The morning underground: the sun, though always absent in the tunnels, had yet to rise, the headed stench of gasoline hung heavily in the air. Anna leaned against a wall and gripped the strap of her messenger bag with one hand, her knuckles yellowing. She scanned the morning crowd unconsciously, her mind eager, starved and rasping, for a quiet surge of inspiration. Nothing perfect, hardly satisfying, but a tiny drop to rejuvenate, a small inkling of a scene that might find its way onto a blank page in her sketchbook.

She took note of the dingy, the wasted, the drowsy. They arrived each morning in uniform; their faces excreted signs of one too many sleeping pills, hangovers, morning afters, repugnantly routine mornings similar to Anna’s. But she couldn’t paint her own frustration.

The subway car approached; it’s arrival reverberating through the tunnels, echoing off the damp walls in long aching moments before it appeared. Anna moved off the wall and through its doors in one fluid motion, settling herself in the nearest seat. She leaned against a divider and sat with her feet up on the plastic chair, her bag still strapped to her shoulder. Suddenly the lights above her head flickered off. The train slowed to an unscheduled stop. “Ladies and Gentlemen, due to a mechanical difficulty, there will be a slight delay. Thank you for your cooperation.” Anna clenched and her eyes opened in a glare. She sighed in the dark, rolling her eyes and slumping down in the hard plastic seat. Hidden from most by the conglomerate mass of morning commuters, she waited in vain for the subway cars to return to their tired motions, for the lights to flicker back to life, once again casting a wane yellow glow on her slender fingers, somewhat crooked and tipped red from the cold.

The subway runs on tracks of inconvenience, she has learned. Dark tunnels glide slowly past the dirty windows, plastered with graffiti-ed ads. The broken red seats creak beneath weary bodies; the air is charged with a thick current of impatience and unrequited lust, the tangled ends of countless stories, much like her own, flowing seamlessly together to create a much larger electric field. Absorbing angst and addiction, it welcomes the starving artist, the young bohemian, into its midst. The subway stares back with the eyes of another—cursed, or blessed, with a familiar fate.

In the dark, Anna reached a hand into her bag—a sturdy messenger bag made from army colored canvas—and felt around the pit for a pencil. Her fingers brush against the tips of aged graphite, broken and forgotten at the bottom of the vast sea, along with used up eraser waste and the caps of inkless pens. The sketchbook was easier to find, bound with spiraling wire, filled with dark oceans of gray matter—smudged graphite imperfection. Anna could not sketch on the subway. Each slight movement caused her body to be lifted, propelled forward or back with each curve of the cars monotonous course. Even now, in the absence of these interruptions, she only flipped through the spent pages, successes and failures, unfinished works, abandoned by time and disinterested frustration.

“You know, you’ll ruin your eyes that way. Reading in the dark.”

Anna’s head jerked instinctively upwards, her eyes not yet adjusted to the lack of light, and searched for the speaker. He sounded familiar; a voice of spun gold, soft and liquid against the nondescript hum of vocal chords filling the confined space. A few moments later Anna found her eyes match up with a dark outline from the seat across from her. He leaned forward slightly, the blur of his form solidifying. In the dark, the scene swayed in her eyes: the buzz of impatience and ubiquitous voices melting together and a light feeling in her head—Anna felt hardly awake, hardly aware of more than the sound of her thoughts as they effortlessly slid across her mind. She thought she felt the vague familiarity associated with deja vu.

Anna straightened slightly, without thinking. “Too late for that,” she murmured, loud enough for him to hear, a quiet talent she’d developed—feigned indifference with just an edge of lightness. Maybe not so feigned anymore. Flashes of a small girl, looking past her book full of endless SAT prep onto an ivory why canvas waiting to be defiled, crash through her brain and are gone in tiny blips. “I’m not reading anything.”

“You’re an artist.”

The fact stunned Anna briefly. Having heard it with such certain solidity seemed to make it true. “Yes…How d—”

Bright lights flashed back on above her head, startling her. The cars began to roll onwards, and she was jerked slightly in her seat. When she regained focus she looked back at him and found that he hadn’t moved; he leaned forward still, his face set in silent composure—self-assured. Her heart caught slightly—paused in its constant rhythm of contempt—at the sight of him. She knew him now, recognized him from somewhere. His demeanor cut the air; the atmosphere surrounding him differed from the usual 6 AM staleness. His voice stung almost, clearing out the stagnated, muffled murmurs emitting from the wilting bodies with a mere obscenity. Meeting his eyes, she took him in: pale, cream-colored skin, short blonde hair, mussed to perfection, beautifully angled cheekbones. The fluorescent light from above reflected downwards, highlighting the delicate scruff that covered the expanse of a defined jaw line. He barred his teeth, his face contorted into a picture-perfect smile, an all-knowing grin.

