NJ Transit

Human beings stand and lean and crouch and squat, arranged nearly unconsciously according to their preferences for personal space. These are clumps of tangled molecules ordered miraculously in a configuration permitting blinks, blood flow and higher brain function.

Unfaltering gazes rest on screens suspended from the ceiling of this chamber, which rumbles faintly and seems to ceaselessly bustle. Some screens are mounted on pillars. They are waiting for The Number to appear, which upon its blinking into being will indicate to where they should briskly accelerate, herding through a doorway like lambs.

Many of them are well-dressed, neatly buttoned and zipped, veritably packaged. It's likely that this happened this very morning, the packaging. It is a prerequisite for the privilege of trading in acceptable social currency. Handshakes, nods, glances, how are you, doing OK, great, that's great, that's wonderful. Start slipping in this area and you notice that your personal space expands quickly.

The people watch one screen or another, sometimes craning their necks to and fro between screens in two different places, in case one is more up-to-date than the other, in which case The Number would appear there first. All of the screens show exactly the same list, which includes the names of places that are in various ways not The City.

The people lean against railings, pillars, friends, and luggage. They sit on steps. They are multi-colored. If you were to ask, the consensus on how their day went would be some degree of Pretty Good. These watchers, gathered here together for a few minutes, have pasts and futures that spread in all directions away from now like spilled water on the floor. They have achieved this and that, have slept in strange places, have hurt badly, have managed to wake up every day so far, their veins and arteries ferrying blood circuitously day after day, as they will continue to do until reluctantly forced to stop.

There is a man in wrinkled jeans leaning on his child's stroller as he waits for The Number to appear. His gaze is tired but abiding, patient. Patience in The City usually follows fatigue and resignation rather than effort. Here, it is simply built into this particular routine, because The Number always appears if one waits for it.

A student, a girl with thick dark glasses and tights, sits on the steps and watches, out of the way, her knees and toes turned in. Today, she has consumed slightly over two-and-a-half cups of coffee, thirty-seven minutes of NPR, and the passing glances of one hundred and eleven men between the ages of 17 and 58.

An older chinese woman in a red coat with red luggage walks, looking, then pauses, then seeing the directed gazes, takes up her post. She has two grandchildren, which is plenty, she supposes.

A young man and his girlfriend stand supporting each other, her arm around his waist, his around her shoulders, watching, murmuring, but both watching.

I am watching for The Number too, having ricocheted through my own confusing series of events, which is apparently called Life Until Now. We have each pinballed here, off of failed relationships and paystubs and Things-That-Almost-Were, and we watch the screens. We are here. It occurs to me that our waiting for The Number is a shared purpose that will dissolve in as wonderfully automatic a fashion as it assembled us here, unacknowledged.

For these few minutes, we are a cult. We could join hands and exalt The Number, could sing hymns, could dance ceremonially, could hand out pamphlets. We have things in common, I know.

And then, The Number is there. An exhalation rustles through the people in the chamber, followed by the clicking of hurried footsteps, and the rhythmic tap of wheeled luggage on the tiled floor. Pockets are patted, tickets clutched, coats thrown over shoulders. And we file out of the chamber, and disperse, swept into other trajectories, our clocks more or less accurate, our eyes straight ahead.