A Subway Souvenir

Last night I took the B train back to Brooklyn.   Without any reading material or urge to write in my journal, I passed the time by looking around the car at my fellow passengers.   I noticed that the guy across from me was doing the same thing, except that he was committing his observations to paper.   My neighbors were completely oblivious as he drew their images into his notebook.  He wasn’t trying to hide what he was doing, but no other passengers were aware.   I watched him draw the two guys sitting next to me, and laughed to myself because they had no idea what was going on.    Was I the only person who was watching this show?

Then the artist saw me watching him draw, and turned his pen to me.  Unlike his previous subjects, I knew that I was being sketched.   I looked at the ads that lined the ceiling, at the people to his left and right, at the newspaper on the floor, all to keep myself from dissolving into a fit of the giggles.     A girl standing by the door saw him sketching me, and smiled at me as if to say, “Yeah, girl, it looks good.”

He finished the drawing just before the train pulled into my stop, which was coincidentally his as well.    He offered me the drawing, I accepted and thanked him.   As we exited the train he explained that he had spent the day teaching kids to draw faces.    We walked out of the station and went our separate ways into the rainy night.