“I just want to say…” Jane starts, and she holds it like water in her mouth until she swallows and goes on: “Thank you, I guess. You didn’t have to help me, but you did.”

August huffs out a laugh. “I just did it because I thought you were hot.”

Jane touches her chin with the back of her knuckles. “There are worse reasons to break the laws of space and time.”

Next stop: Coney Island. The station where Jane’s long ride on the Q started years ago, where they’re going to try to save her. Slowly, the Wonder Wheel slides into view in the distance. They’ve seen it a thousand times from this train, lit up on summer nights, cutting yellow and green lines through the midday sky. August told Jane once about how it stayed when half the park was swept away. She knows how Jane likes stories about surviving.

“Don’t, uh…” Jane says, clearing her throat. “If I go back, after tomorrow. Don’t waste too much more time on me. I mean, don’t get me wrong—wait a respectful amount of time and all. But, you know.” She tucks August’s hair behind her ear, rubbing the side of her thumb once against her cheek. “Just make sure you make them nervous. They shouldn’t underestimate you.”

“Okay,” August says thickly. “I’ll write that down.”

Jane’s looking at her, and she’s looking at Jane, and the sun’s going down, and the goddamn thing is that it’s right there in both of their throats, but they can’t say it. They’ve always been hopeless at saying it.

Instead, August leans forward and kisses Jane on the lips. It’s soft, shaky like the rattle of the train but so much quieter. Their knees bump together, and Jane’s fingertips tangle in the ends of her hair. She feels something warm and wet on her cheek. She doesn’t know if she’s crying, or if Jane is.

Sometimes, when they kiss, it’s like August can see it. Just for a second, she can see a life that’s not here on this train. Not a distant future, not a house. An immediate present unspooling like film: shoes in a pile by the door, a bark of laughter under bar lights, passing a box of cereal over on a Saturday morning. A hand in her back pocket. Jane, walking up the subway steps and into the light.

When they break apart, August tips her head against Jane’s shoulder, pressing her cheek to the leather. It smells like years, like a lightning storm, like engine grease and smoke, like Jane.

There’s so much to say, but all she has is: “I was really lonely before I met you.”

Jane’s silent for a few seconds. August doesn’t look at her, but she knows how the shadows of telephone poles and rooftops slide over the high points of her cheekbones and the soft dips of her mouth. She’s memorized it. She closes her eyes and tries to picture them again, anywhere else.

Jane’s hand wraps around hers.

“So was I.”

15

peopleofcity

 

* * *

 

[Photo shows a young white man with red hair sitting on a subway train holding a bag of groceries. In the background, just out of focus, a dark-haired woman reads a book with headphones on, a leather jacket bundled under one arm.]

 

* * *

peopleofcity My parents split up when I was a kid, and I lost touch with my dad, but I knew he was in New York. I moved up here a year ago after my mother died. I couldn’t stand the thought of having a parent who was still alive and not even trying to have a relationship with him, you know? I’ve been looking for him since I got here. Dad, if you see this, I forgive you. Let’s have a burger.

May 14, 2015

“I swear to God, if I have to inflate one more balloon…” Wes says as he ties off a red balloon with his teeth.

“Get used to it,” Myla says. She’s tying a bundle of them together with a rainbow of ribbons. “We need about two hundred more of these to pull this off.”

Wes halfheartedly gives her the finger. Myla blows him a kiss.

August checks her phone. Three hours until doors open on the most ambitious—and only—party she’s ever attempted to throw in her life. Six hours until they put their plan into motion. Seven hours until Myla overloads the circuit and blacks out the line.

Seven hours until Jane might be gone for good.

And here August is, blowing up a ten-foot inflatable cat with sunglasses and an electric guitar.

The party store by Myla’s work donated their least popular decorations, and they had to take what giant inflatables they could get—anything tall enough to block a security camera. The balloons will take care of the rest.

“Do you need anything?” Gabe asks, hovering around Myla like an enormous gnat with a Shawn Hunter haircut. Part of the agreement with the city was that Gabe’s uncle would supervise the event, and Gabe’s uncle apparently does not give a shit, because he sent Gabe instead. They keep having to switch topics when he drifts too close, so he doesn’t figure out the whole thing is partially a cover for a time crime.

“Actually,” Myla says, “I would love a Filet-O-Fish. Ooh, and a bubble tea.”

“Oh, uh—sure, okay.” And Gabe wanders off, glowering at Niko when he thinks nobody’s looking.

“That should buy us an hour,” Myla says when he’s gone. “Do you think I should feel bad about this?”

“I overheard him explaining wage disparity to Lucie earlier,” Wes says. “He said he believes he’s ‘undermining capitalism’ by ‘choosing’ not to pay his own rent.”

“Ew,” Myla groans. “Nope, okay, sticking to the plan.”

The Plan, as outlined on the whiteboard, and then thoroughly erased to destroy all evidence: One. Wait for the party to hit maximum capacity. Two. Myla seduces Gabe’s security clearance badge away from him. Three. August sneaks out to meet Jane on the Q. Four. Wes stages a diversion to pull security guards away from the control room door. Five. Myla overloads the line while Jane stands on the third rail.

August ties off her last balloon and texts Jane a selfie—tongue out, peace sign, hair static from all the helium-filled latex.

sup, ugly, Jane texts back, and August almost spits out her gum. She should never have given Jane and Myla each other’s numbers. Jane’s going to be bringing millennial humor back to the ’70s.

God, she’ll miss her.

While Lucie and Jerry set up the pancake station, Myla’s network of Brooklyn artists start wheeling in sculptures and paintings and wood reliefs of ugly dogs for the silent auction. There are wristbands to wrangle, drink tickets to count, lights and a stage and a sound system to set up, gendered bathroom signs to cover with pictures of breakfast foods.

“Put it on, Wes.” August sighs, throwing the last remaining Pancake Billy’s House of Pancakes T-shirt at him.

“This is a small,” he argues. “You know I wear XL.”

“Please, that is a youth medium-ass man,” says a loud voice, and it’s Isaiah, brows already glued down, swanning in with a clothing rack full of drag and a trail of half-done drag daughters. Winfield’s bringing up the rear, and once they disappear into the back to paint, Wes pouts and puts his size small T-shirt on and trudges to the corner where his friends from the tattoo shop have set up their booth.