyebrows questioningly. 

"Ok.  But it was also because you are very beautiful."

I could not read her reaction.  I got up and said, "Let`s walk, but I don`t know where" and she got up and said, "It´s better to walk not knowing where you are going."   But time had hurried and she already had to go and we walked to the subway and I said goodbye.  Encrypted Erika went through the turnstile which shut like the iron gates of life. Then she entered the metro which swept her off to a thousand possible destinations in neighborhoods with millions of lives beginning, playing out, and coming to a close.

I left the subway station and wandered the gray streets.  I found another station and went in.  I melted into the metro dark, riding at random the lines once more, seeing apparitions of beautiful faces flickering on the tunnel walls.