He first noticed her as she paced back and forth on the subway station platform in New York City. She seemed anxious for the train to arrive. She wore a fashionable blue half-sleeve sweater and white chino shorts with red low heel pumps. A very good-looking early-30s woman with brown flowing hair. He liked how she appeared mature and not a show-off. Somebody with class and self-confidence but not obnoxiously so.
The Number 2 train in Manhattan arrived. Which car would she choose to find a seat? He entered in the middle of the car and she in the rear. He saw an empty available seat. He raced to snag it. He saw her deciding where to sit. She chose the seat alongside him. They exchanged smiles. He was enthralled, if he hadn’t already been watching her on the station platform.
She adjusted her purse and carry-on bag and he pressed harder against the window to give her bag more room. She offered another dazzling smile at him again, as if offering thanks.
What could he say to her that didn’t sound like an obvious pick-up line? Should he say anything? If he did, would that start something he might regret later?
“I like how you’re wearing blue,” he finally said seconds later. She looked quizzically at him.
“Squze me?”
“Blue. Your sweater is the same color as my bag,” he pointed out to her.
She laughed. “Yes. Okay.”
Was that it? Would she say anything else? Or would they ride the subway together the rest of the way in silence to whichever station she was getting off at and where he was getting off?
He noticed she was texting. Maybe she was meeting somebody, although that thought didn’t first occur to him. Maybe she was going shopping at a store like Macy’s since the train was heading toward Penn Station and he imagined that somebody this classy liked clothes. But not to an extreme that she was a clotheshorse. Maybe that was gender bias to think materialism was what she was all about. Perhaps she was an academic or something similar in that field? One could only imagine since he had nothing else to go on.
The train stopped at Times Square where lots of touristy-looking people on the other side of the tracks had been waiting for it to arrive. Only a few tourists boarded on their side. He wanted to say something else to her but preferred that she say something to him first. He didn’t want to make it obvious he was coming on to her. He couldn’t get a view of her hand to see if she wore a wedding ring.
The next stop would be Penn Station at 34th Street & 7th Avenue. He could almost sense that this was her stop. It was now or never.
Apparently, it was never. He could have mentioned how horribly hot it was outside. He could have said…what…?
The train slowed down. She looked at him with a sweet smile again and said, “Have a nice weekend.” How anodyne. She had no foreign or regional accent. From the little he heard from her, she sounded articulate. Educated. Could be someone from around here. He noticed her nose, pointed slightly downward. It appealed to him. She wasn’t a perfect 10 which made her more enticing. Something to remember her by.
He smiled back at her and said, “Have a nice weekend too.” He almost wanted to get off the train with her, even if it wasn’t his stop. He decided against it. Better that way. And she was gone.
The train arrived at the Ground Zero/World Trade Center stop in Lower Manhattan. He headed toward his 10th-floor 2-bedroom apartment where his wife was ironing his and her clothes for their next workweek on Monday. What a wonderful wife, he thought. He’d never want to do anything to hurt her. If he loved his wife, why couldn’t he stop thinking about the classy woman on the train? What was she doing now?
She had noticed him sitting on the marble bench waiting for the subway train to arrive. A mid-to-late 30s nice-looking guy with thick longish brown hair, wearing an ironed black T-shirt, cargo shorts, and clutching a blue bag. Which car would he choose to take when the train arrived? She was running late to meet her friend at Hudson Yards by Penn Station where they would shop and have lunch at a ritzy hotel next door.
The Number 2 train came. She picked the end of a middle car. She saw the nice-looking guy sitting alone in a seat. He seemed clean and self-confident and not a bum. She sat down next to him and he smiled at her. She offered a beguiling smile back. She could instantly tell he was intrigued by her.
Men found her attractive, she knew that. Many of them were a turn-off to her for one reason or another. Her husband said that all the attention paid to her was one big reason for the tension in their marriage. He had trouble dealing with other men looking and desiring her. She seemed to enjoy their lusting for her. Besides, other women looked at her husband. She didn’t mind that. In fact, it only confirmed he was an attractive guy and she was supposed to feel lucky to have him. Oh sure.
She could discern the guy alongside wanting to say something to her. And then he did.
The noise from the train rattling along on the tracks made it hard to hear what he said. “Scuze me?” she said.
He made some comment about her sweater and his bag being the same blue color. That was the best come-on line he had? How anodyne. Unless he was just a friendly guy and nothing more than that. She’d give him a laugh to acknowledge whatever he meant.
