I size people up for a living.

10May08

And truth be told, I’m pretty good at it. 

And if the guy who sat opposite me on the train last night had come into the lobby and told me he had a meeting with our CEO, I would have taken him seriously.

If he’d walked into my store back when I worked retail, even between the hours of 10:30am and 2:00pm, peak hours for the mentally disabled to stroll through the mall, I wouldn’t have thought for a second that he was anything but a man who’s time was his own.

Not to mention that my train runs from an office park area, so very rarely is there anyone on my train who isn’t a office professional.

When he sat down opposite me I saw a young executive, in casual friday garb.  The backpack and sports watch looked expensive and had exactly the right amount of ware, suggesting that he kept busy on the weekends.

Exactly the sort of person you want sitting across from you, in the aisle seat, next to the seat you have your feet propped up on as you sit in the window seat.

He listened to music on an pricylooking phone.  I read my book.  We briefly made eye contact and smiled that distant smile of strangers who aren’t interested in getting chatty.

2/3 of the way to my stop, something caught my eye and I looked up.  He was twisted in his seat, hands outstretched, fingers tense like claws, reaching for my feet.  Movingly slowly, like the monster in a horror movie. 

Not being a retro scream queen, I whisked my feet out the path of his hands, and into my shoes.  He continued to move in the same direction, seeming to almost be falling.  When I noticed his arm shaking I thought that he must be having a seizure of some sort. 

I reached out and grabbed his wrist.  “Sir!  Are you alri-”  My voice trailed off because something, I can’t exactly define what, terrified me the minute I touched him.  His skin was cold and clammy, but that wasn’t it.  Visions of horrible things flashed through my brain and I had the firm conviction that this was just a different person altogether. 

I looked around desperately.  By now the train had filled up with people going downtown to the baseball game, it was noisy and most people were drinking.  Nobody met my frantic gaze.

I braced myself and reached out again, grabbing his shoulder and pushing him back toward his seat back.  He leered at me at first, but it promptly gave way to blinking, and suddenly I was seeing the lucid man I’d seen earlier.  I continued to look him right in the eyes, willing him to tell me how to help him.  I could see sane emotions in his eyes, like embarrassmentat having scared me.  He un-tensed, and he said, “I’m ok.  I’m ….. ok.”  He looked down, like he didn’t want attention.

I sat back and pretended to read my book.  He sat straight up in his seat and rested his palms on his knees.  Then he began to beat out a rhythm on his knees.  I assumed he was trying too hard to be nonchalant to cover for whatever had happened earlier.  As my eyes flicked up over my book a few times, his rhythm got faster.  And faster.  And faster.  I didn’t look up until it stopped. 

This time he was reaching for me. 

With one hand that is.  The other was sliding between his legs into his backpack.  Something was very wrong with his eyes.  I bolted.  I locked myself into the train bathroom.  Eventually I slipped out because I could hear a woman knocking.  I stayed by the train bathroom, which was next to the door.   We were almost to my stop.  Every time I looked over at him he was looking at me.  The eyes were still all wrong. 

When the train stopped I looked to see what door he would head towards but he didn’t move.  This stop was the last stop, he’d have to get off here.  But he just sat there, looking at me.  It was chilling.  I felt like we were both waiting for the other to make a move.  Finally, I made mine.  I filed off the train next to the largest man in my car. 

I looked back at the train car.  He was still sitting in the train, looking right out the window at me.  Riveted, but he looked a little sad.  I walked fast, keeping to busy streets, looking behind me frequently.  It wasn’t until I was halfway home that I realized he was probably waiting for me to go so as to reassure me that he wasn’t following me.  That whatever part of him that was sane was aware of how he was affecting me.

And I realized that the only thing worse than being crazy might be being only half crazy.

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