First the arrow. I thought it was a skinny nail or small spike when I first saw it on the platform at 82nd St. It seemed to point towards my apartment. Or not exactly my apartment. Slightly to the right. The Unisphere? The Iron Triangle? When I picked it up I discovered it was a plastic twizzle stick, somewhat gnarly. But how did it get there?
Next the capsule. Lodged in a seam in the cement about two and a half feet away. Almost but not quite perpendicular to the arrow. Pointing, in a roundish way, towards Elmhurst Hospital--or Rikers Island? How long had it been there? What did it have to do with the arrow?
The train arrived. I got on. The conductor announced the next station: "Now arriving 74th Street. Manhattan-bound 3 train. Next stop 69th Street. Stand clear of the closing doors." I looked up at the other passengers. No one seemed to notice anything astray. At 69th Street, it was back to being a 7 train.
No. Yes. Something was definitely up.
(Pretty much a straight-up rip-off of Cosmos (Kosmos, po polsku), my favorite of the novels of Polish genius Witold Gombrowicz. Beach reading for the paranoic!)
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