She texted her friend that she was almost at Penn Station. Just a couple more stops where they would meet outside Macy’s.
They rode in silence. She texted her husband that she’d be home in time for dinner. The guy sitting next to her was staring out the window at all the touristy-looking people lined up on the other side of the tracks at Times Square waiting for their train. All the while he wanted to say something more to her, she knew it. She gave him credit for not being obnoxious with another idiotic pick-up line. She had heard them all. This one was staying quiet from either shyness or feeling confident to let her talk first. She couldn’t get enough sight of his left hand to detect if he was wearing a wedding ring.
The train arrived at Penn Station. The least she could do was wish him a nice weekend. She liked how he smiled at her in telling her to do the same. He had a wonderful sincere smile. It was obvious there was a strong connection between them. If they only had more time…Oh well.
She got off the train, ambivalent that they hadn’t gotten more acquainted. Maybe it was meant to be that way.
Onward to meet her best friend where she would tell her about the fellow she met on the train who she felt a bond with and apparently, he with her. She could tell Beryl her secrets without worrying the friend would blab about it to the world. She chuckled to herself remembering that a hurricane recently striking the Caribbean had been named Beryl. What an odd coincidence. Anyway, back to the subject at hand. What were the chances she and the train guy would ever meet again?
That weekend James Mathews and his wife Cynthia Mathews drove out from their apartment upstate to Saratoga Springs, New York, known as the “Queen of the Spas,” where they had signed up to luxuriate in the hot-springs baths aimed at relieving bodily pains. His right hip had been aching for weeks, and the baths always made it feel better. His wife also had pains in her side and the hot springs worked like a miracle to give her some relief. He and his wife would soak in the large bathtub for an hour or so and then eat lunch at a country diner just down the road from the hot springs before driving over to the town of Corinth to enjoy the beautiful Hudson River scenery.
The whole 3-hour drive up to Saratoga Springs he thought about the woman on the train. How was she spending her Saturday? Whatever she was doing it wasn’t with him.
Lucinda (Lucy) Russo and her husband Don Barnes deliberated about which refrigerator to buy at Home Depot to replace the one that had been leaking for months. They had been putting off spending their Saturday morning in search of a new refrigerator, always finding an excuse to do it some other time.
Factoring into that equation was that their marriage was on rocky ground. They had discussed in a very adult reasonable way whether they might try a trial separation. Maybe see other people to decide whether they should stay married or finally call it quits. So why bother getting a new refrigerator if they weren’t going to stay together? That last part didn’t quite make sense because one of them would continue living in this luxury condominium and you didn’t want to have to deal with a leaky refrigerator. They decided both of them would go together to Home Depot and rectify the problem once and for all.
Some $1,070 later their new refrigerator would be shipped to their condo that following Friday morning. Lucy said it made sense for her to stay home that day since she didn’t have classes on Friday for her English literature teaching job at the nearby university. Don, meanwhile, was scheduled to be out of town the following Friday on behalf of his job as a political consultant on the Upper West Side. It would have to be Lucy doing the honors of waiting for the refrigerator to arrive.
Back home, Lucy prepared lunch for them both, and then she changed into her two-piece bathing suit for a dip in the roof-top outdoor swimming pool. Don, meanwhile, went downstairs to the garage to tinker with his new love, a 1954 red Buick Super Riviera where he seemed to spend half his life. Sometimes he even ate lunch in that car. He planned to exhibit the Buick at a classic car show to be held in several weeks over in Nassau County on Long Island. He had always been fascinated with antique cars and finally he had time to indulge in his passion. If he and his wife weren’t getting along, at least he had his car in which to give his undivided attention.
Don still loved his wife, and he was hurt that she apparently no longer felt the same desire for him. She loved him like a brother, she had said in an indirect way, and they no longer slept in the same bed. The real problem stemmed from the way men looked at Lucy and Don couldn’t abide it and she couldn’t abide his insecurity about her, even though she felt at the same time sympathy for his weakness. She said she had never cheated on him, nor him her, in the 10 years they had been married. But he wondered how long that could last with Lucy staying faithful. Jealousy had to be one of the original sins.
Poolside, Lucy lay on a recliner next to a couple, Jerry and Cristina Jenkins. She had met them at one of the condo’s outdoor cookout parties several months ago. Cristina had lots in common with Lucy in that she also was a college professor at the university. Cristina taught sociology and had traveled all over the world, something Lucy wanted to do with Don but he didn’t seem interested in the idea. Maybe someday she and Cristina could travel together on a Mediterranean Sea cruise around Italy and the Greek Islands. Stick-in-the-mud Don certainly wasn’t going to step out from his routine, particularly with that antique car, to accompany her.
