Flickering golden beams radiate from my headlight eyes. The electrical current burns me a little, but I can’t let those lights go out. I have to keep going, even if I’m just a bent metal beast charging through the station at Davis Street. Scratch your name in my windows, graffiti my walls and curse me when I’m late.
I see him from the distance. A man with a knotted black ponytail insists on standing on the bumpy blue strip on the edge of the platform. There’s always that one, anxiously tapping a foot, peering over the platform to glare at me as I approach, checking a watch. I always hope that maybe, just maybe, my engine will malfunction and I’ll go just a little bit faster, or a harried mother with bulky grocery bags will walk by, or a hurricane breeze will blast through the station and said man would step over ever-so-slightly and… well, you know.
A car horn sounds off in rhythmic desperation from the parking lot behind the station. Disturbed from its perch on an overhang, a pigeon noisily coos. The hollow, mechanized train station voice echoes blandly, “Attention customers, an inbound train toward the loop will be arriving shortly.”
That’s my cue. So it goes like this: parallel train tracks rumble, the icy wind of my machinery disturbs the hat-weighted hair of commuters, they frown, clutching coats, purses and the sweaty hands of toddlers. Each person shuffles awkwardly from side-to-side on the dirtied concrete platform. Will I stop? Where will the doors be? I know how they think. (Sometimes I play a game. I stop and then slowly inch forward, eagerly waiting for the exhausted groans of the passengers as they shift from right to left to beat the crowds to the door.) I screech to a halt, gripping the red-rusted tracks. The trashed-littered lines stream like bulging veins down the length of the station.
The pulsing crowd of passengers flows from me and I feel hollow and chilled. Faceless figures, in their black wool coats and scuffed shoes, shuffle in and out. I can’t tell who’s leaving and who’s boarding; they all begin to look the same. They push and shove their way into my innards. Immersed in my breath, the warmth of the heated passenger car, the people let silence prevail this winter day. I become pregnant; a muted cocoon of seemingly endless rows of jackets, hair and poles.
Daylight fades and the Evanston rooftops disappear into obscurity. Old passengers transform into shadowed silhouettes under the golden glow of another incoming train fresh from Chicago. I take off. Relishing the feeling of night, I cut through the blanket of darkness that envelops me. I go so fast I almost feel weightless, like I could rise with steam. But I’m grounded to my metal path and I go on. The electric-light studded skyscrapers of the city are my beacons. I follow them home.