The Third Car

Alice works at a lighting store on Broadway and hates mushrooms. Listening to rock makes her feel young, Alice reads magazines about birds and knows that ostriches have the largest eyes of any animal and that theoretically, baby birds can have siblings of differing species. Alice knows this is because fowl such as the brown-headed crow lay their eggs in the nest of other birds. This fact Alice finds particularly heartwarming, as she herself is adopted. Two brothers, both older. `We're not very close but perfectly friendly, very civil. Different worldviews, that’s all!’. Alice utters variations of the above sentence every time Tod with one D asks about her family relations, which is approximately every 14 days, as there is much time for chatting between the two employees of Williams Lights-- the shop is rarely frequented. Stephanie, age 14 and living above the shop, apt #2B, believes the store is a front, of what variety she does not know. ‘I live above some type of drug front’ she recycles this line to the friends who come and go but mostly go. Tod with one D isn’t the most creative of conversationalists, and therefore, in moments of self-imposed desperation, reverts to the subject of family relations. On each occasion, Alice repeats the same answer, graciously. Alice listens to audiobooks while dusting the glass and porcelain lamp necks of the shop. Tod has never asked Alice about birds because Alice unconsciously prefers to keep her bird knowledge hidden. When researching, she underlines the scientific bird names in blue pencil and forgets to look them up afterward. Alice works from 10 am-5 pm, Tuesday through Saturday. On Sunday mornings she buys carrots at the farmers market and sometimes potatoes or brussel sprouts, but always carrots. Alice likes to sit in her plush green chair, the one with the wooden legs. She drinks three or four cups of tea per day and gets seasonal allergies so bad she occasionally can’t leave the house. Alice takes the F train--12 minutes walk, 13 minutes train, 11 minutes walk -- to Williams lights. Today Alice is wearing a floral silk blouse and skinny jeans. Facial wrinkles covered generously in foundation, she enters the third car. A podcast on robin’s mating patterns streams through her black cordless earbuds. Alice is on the train.

Elanor lives off-campus with her cat, swordfish, and wishes her name weren’t Elanor. She’s half Romanian and plays the violin. Mostly classical but she writes over and over in her notes app try more experimental violin stuff. Elanor has insomnia and doesn't know it. She goes through a bottle of 60 melatonin gummies every 60 days. Lately, Elanor is thinking about negative space, and she just learned the definition of the word soliloquy despite hearing it her whole life. Elanor is very thoughtful her father, Alexandar, tells Mrs. Rosenthal, as they smoke on their adjacent patios at 7 am on a Tuesday. Mrs. Rosenthal is new, moved in after Elanor left for school. Alexander is balding. Elanor has shoulder-length hair and is lonely. Elanor takes the F train to school, a 6-minute walk, 22 minutes on the F, then she transfers. Elanor likes reading poetry but is too afraid to write it. In her orange tote bag today, War of the Foxes, by Richard Siken. She has been carrying the book around for six days but hasn’t started reading yet. Elanor eats frozen waffles for breakfast and occasionally hard-boiled eggs. Today she’s standing on the platform wearing a blue and green knitted sweater and thinking about negative space. Elanor enters the third car, she’s on the train.

‘In every Seamless Bag, a Grubhub order’ ‘A dating app made especially for the shyest of bookworms’ my eyes dart between the ads, surveying the diction of the car. I don’t like the font of the Grubhub ad. I haven’t yet figured out where to look while on the subway. A torn McDonalds cup near my right foot. I pull War of the Foxes from my bag and rest it on my lap, my pointer finger inserted to an arbitrary page. I open the book, read one sentence, I'm not in the mood to read.

Mating occurs mainly from March to June, however, Robins sometimes nest as early as January. The voice of the British accented narrator continues broadcasting in my ears. The female lays 5-7 eggs which are whitish, slightly mottled with red-brown spots. I pause the podcast to sneeze. Allergies. Across from me, a bearded man sleeps. To my right, a young girl reads. I press play. The female robin incubates for 12-15 days.