Weeks passed. By then, James Mathews had mostly forgotten about the train woman. Although one time he thought he saw someone who looked like her pushing a shopping cart in the grocery store. He was about to approach when he realized it wasn’t her.
He was riding the #2 train returning from his usual Friday afternoon tennis doubles match at the racquet club with his friend, Steve Corning, where they usually played one or two sets against whoever wanted to play them. His job next door to the racquet club as an administrator for a multinational technology company gave him Friday afternoons off to play tennis or to indulge his other passion for swimming at the indoor facility. Both those sports kept him in decent shape although as he approached 40, he was starting to experience more body aches than before. Sitting in the sauna twice a week after work helped soothe those pains. However, that thermal spring water in Saratoga Springs was the true miracle worker for him, at least temporarily.
Tonight, he changed into formal tuxedo wear preparing for his side gig as a piano player for a supper club at a hotel in Midtown Manhattan. He had been playing piano ever since he was a kid, and he enjoyed doing it once or occasionally twice a week at that club, depending on how much the club needed him and whenever he was available to tickle the ivories.
The gig didn’t pay much, but that wasn’t the point. It gave him a place to show off his piano chops. He liked the attention when customers came around making requests of what they wanted him to play, usually show melodies, but sometimes Beatles or tunes by other rock groups. He could do it all. Occasionally, he regretted that he should have tried to make piano his full-time job. But being completely honest with himself, he knew he wasn’t professionally talented enough to make a living at it. Just good enough to play part-time at a supper club.
His wife Cynthia sometimes drove their one car uptown to the hotel to watch him perform after which they could have dinner free, on the house, and then drive home back to their apartment. Tonight, however, she was still at work as a project manager for a charitable organization where the job was never done.
All that Friday Lucy had to stay home waiting for their new refrigerator to arrive. The delivery people were supposed to come between 9 and 1. But when they did finally show up at almost 3 p.m. the two guys explained, offering more information than she wanted to hear, that the reason for the delays was that it took them much longer than expected to make deliveries at two apartments over in Brooklyn and Queens. The younger of the two delivery guys, Rico, a rough-looking 20-something but with a friendly smile, kept looking at Lucy as his co-worker made sure the refrigerator functioned properly. Lucy was accustomed to the unwanted attention. Guys were always giving her their bedroom eyes. They finally left.
Having been cooped up all day and feeling the need to get out, Lucy called her friends Beryl and Cristina to suggest why didn’t they do something goofy tonight? Lucy’s husband would be out of town. Make it a girls’ night out.
Beryl’s boyfriend Max would be across the Hudson River in New Jersey at the country club golf course, getting in nine holes before it turned dark around 8:30. He wouldn’t mind, or even particularly care, that Beryl wouldn’t be there when he arrived back at their apartment house. They had once talked about having children together. Forget about that now. Beryl figured she and Max probably wouldn’t be a couple much longer. Not after the way he kept staying out late and refusing to admit that he had a problem with alcohol.
Cristina’s husband didn’t object that she went out at night with her friends. She needed an outlet after teaching at the university all week, so let her unwind with her gal pals. He’d stay here at the apartment and watch cable TV political shows. He was a news junkie and could be perfectly satisfied decompressing by reading two newspapers every evening after coming home from work. He was doing very well managing a car sales and service dealership over on Long Island.
The Manhattan supper club was busy that night and they had to wait a few minutes before being shown to a table that had just come open in back. Lucy was wearing the new strapless outfit she had bought at Macy’s a few weeks ago on sale. Her friends said the dress fit her perfectly, made her look glamorous. The friends weren’t chopped liver either, but they couldn’t compete, even if they were trying to, with Lucy.
None of them had been to this club before. Beryl said she had read about it in the Weekend section of the local newspaper which said it had good food and where you could dance the night away. Why not try it, instead of some trendy plastic joint where most of the guys there were young and on the make. This place catered to a more adult crowd where you wouldn’t be hassled by some jerk making the moves on you. Besides, the piano player took requests. He’d play whatever tune you wanted to hear and maybe dance to.
They all ordered the same thing–tossed salads, and grilled salmon for the main course. All of them were trying to stay slim. Beryl and Cristina were getting a little paunchy in the tummy. Somehow Lucy never seemed to have a weight problem. Diet and exercise, she said. And good genes, she added with a grin.
