13, Rue Therese - Elena Mauli Shapiro [62]
Full-throatedly and without shame, Louise laughs and laughs and she stands up and goes out of the booth, leaving the priest there stymied, unable to dispense his penance. On her way out of the church and all the way to the metro station to take the train back home, she shudders with helpless mirth, knowing precisely what she wants to do next. It concerns a key, and a secret, and needing to get some air.
THE TRAIN PLOWS INTO the narrow subterranean darkness, bearing her toward home. The wheels and gears count out a metallic beat, while the rails wail like a glacial wind trying to sneak into the cracks of a shut door. The sound is difficult to listen to: the pitch is high and loud, and sad.
Louise is looking at a man standing by the door, presumably waiting to get off at the next stop. He is wearing a black suit, the jacket off and doubled over his arm. She likes his face: it looks dreamy in a boyish way, despite the fact that he must be at least in his forties, as indicated by the graceful sweeps of gray arcing over each ear, contrasting sharply against his black hair. There is something sweet and familiar about him; she almost wants to greet him, though she doesn’t know him. The expression of his mouth is soft, almost like the whisper of a smile. His gaze is absorbed by the moving darkness beyond the window.
Louise wonders what he does for a living, and if he has a wife. She is about to look away from his face at his hands to see if there is a wedding ring, when the man winces suddenly, and falls to his knees. His bones hit the floor hard enough that the impact is audible, but the blankness of his stare doesn’t change.
They are alone together in the train car, on this late weekday morning. It seems odd that there is no one else there. She must speak.
“Sir?”
The man doesn’t collapse all the way down but merely sways there on his locked knees, his skin growing paler.
“Sir, are you all right?”
The partially fallen man parts his lips but says nothing. A tiny spot of blood begins to redden the immaculate whiteness of his tight shirt collar and it is then that Louise sees that he has begun bleeding from both his ears, in slow and delicate streams.
“Oh, God—Sir, please—what’s the matter?”
What is happening? Is he going to die in front of her? Why today of all days?
She gets up, runs to the end of the train car, and in a blind flurry of panic pulls the alarm lever. The train stops immediately with a prodigious grinding of gears. At this lunge, the man topples. Louise runs to him and crouches next to him. She gathers his jacket and folds it under his head, to cradle it away from the grimy floor. His eyes are still open—can he see her?
They wait there. After a minute, the train conductor comes through the small door at the head of the car.
“What’s all this?” he demands, as if the bizarre spectacle before him were just an inconvenience.
“I… I don’t know,” Louise stutters. “He just fell, and started bleeding from his ears. Something is very wrong.”
The conductor is young, and wears a dapper navy jacket. He would be good-looking if it weren’t for his pockmarked face. Louise is impressed that a metro conductor should look so dapper all by himself up there in his little cabin.
“Well—ah—well, I will have to take the train into the next station and there we will have to call an ambulance. All will be well, Madam; just stay as you are.”
Louise nods, and watches the fellow jog back away and out of the train car. She can see that the people in the adjacent cars have gathered at the doors between the wagons to look through the glass at them, to see what is the matter. Still, no one comes in to help, as if they are afraid, or do not want to impinge on some sort of intimate moment.
And indeed it is an intimate moment that Louise shares with this stranger, holding his stricken body still and safe until help arrives.