Anna’s face gave away her confusion; her mind reeled, trying to remember from where she knew him, this beautiful boy with a voice of wild silk. She noticed his hands, rough and cracked, but long—strong.

“Adam,” he put forth calmly, waiting. Anna scrambled, how could she not remember a face like his? “We were at university together.”

Instantly, an image of a more polished boy, slightly dorky with gelled hair and a brown jacket, scarf around his neck, appeared in Anna’s head. He carried a guitar around on his back, philosophy book hooked under one arm. He was a couple years ahead of her, but always seemed so young. Now he looked matured, calloused by the constant exposure to New York City muck.

“We had art history together…” she said, not wanting to meet his eyes. Anna continued a faint line on an old sketch. It would never get finished anyways, she thought reproachfully, and slammed the book shut.

“Can I see?” he asked as she made to shove the book back into her messenger bag. She paused, hesitated. He still had his guitar, strong hands grasped it, resting on the floor in front of him.

“You’re a musician,” she said in response. Her sketches were bland, rough, none of them finished, none of them refined. New York had been everything that inspired her; she wanted to capture it but none of it ever seemed to find itself on the other end of her cheap graded pencils. She looked up finally, and closed the clasp on her bag, settled it into her lap.

“A musician with a degree in philosophy,” he countered, a slight exasperation notable in his voice. His eyes gleamed: lighter brown, almost golden, and though they matched the contented look on his face, Anna thought, for the most instantaneous moment, that she glimpsed a sheathed bitterness.

“At least you have a degree.” The train stopped again, this time opening its doors, allowing some to escape from its dirty-fingered clutches. She watched a small clutter of people move together through the sliding doors then disperse on the other side.

“You don’t?”

Anna shook her head and looked back at him and casually requested, “Can I hear?” She was surprised at her own nonchalance.

He grinned quick, and the defiance disappeared, masked behind the pure lure of his music. His face melted smoothly into another; he radiated, dripping in a characteristic Anna couldn’t identify. He’s gorgeous reverberated through Anna’s veins, and she fought to keep this hidden. She breathed in excitement, felt her blood pulsing. Her fingers itched for a pencil, a stick of charcoal—anything. But she couldn’t ask; Anna knew her voice would never comply with her mind’s desperate need to paint, draw, sketch his poignant form.

“Maybe,” he said. “What are you doing right now?”

“Nothing,” she breathed and her mind was in and out of observation; the light against his cheekbones, striping his hair in shades of chlorine-green and darkened gold, glowing from within his yellow-flecked eyes, the shadows curving in and out the folds of his t-shirt. The loudspeaker went on, announcing the next stop, and she blinked hard, damn, and crashed to a stop. She had forgotten: she had to work, she had to pay the rent; she hadn’t eaten in two days. She would get her paycheck today.

She cursed inwardly, and closed her eyes as she said, “Wait. I have to work.” It was hardly work, she thought, as she pictured the small coffeehouse.

He hummed thoughtfully, “Well, maybe I’ll see you around. You live in the East Village?”

Anna nodded and hoped, please ask, please ask. The train slowed to a stop, and she pleaded silently one more time, for him to ask to meet up again, for coffee, anything. She rose, and “This is my stop…” she trailed, drawing the words out, waiting.

He looked at her, that powerful gaze resting on her rumpled form. “Bye, Anna.” And she smiled weakly, turned, and stepped onto the platform. She hurried up the stairs and back into the brusque morning air, shivering against the cold, and the memory of his gaze. She had felt his eyes against her back even after the car had begun to roll onwards, away into the dark tunnels. Anna moved swiftly with the wind, rushing to get to her post behind the counter of a coffee shop where it was warm and the air was saturated with the strong scent of brewing coffee.

Five minutes later she pulled open the door, and thought, as she welcomed the burst of warmth enveloping her shivering form, he remembered my name. Away from the reach of his golden eyes she smiled slightly, and threw an apron over her head, resisting the urge to bring out her sketchbook and attempt to capture the picture still suspended behind her eyelids.