The Doppler Effect  by Mark Russ

The D train doors closed just as Sammy stepped onto the platform of the West 4th Street station. Slightly miffed, he was nevertheless glad to be out of the January cold. He removed his pipe from the pocket of his overcoat, filled the bowl with loose tobacco, tamped it down into a wad, and lit it with a strike anywhere match he ran across the metal No Smoking sign on the station wall. 

“When’s the next train?” Sammy asked a transit cop standing near the end of the platform. 

“There’s no smoking in the subway, sonny.” 

Sammy, twenty-six, leaned back and sized up the cop through squinted eyes peering out from under his Stetson fedora. As he did so, he shifted the pipe bit from one corner of his mouth to the other, the black-dyed peach fuzz on his upper lip in full view. He exhaled a puff of smoke. 

“Sorry, officer. I thought it meant cigarettes.” 

Sammy flashed a disdainful smile and pivoted on his heel. He took several steps on the yellow warning line, arms extended from his sides, pretending to be a tightrope walker. After a fake stumble, he calmly regained his balance. Using his free hand, he knocked the glowing clump of tobacco from his pipe onto the tracks and turned again toward the cop. 

The transit cop pointed toward a sign suspended from the station ceiling some thirty yards behind Sammy. 

“Read the electronic board. Twelve minutes. And stay off the damn yellow line, asshole.” 

The transit cop performed a pivot of his own, not nearly as practiced as Sammy’s, and positioned himself against the white tile wall at the end of the platform. 

*

Sammy’s ability to dodge the cop’s chiding was honed by years of dodging his mother’s. He was a pro at deception and sleight of hand. 

“Sammy, why don’t you eat? Eat a little more … for me,” his mother would beg him, the pleas beginning when he was eight or nine. “You’re skin and bones!” 

Unperturbed, he responded, “I am eating, Mom. Look,” pointing to his empty plate which he had cleverly cleared while his mother wasn’t looking. 

Sammy’s glib attitude toward eating belied the seriousness of his condition. He suffered from a severe case of anorexia nervosa. After years of therapy beginning when he was ten, frequent medical and psychiatric hospitalizations and two near-death experiences because of electrolyte imbalances, the best Sammy could do was teeter on the brink of malnutrition. 

When he entered his twenties, he thought of himself as a man trapped in a boy’s body. Sammy wore thick-soled shoes to make his five-foot frame look taller. He hovered around eighty pounds. Because he never made it to a normal weight during adolescence, Sammy missed puberty. 

“Doc, I’ve never been able to jerk off,” Sammy informed his pediatrician when he was sixteen. 

“Have you ever had a wet dream?” the doctor inquired. 

“Not that I can remember.” 

“You would remember.” 

The doctor ordered a battery of hormone tests. The news was not good. He would remain prepubertal forever. 

Learning that he would never be able to perform sexually in the way he had hoped was upsetting to Sammy, but he kept his feelings to himself. 

Still, he had dreams—dry ones, that is—and ambitions. 

“I am going to be a magician,” Sammy declared to his parents when he was eleven. He read every available magic book in the Kew Gardens library. He took a job stocking shelves in the neighborhood C Town Supermarket as soon as he was old enough to work so he could buy Marvin’s Amazing Magic Tricks and a host of other magic kits for kids. 

“Another magic kit? Better you should study your geometry. Make something of yourself,” Sammy’s father scolded. 

“I love magic. And I’m good at it too,” Sammy countered. Sammy was a decent student but his father was right; his heart wasn’t in geometry. 

During his mid-teens, he performed his act at every neighborhood birthday party that would have him. One thing led to another, and he soon became a regular on the local bar mitzvah and magic club circuits.  He called himself Sammy the Sorcerer. 

He lived in his late grandmother’s rent stabilized studio apartment on the Lower East Side. With help from his parents, disability checks, and the occasional gig, he was beginning to make a life for himself. 

*

Sammy had twelve minutes to kill until the next D train was scheduled to arrive. Leaving the cop behind, he proceeded to the opposite end of the platform where the last subway car would stop. By boarding the car closest to the exit he needed at the 42nd Steet station, he figured he’d save himself a minute or two. He was headed to Houdini’s Haunt, a new magic shop on 44th near Bryant Park. Except for the transit cop who had parked himself at the opposite end of the station, the platform seemed empty, unusual for a Saturday at nine a.m. 

Sammy then caught a glimpse of a young woman standing nearby. She appeared to be about his age. Her short, spiked hair, eye shadow and eye liner, lipstick, leather jacket, extremely short leather skirt, wide-hole fishnet tights and Doc Martens were all black. She was carrying a small black handbag as well, its thin strap draped across her chest. 

