Circus Train

He was the saddest clown Rose had ever seen. He sat across from her in the subway car, gazing waterly out the tunnel-black window over her shoulder. He wore no squeaky nose, dotted pajamas, or squirty flower. His face was free of makeup and his hair of dye or curls. But Rose knew he was a clown because of his preposterously big feet.

The clown caught her staring at him. "Do you have any change?" he asked.

She shook her head, but that was a lie.

"Where are you trying to get to?" he asked.

"Just home."

"Me, too."

"But all these delays."

He shut his eyes. "Yes, the delays."

"I mean, I started in Manhattan and they told us to get off the A line and switch to the F, but then they rerouted the A train onto the F line, which caused train traffic..." She didn't know why she was telling him this. "I'm so tired. I just want to go home."

"Me, too," said the clown.

"When did you get on the train?"

"I left Manhattan at 8:30, June 29th."

"But that's three months ago!"

"Only three?"

Ah, it was a sad clown's joke.

"My wife and son are home waiting," he went on. "My dinner must have cooled by now."

"Maybe you should take a cab."

The train screeched to a halt, nothing but the dark between platforms out the windows.

"I tried," the clown said. "Many times. They either stop taking customers calls, none will stop, or they get stuck in traffic. I blew most of my savings account early on waiting in traffic jams as the meter ate through my pocketbook."

"What, so you've been stranded for three months?"

"I tried buses, walking, ferries, hitchhiking. I was rerouted to LaGuardia once, so I bought a plane ticket, which was delayed, and then canceled."

She frowned. "Why don't you call your wife and have her come pick you up?"

The clown looked at an Asian couple with backpacks and cameras and their three small children. The husband ran his finger along the subway map on the wall. The clothing on the toddlers bloated at the seams.

"Because I've seen what happens to others who invite their families to join them," he said.

She stared at the weary children. "What are you saying? They're all trapped in commuter hell, too?"

He raised a finger, orange and peanut shaped. "Ah, not hell. Hell is a place--a destination. I have not seen a destination in months. We are trapped between the place we started and the place we want to end up. This is commuter purgatory."

"Why don't you come with me. My uncle has a car--" She caught herself. She'd gotten lost in the clown's game! And now she was inviting a stranger home with her. How ridiculous.

We are delayed because of train traffic ahead of us. Please be patient.

The clown cocked his head. "Do you remember how you got on the train tonight?"

"It's winter," she said, her mind slipping away to the early evening before th sun had completely set.

"Coldest one in years, they say."

"There was a station I'd never seen before."

"Yes." He agreed as though he'd been there.

"I must have passed that corner a hundred times but...and it was the wrong side of town for the A train but...it was so cold."

"So you went in."

"Yes, I went in. I didn't expect a train to come. I just wanted to warm up."

"But a train did come," he said.

"Yes."

"And here you are with the rest of us."

"No. It can't go on forever."

"Mmm. Circus train," he said. "From the Latin. Circus. Circuit. Circle. You can travel the line forever and not get anywhere."