Ernie Barnes, Dance Studio, 2002. New Now: Modern & Contemporary Art New York.
Your Rider is Still in Transit
— Written by Kaj Tanaka
I live uptown, I work downtown, my kid’s daycare is across town, and my dance studio is in the opposite direction of the rest. It’s fine I suppose, if you enjoy spending time on the train, only I do not. I count the minutes and calculate my wasted days and months. There’s so much I want to do and so little time. It’s dizzying. I try not to think about it.
Perhaps my stress drew the woman on the subway to me. She handed me a card: “Tired of the train?” it said. “Let us ride for you.” It had a QR code.
“We’re in beta,” the woman said. “That code qualifies you for a free account.”
After putting my kid to sleep that night–pulling out the card and sitting there in the dim of my tiny living room, the trains screaming by outside — I scanned the QR code, entered my personal information and the details of my commute. A few minutes later there was an email confirmation.
The Rider arrived at 6:45 the next morning, just as my daughter and I were heading out. He wore an old-fashioned gray flannel suit and matching hat. “I’m your rider,” he said.
I didn’t understand, so I nodded.
The Rider knelt on the hard floor to take my daughter’s hands in his, gently, as if she were made of glass. Then he got up and told her not to follow him — “following me is not part of the experience,” he said — and he walked out the door.
I figured this was all part of the thing I’d signed up for, so instead of rushing to the train like usual, my daughter and I made breakfast. But halfway through making pancakes, I noticed my daughter had disappeared.
The Rider returned for me about a half hour later. “So that’s how it works?” I asked. “You come and touch our hands, and then we just — poof?”
“Your daughter is at daycare,” he said, showing me a picture on his phone of her waving at the camera. “I do the commuting. You show up.”
“What if I sent you out,” I said, “to my work, for example, and then I changed my mind and went to the airport instead?”
“You can’t do that,” he said. “It won’t work. There can only ever be one rider in transit.”
Ernie Barnes, Dance Studio (detail), 2002. New Now: Modern & Contemporary Art New York.
It was an odd stipulation, but why dwell on little details when over the next month, my life became a paradise. My daughter and I had breakfast together every morning, I had extra time at the dance studio, and I got to work early enough to apply for better jobs. I widened my job search because if the Rider could take me downtown in a split second, could he not also take me to Atlanta or Seattle?
The Rider said he supposed he could do a longer commute. “There isn’t a rule,” he said hesitantly, “If, however, you consider,” he paused to choose his words carefully, “the strain such a commute would take on the rider — ” but then he just trailed off — clearly he didn’t have a point.
I took a job in London. Even with the cost of a daily round trip flight across the Atlantic, it was worth it — the money they were offering! I explained the new job to my Rider at the dance studio that night.
Here’s how it would go, I said: At noon EST, I would step out of my living room and into my new office in London, where the time change would make it 7 AM GMT. The Rider would touch my hands again right away, so that twelve hours later, midnight back home, I would arrive back at my apartment, ready for bed, just in time for the Rider to touch my hands and begin his return trip to London for the next day’s work, and so on.
But when I finished, he just stepped away without a word, putting the piano between us. A group of professional dancers were finishing up practice—the mahogany floor—green lights overhead casting shadows that mingled with the sunset crossing the open windows as their bodies moved in perfect synchrony—their reflections on the newly polished floor seemed to make them taller, the sound of their feet, all meeting ground at once, and again, and again — their regularity hitting me like the passing of days, of all the life I’d wasted, and not just time spent in transit. This was my chance to make things right for my daughter, to make her proud of me, to give her a story she could remember me by.
When the dancers finished, the Rider came over. He took my hands to begin his commute to my daughter’s daycare. I asked if everything was okay. “Everything,” he said with an automatic smile. The new schedule wouldn’t bother him, even if the commutes were a tad longer? “I know you’ll just be flying back and forth from London,” I said. “That’s probably annoying for you, but just think what it’ll mean for me — don’t be selfish.”
Something unkind moved beneath his blank expression. “No, of course. It’s fine,” he clasped my hands to begin the commute. “Everything is fine.”
After class, I checked the app — my Rider was still on commute, but that didn’t make sense. He’d left long ago. I waited in the dark hallway outside the studio. Everyone had gone home.
I checked the app again and again. Same message: “Your rider is still in transit. It is vital to remain where you are. Thank you for your patience.”
Eventually, I had to leave. My daughter’s daycare was calling me. I had to catch the train to get her. He left me no choice — rules or not, I had to go.
But when I opened the door to leave, I didn’t see the familiar storefronts. In fact, there were no streets at all. The door swung open to reveal a narrow tunnel leading into darkness, curving away from me and descending.
It felt as though the world had shifted beneath my feet.
What should I have done? I followed the tunnel. The flashlight on my phone led the way, step by careful step. The walls were damp and cold, the air thick with decay. As I went deeper, the tunnel seemed to close around me, the darkness pressing against my skin.
Eventually, my phone died, and I entered a sightless void. My panicked breaths came in short, ragged gasps. I reached out, feeling the rough, uneven walls, my fingers scraping against the cold material — not stone — not earth — something else. The tunnel seemed to stretch on forever.
And I kept seeing flickers of the Rider, his gray suit and matching hat dancing before my useless eyes — playing tricks on me — the promise of a better life where I had enough of everything — a life of all marrow and no bone. I knew if I kept going forward, eventually I would find it. It was so close now. I would find him and I would make him understand. My new life was waiting for me. I could already taste it.
Kaj Tanaka’s fiction has appeared in New South, New Ohio Review, Hobart and Tin House. His stories have been selected for Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and Wigleaf’s top 50 stories. He lives in Shiprock, NM
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