Cursed book, cursed subway or cursed me?

I started reading a new book on Monday that calls itself “a history of collective joy.” Since starting this presumably joyful book, the universe has done its best to prove that collectivity is anything but joyful.

Tuesday morning I got on the train as usual. As a first insult, it was unusually crowded and I was obliged to stand the entire way. Since my collective joy book is so handy and far less unwieldy than my Rutherford, I was pleased to discover that was able to read the book while standing and proceeded to do so for a few blissful stops. Somewhere around midtown, the train pulled up to a stop abruptly and this slovenly-looking man lurched into the subway car and stood next to me, gripping the metal railing in one hand and a Dunkin’ Donuts cup in the other.

On any other day, I probably wouldn’t even have noticed him and I would have gotten to work unimpeded. On any other day, I probably would have been seated and thus even less aware of his presence. On any other day, I wouldn’t have been reading standing up. As it was, all these things combined with a brake-happy conductor and, as the train lurched abruptly to a stop at the next station, the man next to me also lurched forward and sloshed a good deal of liquid on me, my book and the man sitting down in front of me. “S’okay!” he informed me and the other man in a chill, beatnik kind of voice, as if we needed to be told that it was quite all right that he had just spilled his drink on us. “It’s just water!” he added with a dirty smile at us. The smell of coffee permeated the area. I sniffed my wet hand. Coffee. I glanced at the newly-damp pages of my newly-purchased book. A brown stain and numerous brown splotches stained the open pages and had started to seep down onto others. If it was just water, then I was most certainly the Queen of England. I glared at him, a gesture to which he was utterly oblivious as he took a swig of his coffee.

He got off before I did and the rest of the ride was crowded but without incident. This morning, I got on the subway again. Admittedly, I had quite forgotten about the “water” from the morning before and was happy to give the MTA and the citizens of New York a second shot. So I got on the train, again as usual, and was again oblivious to my seat-mates, only noting them in so far as to notice that they were not very large and that we all fitted comfortably in the space allotted without anyone having to squeeze. So far, a good commute day.

This brief idyll lasted less than a stop. As I sat there, reading about collective ecstasy in ancient Greece, the woman next to me pulled a can of Crush out of her bag and—fitzzz—opened it. Unsurprisingly, it went everywhere (who in God’s name opens a can of soda after it has been sloshing around in your bag for who knows how long?!). Orange splatters flicked my face and my book’s pages. I couldn’t believe it. This sort of thing has never happened before or defaced any of my books in this way. Was the universe sending me a message?

Meanwhile, the woman stared, clearly at a loss as to what to do, at her can of soda, which was still oozing, and at the pool of sticky orange liquid that had gathered at her feet. Her friend laughed. They got off at the next stop. The next stop. She couldn’t have waited to open what she could have realized with just a little common sense would be a messy soda situation after she got off the train?! I glared after her, too, but she was long gone and all that remained was a trail of that sticky liquid on the floor to mark her presence. Someone else sat down immediately and squished me into the side of the woman on my other side. Great.

Clearly, tomorrow will be the judge of the curse. If it happens again, I’m going to assume that a) the book is cursed and there is no such thing as collective joy; b) I am cursed and the universe is telling me to stop looking for happy endings in a cruel, cruel world; or c) I should not take any deeper meaning from the situation and simply be more mindful of my surroundings and those carrying liquids around me. We’ll see what liquid the universe throws at me next!