Connections by Jacqueline Wein

Author:Jacqueline Wein
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781635050189
Publisher: Two Harbors Press
Published: 2016-06-19T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 66

Trying to hurry through Penn Station on a Friday night in summer was like trying to do the breast stroke in quicksand. Rush hour started at noon and lasted all night. The throngs milled around, waiting for the boards to post the track numbers. When a departure was announced, a mass of people moved in the direction of the gate, poking their overnight bags and totes and animal carriers and packages into one another and keeping very close so nobody could break into their midst. The mercury in the station always seemed to climb to ninety-nine, no matter what the temperature was outside. The density of the heat, the condensation from body perspiration, the heaviness of the air, and the thickness of the humidity vaporized and hung like balloons suspended from the ceiling.

More people arrived and departed at Penn Station on any given day than lived in Barbados and Iceland combined. More than the entire populations of Kansas City and Albuquerque and Seattle. More than the state of Wyoming.

Friday night is the worst, Ken Hollis thought as he tried to get through the Amtrak waiting room to the Long Island Rail Road, but when it falls on the eve of July Fourth weekend—a four-day weekend for most people—forget it. Ken had made the mistake of thinking the station would be cooler than the steaming sidewalks and had entered in the middle of the block, instead of Seventh Avenue. He loosened his tie as he squeezed through the people. He opened the top two buttons of his shirt, which was translucent with sweat. He refolded the suit jacket hanging limply over his arm. The 4:26 to Montauk cleared out hundreds of weekenders destined for the Hamptons, but the hole their departure left filled up instantly.

Penn Station had a thousand “movements” a day. Although the official terminology referred to trains, not bowels, it seemed to Ken that their rumblings on the loops and curls of track beneath the city could be likened to a huge monster’s digestive tract, to swallowing and then eliminating the population. The LIRR alone scheduled 735 commuter trains a day, and all it took was one ten-minute delay or one cancellation to start a rash of bad jokes on the Internet and a series of protests in the newspaper.

Ken went into one of the crowded bar joints, hoping for a cold beer, but he couldn’t get near enough to the bar to order one. He left and walked as close to the center of the waiting room as he could, so he’d have an equal chance of making it to a track on either side. He was anxious for tomorrow morning. He’d leave home early—there shouldn’t be anybody going into the city—pick her up at nine. He’d probably run into heavy traffic going back out, but it just would have been too hectic to try it tonight. Especially with the dog. He knew she wouldn’t want to leave him with anybody or board him and probably would have turned Ken down if he hadn’t invited Honda.

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