Station

            Marshall awoke to the dissonant percussion of his apartment building: raindrops tapping steadily at his window, the arrhythmic rattle of the heater, car horns dueling in the avenues below. The cold light of his alarm clock radiated in the still-dark morning, staring him down, challenging him to drag himself out of bed. With dramatic sluggishness he sat up, dumb and bleary-eyed, fighting off the inertia of sleep.  Another day. Goddamnit.

            The icy floorboards bit at his bare soles, the hair on his arms and neck bristled, and a familiar lack of fervor overtook him as he threw himself into his daily routine. Coffee. Shower. Brush teeth. Get dressed. More coffee. Pack briefcase. Stare at aging face in the mirror. More coffee. The tie around his neck felt like a leash, and his coat was too heavy, even in this weather; his palms were sweating as he left for work.

            The building’s elevator creaked and complained threateningly as it bore him towards the rest of his day. Descending, he imagined the snap of a support cable, the rickety structure hurling itself suddenly downwards and shattering at the bottom of the shaft.

            Not today, he thought to himself as his feet once again met stable ground. Maybe tomorrow.

            Street vendors stood huddled under their canopies and smiled cheerily in the gray of the morning. Throngs of businessmen moved past them, striding quickly in the cold, an exodus of suits, newspapers and umbrellas. He joined the madness, weaving through the herd, jostling arms in expensive coats, their owners indifferent to his discourtesy. Rain pelted the back of his exposed neck and settled in his hair. He fought his way towards the subway.

            The same suits from the crowded sidewalk populated the station. He established himself on the same cement seat as he did every day and waited for the train, which was always dependably late. The bench had no backrest, so he sat hunched forward, hands in his pockets, briefcase at his feet, watching the foggy breath swirl from his mouth and diffuse into the air. Men and women around him yelled into their cell phones, attempting feebly to combat the blunted reception of the underground. Idiots.

            Several feet off to his right, Marshall noticed a man sitting cross-legged on the ground, slouched against the wall, comfortably separate from the surging sea of people. His thin, tattered jacket covered an even more tattered shirt, and his shoes blossomed at their tips, revealing his naked toes. Streaked, smoky hair sprouted from his head in tangles and dispersed into the chaos of his beard. Trembling, he reached down his ungloved hands and gripped the valves of an exhausted trumpet; on the ground in front of him he laid the open case, a few coins flashing in its shallow bottom.

            As his cracked lips met the mouthpiece, a rusty, lilting melody sprung from the ancient instrument. The tune rose and fell, and its notes reverberated off the tile walls of the station, prominent among the drone of the morning commuters. People turned around, some interested, some annoyed, and a few more coins trickled into the mostly empty case. Marshall found himself tapping his foot. He realized this and smiled.

            The train announced itself by screeching and clattering to a stop, drowning out the music and wrenching Marshall forcibly from his small reverie. He gathered his briefcase and headed for the train’s sighing doors. As he pulled away from the platform, he caught a final glimpse of the man among the mob, poised like a monk, wreathed in a halo of buzzing fluorescence.

***

            Radios clashed between adjacent cubicles, each occupant competing for his traffic report or smooth jazz or NPR interview. Marshall sat among them, staring blankly at the memo he had just taken from his inbox: He had to stay at the office a few hours late tonight to fill out whatever useless paperwork the company deemed appropriate. Stiff in his chair, he could feel the blood pooling in his feet. Goddamn bureaucrats.

            Among the minimal amount of work he felt compelled to do, Marshall filled his usual day with as much wasted time as possible. Solitaire, pacing the aisles between his co-workers, staring blankly at the wall. Punctuating these vacant hours was the occasional meeting, for which Marshall had to put on a façade of productivity, to bewitch his superiors into letting him keep his job. This was something (perhaps the only thing) that he was exceedingly good at. At the end of the day, he would tick off another little square on the calendar hanging in his cubicle, the pages of which depicted vibrant, sweeping landscapes that made everything in the office seem even more suffocating.

