That night on the train home her eyes followed me the entire way. Every reflection, every half-glimpsed person shouldering their way out the doors, every hushed conversation was a blink of those green eyes, a whisper through reinforced plexiglass. Instead of my usual, measured glances around the subway car, my head swung wildly, hoping to catch her. When my stop finally came, I rushed out the still-opening doors and ran up the escalator towards street level. I needed out. Needed to breath. Pushing open the station doors was like a bucket of cold water on my face. Lights. People. Traffic. Real wind. This is what I needed now; to lose myself in this above-ground maelstrom of human interaction, this turbulent noise. On the subway, or the bus or the tram, I watch everything and everyone. Out here, I’m safe watching nothing, an anonymous cell in the city, letting it all wash over me.

Oblivious but accommodating to the stalls, hustlers, and general foot traffic around me, I walked up Bonvis Ave. to a little parkette I used to frequent when my people watching was more super than subterranean. I found my bench looking a bit older, a few more tags scrawled on the wobbly slats, and sat down like you would getting into your favourite armchair. I needed to carve out a little bubble of solitude, to process what the fuck had just happened. No one’s ever flipped it on me in quite that way, made me the object of such disconcerting study. I closed my eyes and laid down.

Even in that darkness, those green eyes swam into my vision. They had a playful kind of sparkle, mischievous even, like she had a secret she wanted to share. Tomorrow. Whatever it was, I’d find out tomorrow.

I must have lain there for an hour or two, replaying events in my head, wondering who she was, what she wanted and, most importantly, would she be waiting at Lower Park station? Would I be? The stars had moved a distance, and the tree branches above my head had become more and more indistinct as night deepened. Having satisfied my need for public anonymity, I craved sleep. Unconscious oblivion. I half-expected to wake up with visions of those green eyes at 3am, but that was a risk I was willing to take. I decided to walk to my apartment instead of taking the #35 bus like I usually did. Something about what had happened on the train made me yearn for the cold night air and the easy, fluid pedestrian dance necessary on a neon-lit street teeming with other people. I slid past couples arm-in-arm, dodged a man with a dolly full of empty beer bottles, and hopped over a dirty plastic bag filled with what appeared to be mashed potatoes, all without breaking stride. The public. I didn’t bother it and it didn’t bother me. I moved through it like the wisps of cigarette smoke I exhaled as I approached the dead-end street my apartment sat on. The kind of cul-de-sac that looks inviting and quaint during the day, but scary as shit at night. Which suited me just fine. I liked peace and quiet.

The #35 roared past the mouth of my street as I was climbing the stairs to the fourth floor. The apartment itself wasn’t anything special. Just a big open space with a bedroom and bathroom attached. Not much furniture beyond a few armchairs and a low table. What was the point? I rarely entertained visitors and I rather liked the uncluttered look. Plus, what the place lacked in creature comforts it made up for with a 24 hour bus stop a minute away and a balcony out over a ravine pointed at the towering lights of downtown. I made myself a cup of tea and went outside, the cityscape a panorama of light in front of me. Sometimes, and this was one of those times, I watched the illuminated windows of the skyscrapers, the zooming beams of brake lights, the twinkling of the modestly-priced houses in the ravine below, and I was staggered by the thought that there are millions of self-contained little stories happening out there, like a monstrous cloud of gnats, buzzing around my head. Not that I minded. I just found it… humbling, I suppose. Knowing there are whole worlds of experience surrounding, but not touching me. I was utterly inconsequential to all of these lives. It always makes me think about how little I matter which, depending on your constitution, can either be really depressing or the most empowering feeling in the world.

I still haven’t figured out which one it is for me. Maybe the green-eyed woman will know.