"Satyr on the Subway" by Rachel Callaghan

Satyr on the Subway

by Rachel Callaghan

The man on the seat opposite was watching her.  

Wheels screaming, the train shuddered around a curve. The lights blinked out, and they fell into impenetrable blackness. When the fluorescence returned, the outside catacombs, deep beneath the East River, seemed luridly dark.

He was still watching. She gazed back from beneath lowered lids. 

Creeps on the subway weren’t rare, their laps, like his, covered with newsprint. Was he exposed, getting ready to masturbate? His thick hands were atop the paper, fingers intertwined. She kept her eyes on them past two stops, but they remained still. Not quite still—though no discernible change, the muscles seemed to flex and twitch, as if longing to make fists.

She concentrated on keeping her expression aloof. He was just another unattractive stranger. But her hands had, unconsciously, imitated his—fingers in her lap, resting on her purse as if to thwart a thief. 

The car was nearly empty, though the evening traffic above them was heavy. She’d decided not to take a car and risk being stuck on the bridge. Maybe miss the pretentious dinner party for which her husband had bought that special wine. 

Down the car were three old women and a teenage boy nodding to music piped via earbuds. Seeing them, she settled back in her seat, reassured. 

Just an unattractive stranger, the kind of man she would never be with. Squat. Broad. Balding. Wearing an opened navy coat, with brass buttons like a pretend admiral. The eyes fixed on her were flat, shaded by heavy eyebrows. “Thug-brows, like sex traffickers on TV,” her friend Jeanette said. 

The dinner party was in a penthouse. Its dining room table long enough to seat twenty comfortably. Well-off artistic types, effete and smug, pretending to be bohemian, waiting for the chef’s next course. She’d be just an ornament, smiling when her husband refilled her glass. Drinking too much.

He’d sat where he could look directly at her. She could move, but why yield? All he’d done was stare. And, with lips barely pursed, piping a low, haunting tune.

She shifted in her seat, breath quickening as the man’s hands took hold of the newsprint, snapping the sheet. She expected the paper to tear, but it didn’t. She looked away and then back. 

He wasn’t exposed. His cheap corduroy pants were zipped, his white shirt tucked in over his abdomen. Not a flabby beer belly, but the tense kind, beneath slightly pendulous but muscular pecs,swelling out to his groin. 

She thought of bad deeds in alleyways, dropped her gaze toward his crotch, to the area she’d feared would be exposed, but wasn’t. 

His hands folded the paper, tossed it on the seat, returned to his lap, one hand flat on each thigh. Those hands were large, hairy, with meaty fingers. The broad, jagged nails had a hint of dirt embedded in the cuticle. That she could so clearly see all those fascinating little flaws, was unsettling.

The car rocked, tossing her slightly to one side, though the man appeared unmoved, staring at her steadily. She drew her knees tightly together, crossing her legs demurely at the ankle.

Her husband’s hands were elegant, hairless. Not feminine, attractive in a manly way. Jeanette said they were beautiful, as befitting such an Adonis, said she was lucky. “He must play you like a harp, setting your strings delicately vibrating.”

She’d wanted to be an artist, but nothing sold. Anyway, there was no need. Her husband was older, a success.

Across were the most masculine hands she’d ever seen. She looked up, but his eyes were no longer on hers. Half-closed, they’d dropped to the level of her chest. Though her camel-hair coat—exquisitely tailored, exquisitely expensive—was buttoned and tightly cinched at the waist, though she wasn’t at all uncovered, her breasts stirred, and her nipples began to burn as they pushed against the stiff fabric.

As if they knew, those hands made a subtle squeezing motion, index and huge, blunt middle fingers meeting the thick thumbs. Thumbs like mushrooms when the cap bulges tight against the stalk. She couldn’t look away, had never been so aroused, not without touch or words, just the sight of two hands wanting her. 

She swallowed hard, shut her eyes, but when she opened them, she was again staring at his lap, those two hands, no longer flat against his legs, but now turned, fingers splayed. As if pulling his thighs apart to show the bulge of his privates. 

The lights in the car flickered off and on again, making the man appear to rock back and forth, back and forth, toward her. His expression was steady, impassive, not threatening, not lustful, not needy, though still seeming certain of something. 

The train was slowing to a stop, one far from her destination, in a part of the city she’d never considered visiting. The man suddenly stood, grabbing the pole next to him. She had the impression that he could bend it if he wanted. He moved to the door, without turning to look back. 

The car stopped; the door opened. He stepped onto the platform, stood for a while, hands hidden, searching for something in his pockets. 

Making sure her handbag was secure, she rose, chasing as he strode down the platform. Followed up the escalator, staring at the narrow heels of his shoes, which reminded her of hooves. Outside, in the dense fog-tinged air, walking as rapidly as her stiletto heels allowed, she felt her clitoris swell, as if her panties were rubbing it raw. 

As she stepped on a grate, one stiletto heel snapped. She braced herself just in time, both hands against a rough brick wall, her body bent at the waist. The man moved on, strange tune hanging in his wake. His stride lengthened into the shadows on the dark sidewalk, into a forest of signposts and alleys. Into a wild land she’d longed to visit.

“Wait!” she cried, limping after him.