Spare Change
8:32AM Friday.
The F train is crowded. I just got on at Roosevelt, end of the car next to the conductor’s booth, by the door – my door. I stand across from the platform I’d been standing on, reading Macworld – hey, somebody’s got to keep them in business. The doors close and the cars start to move towards
Manhattan.
Out of the corner of my eye I see the back of a head that looks familiar, only I’m not interested enough to investigate. Then I see a hand go out in a familiar gesture and my curiosity gets the better of me.
“Do you have any spare change? Anything? Anything at all?”
It’s the young man who liked the Saints who’d asked me for money three week before. He turns into partial profile. There’s a woman across from me standing in front of the bench passengers.
He asks her again, “Anything at all?”
He wears shorts, a new red baseball cap with black visor, a little too big for his head, the way they wear them these days.
I take a good look to make sure it’s him while the woman digs into her purse for change.
Same short buzz cut, dirty blond hair, wire-rimmed glasses. It’s him, only he seems older now, maybe 20s instead of barely 18. The woman couldn’t find any change.
She shrugs, palms up. “I’m sorry. I thought I had some, but I don’t.”
The young man looks towards me and I shake my head automatically before he can speak. Words hang on to the edge of his lips, then tumble back into his mouth. I don’t make eye contact, but I keep my eyes on him. He hesitates a moment and I wonder if he remembers the Saints cap – I’m still wearing it – then moves on to the people standing to my right.
“Do you have anything? Anything at all?”
The woman in front of me has gone back to looking in her purse. I’ve got coins in my pocket. I can feel them against my thigh. I tell myself I’ll give it to him if he comes back my way. He doesn’t and at the next stop, across the car by the middle doors, he leaves.
The woman closes her purse and she lets it hang at her side. I go back to my magazine but it’s a while before I can concentrate.
–Joe Lunievicz