Phone Booth

At the northeast corner of the 30th Avenue stop there is a round hole, the size of a quarter, eyelevel, in the stairwell of the overpass… otherwise unnoticed, except that tonight, it opened up a small window to my furtive observation of a man below. 

Each time someone passed, he repeated the same line. His volatility was noted by people on all corners of the block and most walked past quickly trying not to make eye contact or provoke further rage. His surges of anger, banging the receiver against the phone booth, crouching and wailing, and lunging at passersby, were punctuated by silence when he simply hung his head.

I watched from this narrow scope as he held the telephone in his hand and repeatedly slammed the receiver against the walled booth: “I am so mad…I am so mad! I could kill someone right now. I could KILL someone!” 

My curiosity was cut with fear and I am told by a handy local, “You know you shouldn’t do this alone. Pulling this shit could get you killed in other parts of New York.”

“I know,” I answered, “But we always leave too soon. I want to see what happens.”

As though this display were commonplace, I was too quick to assume he had gone mad. I noticed then, that the man in the phone booth looked showered, well-dressed, and pulled a suitcase. At some point he had been prepared…now loaded. If it were not for his rage, he would have gone unnoticed… completely functional (as we can only seemingly be). Something had happened. I ask what could make a man so angry:

“A woman…a woman could inspire that kind of rage,” said the local.

I watched incredulously considering the possibilities…an estranged wife… the arms of another man… a failed attempt to recover a lost love…a mercurial woman…the utter devastation of a definitive end.

You stupid, stupid man, I thought of the man in the phone booth…you had your belief in fated love. He had seen too many films, too many images to cause him hope, and now he has fallen prey to iconic scenes …relentless images belied by reality…now he is driven mad… left standing at the phone booth, waiting for answers …played the fool…he finds too late…that he was wrong… the guy does not always get the girl.

Perhaps he had been waiting at the phone booth for her to return his call. Now he stood panicked, alone and dejected, feverishly shaking his fist at the world, but unwilling to get back on the train. 

“But…he’s still crazy, right?” I asked, “Something IS wrong with him?” I waited for confirmation… I needed to know that this could not be any man.