At six thirty on the outbound platform at Queensboro Plaza, there were a lot of really pissy people. We’d all gotten here somehow, determined to make it across the river, past the snarl of stalled trains in various tunnels. We’d been turned back at Times Square, put on the E or the V, jumped on a crowded 4/5 from 59th/Lex to get onto the 7 at Grand Central, hell, maybe some of us had walked across the bridge.
We’d gotten to Queensboro any way we knew how, and now they were telling about 250 people that there were to be no outbound N/W trains snaking up to the last six stops on the line. They were telling us that everyone going to those last six stops had to just take a bus, or walk. And it looked like rain. It really looked like rain.
I’d left the office at 5:15 and here I was at 6:30, only halfway home. I had been reading a crappy magazine at very close range on the very shaky train and I was getting the beginnings of that sort of headache that isn’t going away any time soon. I was hungry and cranky and so was everyone around me. And when the announcer told us all, effectively, to sod off and make our own damn way home, I couldn’t figure out what to do. Walk? I was in heels and tired. Catch a bus or taxi? Me and two hundred odd of my fellow travelers. Sit down on that there seat right here on the platform, pull out the phone and see if I could warn Stuart about the mess and figure out where he was? Check.
So I pushed gently through the confused people and I started to ease my body into the bench and look for my phone in my bag when BAM. There he was. Stuart was standing about 10 people away, also looking around for his phone and staring worriedly into the landscape of Queens.
I remember being pretty thrilled when I saw Stuart at the airport, all three times we were reunited. I remember being pretty thrilled when we got married. But damn if this wasn’t a close rival, to see his familiar – so incredibly familiar it make my heart ache and leap – face in the midst of the angsty throngs of commuters. My voice must have sounded a bit desperate when I said, “Stuart!” and he looked at me, smiled like he knew he’d find me eventually, and came over to sweep me up in a hug.
It wasn’t that bad of a subway snarl. It wasn’t even that bad of a headache. Like many times before that one. I would have gotten home okay. But this time, I got a break. I didn’t really have to surmount any irritations or just hold it together until I got home. I got to just lean into a hug, get guided downstairs and along the street until we hailed a taxi. I got to be a little more clingy, a little more needy, and a little less tough and independent.
It was kind of nice.

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