The woman was precariously leaning over the tracks, her left foot on the yellow marker and her right foot securely planted several feet back at a forty-five-degree angle. She was looking up the tunnel for a sign of the next train. Sammy was accustomed to observing fellow New Yorkers engage in this risky ritual presumably intended to magically make the train come faster. 

“You shouldn’t lean out like that,” Sammy remarked, hoping the woman had not seen his antics at the other end of the station. 

The woman stepped back from the edge of the platform but did not acknowledge him. Her eyes were focused on the smooth concrete beneath her feet. 

Arms folded, she began to pace along a path parallel to the subway tracks and at a safe distance from the yellow stripe. This back-and-forth motion persisted for about a minute or two. Sammy watched intently.

Although her goth appearance was somewhat off-putting to Sammy, he could see that she was quite beautiful. Her light blue eyes and pale complexion sharply contrasted with her black hair and clothing. His eyes were drawn to her leather skirt, which he thought was far too short for winter but suited her shapely body. As she walked, her skirt rose and fell. He could see a row of cuts on her upper thigh through the holes in the fishnet tights. The cut furthest down on her thigh was oozing blood. 

“Are you okay?” Sammy tried again. 

The woman did not respond. The trajectory of her pacing grew more elliptical, approaching the platform edge with each orbit, and her stride quickened. 

“Yo!” Sammy raised his voice. He glanced at the digital sign. The train was just five minutes from the station.  The woman did not respond.  Desperate to get the woman’s attention, he blurted out the first thing he could think to say. 

“Hey … have you ever heard of the Doppler effect?” Sammy immediately felt stupid asking such a random question. 

To his astonishment, the woman stopped pacing and took two deliberate steps toward him, her arms still folded, a quizzical look on her face. 

“What did you say?” 

“The Doppler effect,” Sammy repeated more emphatically. “You can hear it when subway trains come and go. The pitch gets higher as they approach and reaches a crescendo as they pull into the station. Then the pitch gets lower as the trains speed away.” He took a breath. 

“Why the hell are you telling me this?” the woman asked, her stare piercing Sammy. 

“I don’t want you to jump.” Sammy insisted.

The woman glared at him.

“Whatever you are feeling now will pass. I’m sure of it.” His voice grew more tender. 

“Well, fuck you. Get out of my way!” 

“Well,” Sammy echoed, “for your information, I’m killing myself too. The difference is I am doing it slowly.” Sammy shocked himself with his disclosure. 

His revelation had no impact. The woman resumed her elliptical pacing but more frantic than before. 

Sammy suddenly stepped in front of her and raised two fists near her face. He opened both hands, palms out, revealing there was nothing inside. Stunned by this maneuver, the woman stopped. 

He then made a fist with his right hand and slowly began pulling a red silk scarf from it with his left. “Voila!” 

“What the hell?” The sound of the train could be heard in the distance. The woman stepped to the left, her own fists clenched. Sammy mirrored her movement and prevented her from getting around him. 

As he did so, he dropped the red scarf on the ground and pulled out a rainbow-colored scarf, this time from his left fist. “Presto!” 

“Get out of my way you creep!” The train would soon be upon them, judging from the sound emerging from the tunnel.  

Sammy did not relent. He reached behind the woman’s right ear and produced a carnation. The sound of the train reached a fever pitch as it entered the station. 

The woman screamed as loudly as she possibly could, but no one other than Sammy was there to hear her. He stood several feet from the woman, between her and the arriving train. The sound of her screams and the screeching of the brakes hurt his ears, but he did not move. 

As the train slowed, her folded arms fell to her sides, her shoulders sank and her clenched fists relaxed. The woman’s screaming gave way to crying. Her face softened and her tears fell to the platform. 

Full stop … pause … hiss. The subway doors opened. Several passengers emerged. 

Sammy and the woman stood there looking at each other.  He wanted to ask if she felt better, but dared not.

The sternness in the woman’s face was gone. She tried to wipe her tears with the back of her hands, but only managed to smudge her cheeks. She then reached toward Sammy’s hand and took the carnation. 

“Can I call someone for you?” 

The woman shook her head. “Thank you. I’ll be alright. I know what to do.” 

Sammy heard the subway doors close behind him. Now it was Sammy who looked down at the concrete platform. The only sound in the station was the shuffling feet of departing passengers headed for the exits. 

“Can I call you … you know … to make sure you’re alright?” Sammy was barely able to get the words out. 

The woman opened her handbag, took out a pen and scribbled her phone number on the back of a theater ticket stub. 

“Astrid.” She handed Sammy her phone number as the train lurched forward. “You missed your train.” 

“Sammy. No worries. I can catch the next one.” 

Mark Russ

Image by Peter H from Pixabay  – Subway station with no train.