Friday, April 30, 2004
Don’t Talk to Strangers
The past two posts have been about being on the bus and hearing things, or not hearing them, as the case may be. This is the third and last of this series. Cleveland elects to receive.
And then sometimes words aren’t even necessary:
I was riding home on a shockingly crowded bus at 8:30 or 9 at night; I wore a dark suit and carried a worn-out brain. I was tired of arguing, of talk, of words. I sat quietly, a magazine warming my lap, my eyes scanning it without much comprehension.
We were mostly commuters so we knew the rules: keep quiet, eyes to your lap, thoughts peacefully inward. But nobody told him, or if they had, he had forgotten. He was young, looked to be in good shape, maybe even smart. He wore a cheap suit with his collar open and his tie loosened. He was lit up, flushed and drunken. In a mass of people jamming the aisle, he stood mumbling to himself and weaving, engaged in an out-loud internal monologue - laughing at imagined jokes, responding to the questions of his own overtaxed mind…. People tried to edge away but there really was nowhere to go.
I was about four rows behind him. Naturally, he caught my eye, and consequently I caught his. Thankfully, I was too far away even to have to think about talking to him. He had no such inhibitions, though, so he cheerfully started a conversation with me, speaking to me over a dozen strangers’ heads. “Hey, how ya doin’?” With my eyes I tried to brush him off. He misunderstood it as a reply, rather than just a response. “Yeah, long day. Don’t have to tell me twice.” I scoffed silently, he responded vocally, and the conversation continued in this fashion for some time - him speaking, me responding silently.
He was finely attuned to the tiniest facial gestures, picked up on the smallest non-verbal cues. Without meaning to, I began to toy with him. Then, when I saw how easy it was, I began to do it on purpose. I listened to his rantings and raised my brow, or turned down the corners of my mouth a millimeter or two, or looked away in a delicate gesture of mock rage; I made whatever minuscule changes of expression I thought would feed his randomly-firing neurons. As a result, I somehow convinced him that: he’d been spied on, but wasn’t currently under surveillance; that I was with an intelligence (!) organization, but not working on his case directly; that I was, in reality, a mole working to destroy a corrupt system from the inside; and that our communication was not only unauthorized but dangerous for us both.
Realizing how powerful an ally I was, and how exposed he was for fingering me in public surrounded by all these who-knows-whos, he suggested he’d better get off the bus for our mutual safety. I agreed, closing my eyes with serene resignation. When I opened them again, he was gone. I tried to go back to my magazine but it seemed pathetically two-dimensional. I was a double agent, after all. There had to be something more gripping to read. And in the end, nothing is so good a read as another person’s face.
