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Flash Fiction

A Brief Incident

William Cass
issue five

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My subway train suddenly came to a stop between stations.  I swore, regarded my watch, and swore again. 

 A young man about my age sat in the seat perpendicular to mine.  He looked at me with a small, sympathetic smile, and said, “Maybe it won’t be too long.”

“Sure as hell hope not.”

“Going someplace important?”

“Interview,” I muttered.  “For my dream job, actually.”

His eyebrows raised.  “No kidding.”’

My right foot wouldn’t stop tapping.

“Which stop?” he asked.

“Next.”

“Long walk from the station?”

I shook my head.

“You might be all right.”

I gave my watch another glance and huffed, “Shit!  Shit, shit, shit.”  

I removed the lid from my paper cup of coffee and swallowed off a gulp.  We were sitting close enough together that our knees almost touched.  He was as dark as I was pale, had a similar 

build, and wore a blue button-down shirt untucked over jeans.  I tugged at my blazer and necktie, then repositioned the briefcase on my lap.  

Along with all the other passengers, we waited in silence for several more minutes until the train gave an unexpected and jarring lurch.  As it did, most of the remaining coffee in my cup sloshed out over the front of my shirt.  I recoiled, dropped the cup to the floor, and gasped a louder curse.

The young man’s hand extended my way with several tissues.  “Try these,” he said.

I took them from him and dabbed furiously at the spreading wetness while the train resumed speed.  The tissues absorbed moisture but did nothing to resolve the stain that had grown to nearly the size of a football.  The loudspeaker announced the approach of my stop.

“Here,” I heard the young man say.  “Unknot your tie.”

When I looked over, I saw that he’d taken off his own shirt, exposing a bare, concave chest.  The train had begun slowing as it entered my stop’s station.  Without considering further, I ripped off my tie, blazer, and shirt.  I completed the reverse process with his own shirt just as the train came to a halt.  Our eyes met, his kind and gentle.

“Go,” he said.  

I nodded, stuffed my ruined shirt in my briefcase, and scampered onto the platform just before the train’s departure warning chimed and the doors slid closed.  I ran huffing up the stairs and emerged onto a busy sidewalk in the clean, white light of a lovely morning that seemed as impossible as the interaction I’d just had with the young man.  I realized I hadn’t even thanked him, didn’t know his name, probably would never see him again.  I pictured him heading off to 

wherever he was going, shirtless and with people staring at his narrow, naked torso.  Both of our lives would go on, this encounter already a memory, just a brief incident from our past.

Up the street, the sun glinted off the glass of my waiting building.  I shook my head again, then hurried toward it.