Wednesday Evening on the Downtown W Train

The electronic sign just below the roof of the subway car says "Cortland Street &" and then it blinks and says "Will Not Stop"as though it can't bear to complete the sentence even though it's almost a decade since that stop description was rendered obsolete.

We roll past the blue wooden boards obscuring the place where the downtown platform used to be and the boards are plastered with ads for some security software company.

"(Security software company) is backup"
"(Security software company) is recovery"
"(Security software company) is security"
"(Security software company) is compliance"

If the train would zoom through the station at high speed those ads might be a subliminal cartoon of some sort. The trains never zoom through that stop. Why? Safety? Memory? The layout of the rails?

The "Cortland Street &" disappears from the electronic sign long before the ads do. "Cortland Street &" is replaced by "This is Rector Street" long before you pull into the penultimate stop in Manhattan. It is as though the train itself wants to rush past some unpleasant memory even though its wheels and walls and computer chips were not yet assembled at the start of the decade.

Better to immerse oneself in thoughts of recovery, security and compliance.