“It’s not fair,” said Beryl, joking but not joking. “Some people were born with all the luck.”
“I wanted to be a fashion model,” added Cristina. “If only I weighed 100 pounds and never ate anything ever again.”
“And be anorexic,” said Lucy. “Cristina, remember that singer Karen Carpenter? You don’t want to end up a skeleton like her, do you?”
“At least she had some good years,” Cristina said.
All this chit-chatting and bs-ing with her friends was fun, Lucy thought. “You know ladies, we should do this more often. While we still can.”
It was then they heard the piano player over on the far side of the room doing a rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York.” He wasn’t bad, Lucy thought. Wait a minute. It couldn’t be. Yes, it had to be him. Wearing a tuxedo. With the thick brown hair and nice smile. The same one from the train. She felt her heart pounding faster.
“Holy crap, ladies, I know that guy. I mean, at least I met him on the train. Why don’t we go over and say hi.”
Her friends said they were happy just sitting at their table enjoying the ambience. They were getting a little tipsy from drinking all those mojitos and it might not be cool right now to stand up and then fall over on their face. Let Lucy go over to the guy and make a fool of herself. Or bring him back over to their table where they could all hit on him at once. They all giggled.
Lucy sipped on her mojito and then moseyed across the room to the piano. She knew she was acting more forward than normal. Blame it on the two or three glasses of mojitos she had downed even though in theory it was supposed to take more mojitos than that before you really began to feel it. But not being a real drinker, it worked wonders for Lucy.
The pianist was doing a rendition of Bye Bye Blackbird which had the customers clapping along. He glanced over to see a woman leaning on the side of the piano humming along with the tune. That downward nose of hers. He instantly recognized her from their train ride together some time before. His heart pounded.
James finished the final chords. He tried to not let his hands shake seeing her. It was hard trying to stay cool.
“You play beautifully,” Lucy said. “Can you play Yesterday?”
“Today’s your day for that,” he said.
James started with the F chord and stopped. “Remember we met on the train a while back? We sat next to each other?”
Playing it cool, Lucy asked what happened to Yesterday.
Lucy sang along as he got to the part where the lyrics went “Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play.” Lucy sat down beside him on the piano bench. He could feel her body heat. He hit the last chord and said, “Any more requests?”
“Just one,” Lucy said. “Give me your cell phone number and I’ll give you mine? We should get together sometime.”
“Why don’t we?” He didn’t hesitate, even though he knew this could start trouble. He jotted down her number on a piece of sheet music with the lyrics and chords to Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind.” He didn’t bother giving her his number. Lucy knew what that meant.
“You’re married, right?” Lucy said.
“You are too, right?” James said, noticing the indentation on her finger where she obviously had removed a wedding ring for her night out.
“I guess we shouldn’t be doing this,” Lucy said.
“I guess we shouldn’t.” But he knew he would. “Maybe after my gig ends in a half hour, we can have a drink. Or something,” he suggested.
“I’m with friends,” Lucy said. “I don’t know if I can do that.”
“Whatever works for you,” James said.
She knew what would work for her.
They shook hands. Lucy retreated to her table and told her friends she was staying behind if they wanted to leave without her. Her friends kidded her. They knew what was going on. But Lucy could trust them to keep their mouths shut about it. Unless the liquor started talking.
A half hour or so later, with all of them feeling a little inebriated, Lucy said the girls should take an Uber home. None of them were in any condition to drive Lucy’s car back to where they lived. And that’s what Cristina and Beryl did. They called for an Uber. Lucy ordered a diet Pepsi to take the edge off. She wasn’t leaving.
James, the pianist, finished his playing with a rendition of the show tune, “Till There Was You.” He drew a hearty round of applause. He stood up and bowed and then made his way over to Lucy’s table, knowing he shouldn’t be doing this. He was a married man. She was a married woman. Guilt. He was consumed with it. Yet, as the Selena Gomez song goes that he liked to play and where it seemed especially fitting now was “The Heart Wants What It Wants.” It was a fever, a chemical attraction, that made people do crazy dangerous things.
Over the following weeks, they snuck around town to meet up whenever possible. They couldn’t keep their hands off each other with the mutual attraction so strong. That first time they met up was on a Friday night when James lied to his wife that the supper club had asked him to stay for a second round on the piano that would mean he wouldn’t get home until past midnight. His wife had offered to drive down to the club to pick him up. But James said he’d take an Uber. He didn’t want her going out that late especially when the Midtown traffic would be insane. He was full of recriminations about his secret affair. But not enough to stop him from seeing Lucy.
