When You're a Stranger

[plumtreeblossom]

The Red Line T slows to a dead stop between Central and Porter; the lights flicker and half of them go dark. The car I'm in is mostly empty, perhaps 18 people or so scattered down the rows of seats. In this semi-dark stasis, the train car becomes a roomful of strangers suddenly joined by circumstance. There is brief eye contact here and there; a mutual appraisal, since we're stuck here together.

Unconsciously I flip into a favorite game - making up names and personas for the strangers around me, across from me. I've done this since childhood. I do it all the time without thinking about it. It must be that my brain abhors the vacuum of anonymity, or maybe it's just my writer's mind at play. I name my fellow riders:

Tamisha Shante Williams
David Ng
Giselle Shapiro
The McCabes (Tim, Leslie, Madison, Dylan)
Marisol Lopez
Sung Kim
Robert Drurry and guide dog Maisey
Dominica DiTurro (aka Tia Mima)
Josh Gellerman and girlfriend Tasha Greene

This is how I've sometimes come up characters for short stories. If someone catches my interest in particular, my mind will drift to fabrication of a history and life for them, where they're going today, who's waiting for them at home. I imagine interaction between them should the train be stuck here. Who would speak to whom? Who would emerge as the impromptu Alpha, organizing a plan to break a window and get us out? Who would cry? Who would comfort? Strangers become seeds around which I wind imaginary worlds.

Then the train does its shimmy and lurches into motion again, to the stops ahead when we'll all get out.