Rough Allston winds do shake the darling buds of March, and here one came, lumbering onto the trolley platform at 11 p.m., wrecked, positively shook and shake’d right from whatever branch of Allston 18+ venue was hosting her for the evening, whatever bouncer dragged his Sharpie marker, turgid with blood black ink, into big fat Xs on her hands. And now she dragged herself, four-inch-tall platform booties like cinderblocks molded around two splintery ankles, 19-year-old popsicle stick legs, bare –– uncovered with the unsexy unlikes of unopaque nylons –– threatening to crack if she ventures one more step, toward eastward salvation –– take me home. She sighs and pushes her hair –– most of it, yellow; the roots, a stripe of ashy brown –– out of her charcoal-rimmed eyes. Tired tired eyes, red tired blackened eyes, big shining worried sad eyes, eyes, eyes, find me a train, eyes, find me a lipstick a boy an anything an admirer a purpose a fame an everything find me a train to take these tired eyes tits legs platform boots home. What a darling, as she collapses on the fence lining the platform, her body creasing at the waist like a flaccid back issue of Teen Vogue, her knees criss-crossing, her sack-like designer coat ripped open down the center, revealing unravished clavicles and unloved sternum –– this darling needs no buttons no zippers no tacks no seams no hems no snaps no no no, not for her.

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Something is just bugging her and I gotta know what it is. It’s the way her eyebrows knit far above the bridge of her button nose, the way her skin tugs under her lower lash lines, the way her velvety neck cranes and strains as she tips her body, strains, toward the tracks –– where is the train? Two bulging lightbulb eyes searching westward for the two oncoming headlights of the T, ten shivering fingers clutching buzzing Blackberry vinyl sling bag unslung lipgloss flipping out between unzippered vinyl lips clickity clack to the rainwet ground she bends to pick it up, face twisted loathsome but still so pretty, and when she resurfaces she sees those two lights glowing some yards away, growing yard by yard as the train approaches––

We all get on. She’s with a friend and they haven’t spoken, and I’m alone feeling ugly and poor next to both of them. I get on first, traverse the fare machine with a smile holding up my monthly pass and the friend is next ping goes her card as she stalks on, stiletto heels teetering on the striated floor as she moves down the aisle with the grace of a stack of ice cubes, and finally comes our darling, our Edie Sedgwick our tragic heroin(e) our skinny-as-a-rail our uptown girl, whipping right past the driver leaving not so much of a flash of her designer perfume in her wake––

“Hey!” shouts the driver, straight from his nose.

She ignores, fingers tangled in hair, keeps walking down aisl––

“Hey! HEY.”

Hesi-tense. Platform halts midair bent inches from unfed thigh. Other one’s just toe-down on the floor. Everyone’s looking.

Little starlet.

“YOU GOTTA. PAY.”

Heads whoosh backward even the poor people even the foreigners even the kids whooooosh who’s that girl holding up the train?

She turns on her heeeeeeel, begrudged obliged fuuuuuuuuuuuccccccc––– fine.

Back to the front, pulls something out, taps it on the target, a strange beep, turns again, back to the back––

“Excuse me YOU STILL HAVE TO PAY,” he shouts. Mean old man.

Some fumbling. Some blushing. Vinyl bag tears open–– but nothing.

Where’d all your money go? Poor little rich girl.

The woman in a headscarf who got on last comes to our girl’s aid. Happy little ping, $1.70 later, the train’s moving finally. A brief grateful mumbling slips from tremulous red-painted lips under which hide red-stained nicotine strained teeth behind which hides a tongue that’s seen all sorts of things. Oh–– but where did all her money go? How does she––

–– survive?

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I mean–– what pumps whatever it is that runs her? Sticky strawberry lipgloss blood, mascara marrow oozing at the core of cigarette bones? Battery acid –– but where does she plug in? How long before––

–– well that doesn’t matter. She’s still on the train when I get off: shoes perched on the ledge under her seat, alabaster skin yellowish in the stark fluorescent lights of the train, hands surrendering cell phone zipping bag up head turned toward window black-rimmed eyes gazing at nothing, sad sad sad. What a way to spend a Sunday. What a way to spend a nineteen.

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