I reach into my back pocket. Remove my wallet. Touch it against the sensor. I continue moving forward leading slightly with the left hip, pushing against the turnstile. It rubs against my thigh as it descends. My right arm arcs forward, up, and back around in a fluid motion that ends with my wallet being pushed down into my back right pocket. I am in.
It is choreography that no longer requires thought and this finely tuned sequence lasts no more than six seconds and occurs within a distance of ten feet.
I had nearly completed my descent along the first flight of stairs when he caught my attention and despite it being rush hour he and I were the only two people on the landing, if only for a few seconds. He was on his way up from the opposite platform.
Our eyes met briefly and then he looked away. They were dark and hovered in orbit under a heavy brow, accentuated only because of his slightly sunken face. Color had vanished in this moment. In it’s place, grayscale. His face neither pink, beige, brown, or olive but just a shade of gray, like everything else about him.
His oversized shirt, unbuttoned, exposed his dirty t-shirt and a leather belt which held up tattered trousers. In his right hand he carried a tarnished tin pail stuffed with rags and implements with wooden handles that protruded out as though they were stalks from a dead vegetable garden. His hands, tanned like leather, were soiled too.
My mind took rapid snapshots and compared them to pictures I had seen before, but from where? An old newspaper clipping or the cover of paperback by Studs Terkel on the shelf of a used bookstore – either one a possibility. It was if he was an apparition from an account of Chicago’s past.
A moment later he was behind me and living color returned as he headed up to the street and as I moved walked down another flight of stairs, holding on to the red-painted railing, towards the northbound platform.
My one minute repertoire had been interrupted.