Meanwhile, Lucy and her husband finally decided that before too much more time passed, they would make it official. They would try that trial separation, which for Lucy wasn’t a trial. She knew it was probably over with Don, no matter what happened with James.
Don didn’t want to believe it could finally be over with Lucy. He still loved her, even though he suspected she was seeing somebody else. When he confronted her with his suspicions, Lucy denied it. But she reminded Don that in their couples therapy it was suggested that during a trial separation, there was nothing improper about seeing other people if that would help make them appreciate and love their spouse more. That lessened the guilt for Lucy about seeing James, but she still felt she was doing something immoral. She had been raised to do the proper thing. To not violate an oath. The only solution, Lucy thought, was to get divorced. But not yet.
One Friday night when they were supposed to meet after James finished his gig, the jig almost came up. James’s wife Cynthia unexpectedly appeared at the club after she left late from work at her charity foundation. Cynthia said since she was already out, she might as well drive uptown and pick James up so he wouldn’t have to ride the subway home alone or take an Uber so late at night. Lucy, who had been sitting at a far table, saw the woman come in. An attractive smart-looking lady, she thought, about the same age as her. She immediately figured this had to be The Wife. The only reference James had told Lucy about his wife was that she didn’t know about Lucy and he had to keep it that way. And now Lucy better skedaddle before it was too late.
Just to change their usual routine, they chose a weekday to meet at the almost deserted Hudson River waterfront walkway in lower Manhattan. To do something different, to have a real conversation instead of just pillow talk. Lucy said to James that it was scary about that too-close call with his wife at the supper club.
“Way too close,” James concurred. “You did the smart thing disappearing.”
Lucy patted him on the back. “How long do you think we can keep meeting in secret like this?” James sighed. “I guess we’ll do it as long as we can keep doing it. What do you think?”
Lucy smiled. “I’m trying not to think anything. If I start thinking, I may not like what I’m thinking.”
It was then that she could sense somebody following them from behind. She turned around. She felt her heart in her throat. It was her husband, Don. He obviously was following Lucy.
They stopped in their tracks to let Don catch up to them. Don had slowed down but he couldn’t hide. Finally, he approached. Lucy stood with hands on hips.
“Why you following me?” she said in a low voice.
Don shrugged. “It’s a free country. I can go where I want.”
James hoped the guy wasn’t packing a gun. Who knows how people will react in a situation like this?
“Who’s the lucky guy?” Don asked. He extended his hand in mock friendliness.
“We’ll talk about this later,” Lucy said. “You need to turn around and go home.”
“Sure, Lucy, whatever you say.” He cocked his finger at James as if aiming a pistol at him. Then he headed back to Battery Park near where he had parked his car.
Lucy was breathing hard. James held Lucy for a few seconds to let her compose herself. And to compose himself.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I told him we should see other people.” She managed a wry smile. “I guess he’s not happy I said that. I shouldn’t have told him, right?”
James offered a weak smile. “That’s putting it mildly.”
They sat on the bench by the river watching the ferry boat take visitors to the Statue of Liberty.
“What do you think, James?”
“About what?”
“Whether we can keep doing this?”
“Not that I want to say this. But maybe we should break it off, Lucy. Cool it for a while. It’s getting too complicated. Don’t you think so?”
“I don’t want us to stop either. Maybe though for a while it might not be a bad idea.”
And that’s how they agreed to quit seeing each other. Supposedly for just a while. Weeks passed. They talked on the phone. But for their own individual reasons, neither of them proposed meeting up again.
He missed seeing Lucy. She filled a part of his life that was left unfulfilled.
She missed seeing James. He filled a part of her life that had been left empty.
Whatever was wrong in Lucy’s marriage to Don, she hated feeling sorry for him. Their marriage was probably over no matter what happened with James.
James wouldn’t tell his wife about Lucy. He had a strange idea that by the guilt he was trying to hide, Cynthia suspected that he was seeing somebody on the side. But she never accused him of anything. Some things, Cynthia theorized, were better left unsaid or not wanting to be believed.
James thought, not to be melodramatic, that his love affair with Lucy felt like he was in a B movie.
Viewing herself as a realistic romantic, Lucy thought with her English literature background, and not to sound melodramatic, that her Hudson River affair with James was something of a modern-day star-crossed re-creation of Romeo and Juliet. Except in this play, she hoped, maybe there could be a happy ending.
Should James and Lucy ever see each other again? Both were waiting for the day when maybe they would.
