The heavy coin hit the brass baffle-plate with a wet, hollow clang.
It was a tarnished $1.50 silver trade-dollar, blackened by river silt and crusted with green verdigris around its milled edge. It rocked once under the Duncan Model 90’s inspection bulb, dripping brown harbor slime across the angled glass window.
The stench of stagnant canal water, rotting reeds, and sour copper flooded the front vestibule of Coach #404.
The lead commuter stood on the bottom rubber stair-tread. Its head stayed bowed, chin tucked deep inside a soggy, mildewed wool collar that hid everything above its throat. Behind it on the flooded curb, two more figures in identical waterlogged rubber boots waited in the yellow sulfur fog.
Slowly, the lead commuter pushed its right arm forward across the two-inch yellow thermoplastic line.
Its palm was bloated and grey-white like wet cardboard, the skin split along the creases of its knuckles. It held that damp palm flat, four inches above the black rubber floor mat, waiting for Julian Vance to drop twenty-five cents change into its hand.
A dollar-fifty coin for a dollar-twenty-five fare, Julian thought, keeping both boots planted six inches behind the Yellow Standee Line.
And a red sticker right on the glass telling me to step over the line and hand back a quarter from my own pocket. Subtle as a brick through a plate-glass window.
