Chinatown









"Hey, are you wearing contacts?"

Andy turned his head and arched an eyebrow. She couldn't have been older than seventeen, he thought. That was what stuck out the most. Young in the face. Young in the eyes. And then the cherry red saucer sized headphones tangled up in her stringy, blond hair. Chic clothes.

"Uh, yeah," he said, not offering mulch else. He looked away.

Her eyes moved to Andy's green mohawk, which lazily crested his shaved head with not enough hair spray, and then back to his eyes. The subway car rattled. Rail #9. A straight shot up into daylight into the east end of Chicago China Town. The ride was taking far too long, Andy thought. And Andy couldn't stand the silence anymore.

"Hey, how'd you know I have contacts on?"

She blinked in surprise.

"One's green, the other's blue."

Andy sighed and leaned forward, closing his eyes.

"What?"

"I said one of your eyes is blue,' she said, staring down, "And the other's green. Like, lime green like your mohawk thing, seriously. Here, look at me. "

Andy shook his head. He was tired. It was four in the afternoon. His vision was thirty-thirty, and he'd had his contacts in far too long. He'd been up all night and light kept him up, and it'd been a long way back. Fourteen alley way blocks and a thirty minute standing wait in a dark platform. He was getting tired again. His head didn't hurt, yet, but the girl was loud. He thought about the red headphones.

"Keep it down, Kid."

"It's Jen."

"Okay, Jen, keep it down," he said, glancing up, "Okay? If anything, it should be red."

Jen slid a cell phone up and snapped a candid shot of Andy looking completely unimpressed, head pressed against the long fingers of his hand. His nose reminded her of a crow. The collar of his leather jacket was half-up half-down, and his white button down was wrinkled. His jeans were also black, and too tight. His leather boots came to a point and sucked all the light.

"So what's with the look?"

"I'm in a band."

"Oh, fascinating." Jen looked back at her phone.

"Right, so let me see this picture."

"Huh?"

Andy reached over and grabbed the phone. He stared at the screen. "In a Band" typed below his photo.

"Hey, give that back," she said, taking the phone back, "It's mine."

"Okay, well where would I go with a stolen phone while we're moving?" Andy glanced at all the empty seats and metal cream white walls, occasionally crisscrossed with graffiti and profanities.

She furrowed her eyebrows. "I didn't say that. It's just not your phone. Don't grab it like it is."

For a few seconds there was only the clattering of the train cars, the occasional cry of the wheels against the track. The frantic hum of an electric engine accelerating. Then Andy smirked and let slide a small chuckle.

"Okay, point."

"Huh?"

"You made a point. You have one point," Andy said, his expression only shifting when he thought about the photo again. Jen gave him a look that read of reassessment, like having heard of him, but getting an entirely different impression.

"Oh. Okay."

"I don't wear color contacts."

"What? No, don't say that. That's weird," Jen said, furrowing her eyebrows, "A band thing makes sense, I get it."

"No, I'm being serious. Look closer."

"No thank you."

Andy thumbed his pockets for eye drops, and didn't find any. When he looked up to ask the girl, she was cowering back in her seat, her iWhatever clutched to her chest.

"Look, Jesus Jen, I'm not going to rob you. I honestly have no idea what the fuck you're talking about. Did you color my eyes green on that things?" he asked, nodding towards Jen's phone. It had a red case and was attached to a cord that fed into the headphones. Andy blinked his eye and nudged at the side of his eyelid.

"Uh, no. And I never said that," Jen said.

"You didn't have to, it's written all over you." With a grimace, he pulled out the contact. He'd have to throw it away. His next to last one. He held out the curved blob of plastic. "See? Clear."

Jen's eyes widened. "Take out the other one."

Andy sighed and did. Now he only had the one sitting at home. He just wanted quiet, though it was slowly dawning on him that it would probably lead to more questions."

"Whoa. Heterochromia." Fear turned to disbelief and amazement.

