“What if they won’t break the hundred either, though?”
“Good point,” I said, figuring that it might be a taxi policy, and not just the one car we’d happened to get. “Can you call an Uber?”
Stevie shook her head. “It’s tied to my mom’s card.”
We stood there in silence for a moment, and I could practically see the time ticking away, time we really didn’t have to waste. And though I was trying not to, I was starting to get annoyed at the fact that Stevie was just shooting down all my ideas and not coming up with any of her own. “Maybe I should just carry Brad?” I suggested after it became clear Stevie wasn’t going to contribute. “And if anyone asks, we could say he’s my emotional support animal.”
Stevie nodded. “Sounds good.” I scooped up Brad, who took the opportunity to lick my face as we walked down the subway steps, Stevie holding on to the railing carefully as she navigated the steps in her heels. “What is he emotionally supporting?”
I laughed as I scratched his head. “I have a crippling fear of being without a dog,” I said. “He fixes that.”
Once we got down the steps into the station, it was suddenly much too hot, like the heat had been turned up full blast and then not turned off again. I held Brad close to me as I looked around, but there didn’t seem to be anyone working in the glassed-off booth, and the two police officers stationed by the entrance didn’t say anything, so I figured we were okay on the dog front.
Stevie pulled out her MetroCard and swiped it. It didn’t work the first time, and I could see her getting anxious, looking behind her like she was worried about other people waiting, as people in the next two turnstiles zipped through with no problem. She finally got it to work, and I could see the relief in her eyes as she pushed her way through the turnstile and handed the card to me. I swiped it through, pushed through the turnstile, and handed it back to her.
There was the whoosh of trains coming and going, announcements about what was arriving, reminders about keeping your belongings close to you, and the intermittent Stand clear of the closing doors echoing throughout the station as various trains departed. There was also a man with an alto sax, his case open in front of him, playing “New York State of Mind” very loudly.
I tipped my head toward him and Stevie smiled. She tossed her change into the man’s case—he nodded at her without stopping playing—and pulled out her phone, recording a video for a few seconds. “I’ll send that to my dad,” she said. “He’ll love it.”
“So what now?” I asked as I looked around at the signs for the different trains.
“We need the B or D uptown, which is… there.” Stevie pointed, letting out a small groan when she saw getting to the train meant going down more stairs.
“Should we buy you some flats?” I asked as we descended and she gripped the railing again. “We could break my hundred dollars.”
“You mean our hundred dollars.”
“Sure, our hundred dollars. Think of the shoes we could get with it!”
Stevie laughed as we reached the platform, which, in contrast to the station, was cold again, and drafty. I pulled Brad a little closer to me in case he was cold too. “There,” she said, pointing up at the B and D sign, “that’s what we want.” We walked up to the edge of the platform, standing just behind the yellow safety line.
I looked around the station. Most everyone was looking at their phones; a few people were reading as they waited. There were advertisements along the tiled back wall of the subway for movies that came out last month, now scribbled over excessively.
I glanced up at the electronic sign, trying to see how long it would take for the train to arrive, but it was flashing an error message, 00:00 where the arrival time of the train should be. “Apparently, the train is coming never,” I said, shifting Brad to my other arm.
“I don’t know about that,” Stevie said, nodding at it. “It’s coming at zero, apparently.”
“Maybe it’s a fancy New York way of saying midnight.”
The couple standing next to us on the platform, who’d been having one of those whisper-hissing arguments, suddenly both started to get a little bit louder. Apparently, Richard was always pulling