Louise and The Men of Transit

New Route

The glass exit door was propped open. Louise churned through alongside the homeward-bound TTC management and stopped. A man bumped into her, jerking her forward, her arms flying up as she stumbled out of his way, bumping into a hurrying woman on her right until she swivelled and staggered against the glass panel where she'd first met Andy, her right hip colliding with the garbage receptacle. Louise tugged her cardigan down with both hands, plumped her hair back into place with her right hand. She scanned the echoing place she was in. She was doing it, she was taking the TTC home, she crowed to herself. She'd chickened out on the way to work, hailing a taxi because she'd been late. But now she had time to get her bearings and ride the subway. Shimmying her shoulders back, she took stock of her surroundings.

Light slanted in faintly through tall windows deep-set in the cream, square-tiled wall on her right side. A couple of them had inset waist-high black heating vents. People leaned on them, checking their smartphones. Doors far ahead of her whooshed open and closed, open and open and open and closed, as customers hurried into the station. She followed the stream with her eyes and spotted the top of a staircase to her left across the brown-tiled floor where the wall tiles switched from large squares to thin, vertical tiles of gradated grey-beige. A hefty concave terrazzo quarter round ringed the space at floor level. Louise took a breath and rejoined the throng of commuters. No, not commuters, she corrected herself. Customers.

Louise smiled; she was becoming one with the customers, minding their space in their community, their TTC community. She locomoted toward a large metal-mullioned window at the top of the staircase that revealed the bus bay beyond. A bus roared in, disgorging its human cargo.

Customers carried Louise along to the narrow staircase shoehorned between the bus bay wall and the empty up escalator. She latched on to the staircase's thick tubular rail with its fat yellow tape wrapped around it near the top and stepped down into the stair enclosure. Customers squeezed past her on her left, jogging down the brown-tiled steps as she carefully picked her way down. A blown-up black-and-white photo of the McBrien building loomed directly ahead from its place on the wall, the wall that ended above customers' heads at the bottom of the stairs. The crowd surged to the left. Louise spied a booth on the far wall and side-stepped and hopped through the human stream until she reached it, breathless. Pausing to regain her breath, Louise adjusted her purse over her shoulder then joined the line that snaked around the end of the row of faregates till it reached the booth on the other side of the gates. Two ceiling-high panes of the booth's glass angled inwards to the flat centre behind which sat the hidden booth collector. In front of the collector, a metallic Dalek-shaped fare box and grey payment terminal with its colourful lit-up buttons sat on the narrow stone-hard black countertop that anchored the glass.

When it was her turn, Louise asked the now-visible collector how much the fare was. He pointed across his chest to his left, her right at the many stickers decorating the bottom of his window. Louise leaned into the window to try and look to his left inside the booth. The man rolled his eyes. Another man standing near his right shoulder leaned down toward the speaker and said: "How many trips do you want to take, ma'am?"

Louise piped, "I want to start to commute on the subway."

"Then you'll want to get yourself a Presto card."

"Okay," Louise chirped. "I'd like to buy one."

"Over there," he said, pointing in the same direction as the seated collector had. Their dark blue TTC business jackets and their diagonally wide striped red ties caught her admiring eye. The TTC had style. Louise refocused on the standing man. He was saying, "— the black thing on the other side of the escalator." Louise turned her head and peered through the hurrying people. She spotted the side of a vending machine. She nodded. He said: "You buy your Presto there."