Andy snorted. "Homo-what?"

"Heterochromia. One eye is colored different." Jen leaned forward and stared, which prompted Andy to lean back. He didn't like her sudden change of heart.

"It's Andy," he said, "And I'm calling bullshit. My eyes were both blue when I got up this morning."

"Prove it. Get out your license."

"I don't do concerts with my license. Shit gets too crazy."

Jen shook her head. "You are unbelievable."

Andy's forehead began to throb. The clattering around him began to echo in a hard way, pinging off of the inside of his head. From his pocket he fished out a black metal box about the size of a pack of cigarettes, which had a thumb sized glass tank and tip. A brownish liquid sloshed inside.

Andy stuck it to his lips and inhaled, and after a moment let roll a fountain of crisp white vapor. Jen rolled her eyes.

"And now what the hell is wrong? Does my smoking bother you?"

"That's the problem, you're not really smoking," she said, looking him up and down, "You've got this half-assed British, punk thing going on, but you just act like you've got this stick stuck up your ass. But you wouldn't even care about that either. Like a zombie. You've got this act, but it's not even a good one. You just look the part. Even your eyes. You're probably not even in a band."

Andy didn't know what to say. He just took another drag from his vapor and stood up, staring into a reflective spot on what he liked to think of as a public stripper pole. Yes, it was just for standing and leaning as the rail car clattered its way over rail after rail, but he'd seen its few alternate uses during his time on the tube. This time it would be a mirror, and she was right. Despite the blur in his eyes and on the bar, one of his eyes was utterly lime green. Even where the chrome-metal was scuffed into a hazy metal blue, the color glowed.

"Huh."

Jen watched as Andy studied his own expression. She was familiar with the subway as well. She knew of the weirdoes that took public transport, but she was guarded in that. She took public transport, after all.

A stuttered section of track clattered out. Andy lurched, but kept staring. Jen blinked and looked around, as if a gear unstuck. A slow feeling began to dawn on her. Something was off, and it wasn't just the punk man's eyes. For one she was alone in the car with this man. Had she seen anyone else standing at the platform? No, not really, but she'd been on her phone scrolling through some picture blog. Music constantly poured through the headphones, the volume never really off--only turned down to her ears. She thought Andy might have been interesting, but she was dismayed in the possibility that he was just a true, honest to goodness weirdo. And now she was utterly alone with him.

"So you don't believe me?"

Jen's head snapped up. Andy was still staring at his own eye, using his fingers to keep the eyelid open. She shrugged, knowing he wouldn't' see it.

"Eye's don't just change color. You knew or you've never been around a mirror. Since you're using the pole as one right now, something tells me you have."

Don paused and turned, holding out a finger. He didn't say anything for a second; Jen could see gears working feverishly to think of a comeback.

"What? Point?" she asked.

"No," Andy said, shaking his hand, "I was just gonna say that you're not allowed to be snappy in this conversation. You started it, after all. And for what it's worth, yes, point, eyes don't just change color. That's why I'm standing here trying to figure out what the hell this is. Alright?"

"Whatever." She turned away.

"I could have a disease, I mean, have you seen eyes this shade of green before?"

"No. Don't be weird. I already regret talking to you."

"But you don't believe me?"

"No."

"Then what if I looked at you like this, and said for you to listen very, very carefully."

Jen turned. The tired expression was gone, and a troubled look lay etched in stone. Andy had lost his bored sense of calm. He looked wired, electrified. About to jump at any second. The eyes made him look like a black truck with mismatched headlights. Pieced together. A human made of manufactured parts.

"My. Eyes. Are. Blue. They were born blue twenty-something years ago, were blue when I hit eighteen, and were blue when I woke up yesterday. Some weird shit is going on, and I don't. Know. What."

