Ana (ch 1)

“Anacostia doors open on your left.” Is what the train driver mumbles over the intercom, not really giving much effort to be understood or heard clearly but he did not care. Anyone who was out this far in DC knew where they were going and knew what stop to get off on.

A man in subdued colors browns and greys gets up stiffly from his sit on the train. He stands in front of the train door staring at his reflection in the glass, glaring at himself, looking like a stranger to his own eyes. The doors open and his sticks his hands into his hoodie pockets and walks towards the escalators. He keeps his head forward, level, and straight but his eyes don’t stop moving watching everybody around him, watching even the people behind him.

On the escalator up and out a young girl who looks and dresses a few years older than she really is, glares at the man in brown and grey as he tries to move past her. Slow traffic stands on the right everybody else is supposed to pass on the left, she knows that, he knows she knows that, but she just stands looking down at him glaring. He locks his eyes on to hers his face not saying a word. She rolls her eyes and marches up the steps.

“Oh, someone been smoking that la!” another young female voice going down the escalators and into the subway exclaims. She shouts it in a strange tattletale voice as if she is spilling a secret that no one else knows about, as if no one else around her can smell the distinct odor or Marijuana. At the top of the escalator Jones quickly scans the station, the usual Anacostia happenings. He sees the police idle in a corner standing around their latest victim. A teenage woman with her pant leg rolled up hands behind her back, the transit police talking and congratulating themselves, as the young woman stands stone faced infront of the crowd of onlookers. The rest of the station is filled with groups of people standing off by themselves every conversation is hearable but all of them sink into the low din that is Anacostia. The only station where the people are louder than the trains.

It doesn’t bother Jones that the police are standing at the entrance of the station, they are always stationed out in Anacostia, they are always on the patrol, it is for that reason that he hates riding the train from Anacostia, there is too much risk, and the metro police are only too happy to make another drug arrest.