I’m watching my breath curl and feather and hold in the heat lamp light. The hot boxes on the el platforms are fucking beacons. Tell me I’m wrong. Out of nowhere, this woman not so much approaches me, but appears. Just fucking suddenly exists where, a second before, it was just frigid air connected to the rest of the night.
“I’m sorry,” she hiccups, “Hello.” Like me, she’s a little less-than-stable. But she has no coat. Is this Tampa? Is this June? She’s hugging herself.
“Oh shit, here.” I start to peel off my peacoat because I have a sweater on underneath, a big one, one of those Irish braided raglan things, a Christmas present from you-know-who back in the day.
She goes, “Oh no, I’m fine.”
“Fine? You’re fine? Okay.” I start to put the coat back on but, “Fuck that. It’s ten degrees. Take it,” and I tear it off and hold it out to her.
“What are you supposed to be, some kind of knight?”
“The dragon,” I say, and puff out breath, a big lungful, rolling smoke for a peaceful shire or some shit. She smiles.
“Tell you what, I’ll just set it down right here and you can do what you want.” I let go of my coat, let it whump to the platform.
Down the tracks, the twin stars of the el’s headlights, and the rumble they bring, a swooping noise that takes over entire neighborhoods, even in the middle of the night. Especially in the middle of the night.
“If this were another night, dear knight, you might’ve gotten an, ‘I love you’ out of me,” she says.
“An ‘I love you’?”
“If it were another night.”
The train rolls up, the doors slide open, and on she goes, into that stuffy light where other people sit with glazed eyes or closed eyes. With either tears in their eyes or lightning. I step on after her, right behind her, on her heels, the instincts of a dog. But she pivots, puts a flat hand to my chest.
“What?” I say through a goofy-ass grin.
“Your suit of armor.” She points over my shoulder, “You are naked, good sir.”
“Naked?” I’m so gone.
“Your coat, numnuts. You dropped it,” she says, “It’s cold as shit out here.”