There was that word again, Jen thought. Weird. What else was there? What else was wrong? There should have been more people around. Looking into the car behind them, through the small half-windows, there was nobody. No one at all. On the Chicago metro one a weekday afternoon? Impossible. Jen snapped her head the other way and it was the same. Empty cars. And this seemingly infinitely long tunnel and--

Jen paled and jerked up, hands clutched tight around her headphones like a life preserver.

Andy took a step back and jammed his hands into his pockets, back to brushing it all off in stride.

"Jesus, you know you're a little edgy for someone hand's off in all this? You're not the one with the fucked up eye on the subway into the fuckin' Twilight zone, trying to convince some girl that you're not crazy."

"Okay, for the record, I didn't think you were crazy until you opened your mouth. I was just asking a question," she said, whirling. Andy wanted to take another step back from the look she shot across the small, four foot gap between them. "And another thing, I'm on this sub too, completely alone with someone who... Well I don't know. I don't know what to think of you anymore. You act like you're on drugs, or coming down from something. First you were just a strange guy, then you got weird, and now everything's weird. It's only us here, did you notice that? And that we should have been out of this tunnel by now?"

He shrugged, as if to say So? He then looked around for himself. Sleepless nights and long mornings had him in his own head space, and he'd been too wrapped up in himself to notice the anomaly. She was right. He looked Jen over again, looking for chinks in her story. She stood guarded, on her toes, as if ready to run. He could believe it. Genuine fear was a difficult façade.

"Okay, point."

"Exactly. And you're not freaking out--that means something.""

"Well, see, I mean about you acting on edge like this," Andy said, loping up to the double layered plexiglas, "So what? So you're on the metro with some alien eyed, grunge-rock-freak who, for the record, actually is coming down from something. He's completely drained. Dead. Running on fumes. Been up all night. No sleep."

He let out a wheezing laugh. "You know, when I finally go to sleep I'm dead for eighteen hours. Guaranteed. What kind of hell is that, right?"

Jen didn't laugh. And for some reason Andy chuckled at that.

"And now, some-fucking-how, you're stuck with me here alone in between worlds. Really alone, in the realest sense of the word. Like, if you pulled out a gun and shot me, no one would ever know. I mean, except for the cameras, but you get my point."

"I don't have a gun."

"Well neither do I. And on top of that shit-pile, we've been going back and forth for fifteen minutes on a seven minute train ride. So yeah, I can see why you look like you're about to run out the door, why you don't believe me, and how you're probably thinking this is all my doing."

Jen glanced around, not quite sure when she'd jumped up. She crossed her arms and sat down, pulling the cell at the end of her headphone cord up in front of her. No service, but she wasn't sure if it was from the tunnel or whatever the hell was going on.

"Maybe we're dead," she blurted, "Maybe we're dead and this is purgatory, and I'm supposed to, I don't know, learn how to trust you or something. Or myself. Or something vague that we've got to figure out for ourselves. Or--maybe just me."

"So, I'm just here as some sort of side character to help you to the next level? Like a videogame?"

"Yeah, like an NPC. Which is weird because this is actually the beginning to a videogame I played once."

Andy continued to look out the window, alternating his focus to the speeding tunnel outside and his own reflection. Videogame his ass. For all he knew, she was the NPC, and he was there to learn.

"So did this game have a character with two different eye colors?"

She looked up at him. "No, but it did start out on a train."

"Lots of things start on trains."

"Yeah but, it starts off very surreal. You hear this voice and then you just..." She glanced over at Andy, stopped talking, and let the sentence drift off as she turned away. "Well it just seemed the same. That's all. And I don't think we're dead, for the record. I was just sayin'."

Andy sat down across from her and rubbed the strip of hair back, sighing. He took a long drag of the vape-block and slid it back into his front pocket. His headeache was on full blast. Now he spoke to power through it.

"You must be a very smart. Like top of your class. You go to school?"

"You know, you really sound like you're talking to someone from the sixth grade softball team. It's pretty fucking annoying. And creepy."