            This day, however, moved especially slowly. The presence of actual work to be done sent Marshall into a fit of overwhelming apathy. He moved distractedly through each stack of paperwork, his hand sore from checking boxes and signing initials. With the passing hours, he could feel his brain’s circuitry rewiring itself, devoting its entire capacity for thought to this single mindless task.

            With the completion of the last form, after the last signature had been squeezed out of his now-useless wrist, Marshall glanced up at the clock. Nine o’clock. He was the last one at the office. God, I hate this job. He turned off his computer, picked up his coat and headed for the door.

***

            He stepped off the train with a long, protracted sigh. The station was nearly empty at this hour, occupied only by vagrants and night shift workers. As Marshall made his way to the stairs, he was met unexpectedly by the staccato of a trumpet solo from somewhere off behind him; the man was there still, crouched in the same spot, his fingers flying expertly, his body shivering in the penetrating winter weather. Marshall stood and watched, transfixed; nobody else paid any mind.

            The song drifted into a decrescendo, fluttering softly into silence. Its creator laid his trumpet on the tile floor and hung his head between his knees, huddling for warmth. Unclear as to own his intentions, Marshall wandered slowly over towards the man, noticing the meager few coins that sat heavily at bottom of his case.

            “Aren’t you uncomfortable?”

            “My back is stiff as all hell.” The man looked up at Marshall. “And I’m cold as a motherfucker. But it could always be worse.”

            Marshall felt the warmth of his coat turn into guilt. “How long have you been down here?”

            “The whole day. I came here looking for a more appreciative audience. I think I need to keep looking.” The man peered into his case, counting his earnings. “But, again, it could always be worse.”

            Marshall stared down at the man, “How is it possible?”

            “What?”

            “How do you sit there for twelve hours playing for a bunch of nameless, faceless people who couldn’t care less about you? What keeps you going? I sit in a goddamn cubicle all day and do a job that I hate, that a computer could do a thousand times faster. There’s no art to it, no elbow room, no opportunity for expansion; I just sit there and waste my life worrying about whether or not I’m wasting my life.”

            “The why stay? Stagnancy never reverses itself; the universe is not going to come rescue you while you sit and mope.”

“I know that, and it drives me crazy knowing that there’s a gigantic fucking planet out there that I might never get around to seeing, out of laziness or fear or whatever. I mean, we’re all hurdling through space at a million miles per hour, there are children starving in Africa, six-and-a-half billion people wouldn’t give a damn if I threw myself in front of the next train, and here I am sitting in a little box working for nine hours so that I can keep my shitty apartment.”

“But you chose this life. You’re lucky enough to still have a choice, and you’re squandering it. Be glad that you’re not trapped in a corner, acting out of necessity. Men in suits tend to take that for granted.”

“And that’s what makes everything so damned trivial—I’m privileged. I’ll never know what it’s like to starve, to worry about drought, or whether my kids are going to die of malaria; I worry about what kind of plasma TV that I should buy. And I hate that, I hate the thought that the everyone else is struggling to get by while I’m staring at a screen, that the world keeps happening while I sleep, that nothing is ever going to stop and wait for me. I go insane in that cubicle. So how do you do it? Why do you sit on the ground and play for coins? What is it that you ever always wanted to be?”

            The man smiled wryly. “A trumpet player.”

            “Well then,” Marshall laughed, “I suppose you’re better off than all the rest of us. Here–” Marshall took out his wallet and emptied it into the man’s case, removed his watch and dropped it next to the money, took off his jacket and shoes and offered them at arm’s length. “I doubt I’ll need these anymore, I think I’m leaving.”

The man stared upwards, “Leaving?”

“Leaving my job, this city, all these damn people. Leaving the country, maybe. I think it’s about time,” Marshall stepped back and sighed deeply, shivering. “Anyways, thanks for your ears.”

The music started up again as Marshall made the trek to the exit, drifting through him, bearing him weightlessly up the stairs. With a quick glance backwards, Marshall left the station for the last time, smiling and cold as a motherfucker.