He smirked and laughed. "It was just a question."

She rolled her eyes. "Yes, in fact I graduated top of my class, Boy. Is this the part of the game where we guess at each other's backstory? Are you going first?"

"Well then I guess I'm going first," Andy said, leaning back, crossing his legs, "Now I think you're a smart girl--woman, whatever you are, Jen. I think that when you're not plugged into your headphones, you notice everything. My eyes. The empty train. How long we've been stuck here. But more so you know the significance. And you're willing to give thought to any idea. That this is purgatory. That I'm just some demon-construct. That this was like your videogame. Am I right?"

Andy paused. Jen didn't say anything. She just looked back and him and shrugged. Her eyes were brown, Andy saw.

"You know how you were talking about your game? I said one thing--something about lots of things starting on trains. And you started to go off on your idea, but then saw me looking at you the wrong way. Like maybe I couldn't follow or was bored. Look, I'm running on four cylinders, so I'm too trashed to look interested, even if I am. But it was molly, so the crash is keeping me up for now. But I'm still a wreck."

Jen nodded in agreement.

"But in the back of your head, even worse is that I would understand what you were saying--but then wouldn't care. That I'd be too dull to see the beauty of it."

Jen paled and started to shake her head. Andy waved her off.

"But look you don't mean it that way. It's just that you're so tired of painting a perfect picture of your idea when everyone is blind. You'd just rather not bother anyone with it, because you figure it more of an inconvenience to them. So you just drop it. You cop out with easy conversation because you kind of figure that you're the one being weird about it. That you're always thinking too much. That you don't just ask stupid questions, but that you ask all of them because you're willing to give them thought because you're a smart, damn smart girl and you're head gets bored thinking of what's just here. It's what you do for fun."

Andy thought over what he said, and went on.

"And you know? The other ninety-percent of the time? You're thinking of all the right questions. All the right answers. But who has time to go through them all? To everyone? And then get them to see the beauty of it? So you just bother now, and not because you necessarily think everyone is too dull to follow, you're too optimistic for that, but just because it's easier. It plausible. And cause hell, you're used to it."

Jen sat back and tilted her head in thought. Andy didn't say anything else, but only brought up the vape to drag on it. The train continued its clatter like an old IBM printer hammering out letters on old dot-matrix paper. He puffed a few half-assed smoke rings.

"Point," Jen said.

"Huh?"

Jen looked up. "That was really well put. Poetic in way."

Andy leveled his head and twirled his finger in a rewind motion.

"Say that last part again."

Jen furrowed her eyebrows.

Andy waited for a moment. "Earlier you seemed to have trouble believing something. Say that last part again."

Jen blinked before a smile escaped. She turned away--red.

"Poetic... Like a singer."

Andy nodded. "Thank you."

"So you are in a band? You didn't have an instrument so... You must be the singer. You probably write the lyrics too."

He nodded again. Jen bit her lip and leaned forward.

"Sorry."

"Don't be. You're smart. You would have figured it out eventually."

"And what if I didn't?"

Andy stood up and held out his arms, slowly turning. He had a smile. He had something to say. Someone was listening. His eyes looked alive. They looked eerie. He didn't care. His vision was still screwed in both eyes.

"Well, then where'd we be? Still on this damn train. Me and my fucked up eye. You and your headphones. Still stuck. Still sitting. Still stuck in metro-limbo or some shit, and literally, nothing, absolutely would have changed."

The moment held. Jen watched, transfixed. She took a step back in her mind. Nothing was alright, everything was a question, nothing had changed, and the only thing she could do was smile. So she did. After a moment Andy sat down and closed his eyes, his burst of energy gone.

"Nothing would be different."

After a moment Jen shrugged and looked towards the front of the sub-car.

"Well, no. Now there's decent conversation."

"Well, there is that." Andy opened his eyes and followed Jen's gaze. He arched his neck. "Hey, I think I see some light."

"I think you do too."