The One Where Tom Nearly Gets Shot

The thing is that it happens so quickly.

It’s been hot for days in NYC, and the heat makes people crazy — it’s hard to sleep, subway platforms are stifling and unpleasant, the days long, the nights longer. The air feels dirty. The city sweats under a blanket of smog and haze. And so plenty of people, NY Conversation included, head for the beach. In NYC, this is an undertaking, a two-hour mission that involves a long trip out on the A train to the Rockaways, then a shuttle train that takes you further out along the long, thin strip of land that separates Jamaica Bay from the Atlantic, and then a bus.

The beach itself is pleasantly chaotic, with boom boxes, bass and booze aplenty. But by the time 5pm rolls around, everyone’s hot and tired and drunk. There’s an edginess to the platform where we wait for a train to come and take us home. And the weather’s changing — there’s the tension you get in the air with a coming storm. As minutes tick away with no sign of the train, more and more people arrive, shoving their way onto the platform with their umbrellas and chairs and Eskies. Cops walk up and down the platform, ushering the crowd back from the edge.

When the train finally arrives, after a 30-minute wait, there are so many people waiting that it’s difficult to move. Nevertheless, we manage to push our way on board, which is just as well, because god only knows when the next one will arrive. It seems no-one on board is over 18 — which makes sense, as it’s school holidays and most people NY Conversation's age are at work instead of skiving off to the beach. The train stinks of turgid testosterone. There’s one guy in particular we noticed on the platform, a ponytailed kid with a pumped-up, edgy air about him that implies he’s been doing more than drinking, grabbing his girlfriend by her cheeks and talking into her face: “I love you, I love you, I love you.” It’s discomfiting – there’s something of violence about him.

As we arrive at Broad Channel, where the shuttle train terminates and everyone changes to the A train, we see with dismay that there are even more people on the latter platform. But a stroke of good fortune means that we're right where one of the train doors opens, and we don't just get on the train — we even manage to get seats. Things feel like they're looking up... until we realise that the ponytailed kid and his friends are standing right in front of us. One of them offers around a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, boasting about having a gun in his bag. “Niggas think I’m jokin, but I’m for real, man, for real.” Some kids next to us start goading him. If you got a gun, then get it out. Show us. For real.

We pull in at Howard Beach. Even more people try to pile onto the train. And something happens.

It’s hard to tell what. The guy with the Jack Daniel’s disappears out the door. The doors close. Re-open. Close. Re-open. The driver makes an announcement, but it's hard enough to understand these at the best of times, and this is definitely not the best of times. There’s shouting and pushing outside. One door closes. People are shouting. I see a little girl’s face through the single open door, looking at me with an expression that’s hard to read. She looks like she’s appealing for something. Both doors open again. From somewhere, three large women with prams explode into the carriage, throwing people left and right. They look terrified. More shouting. A flash of steel, and suddenly the guy with the girlfriend is holding a knife, shouting in Spanish, a fierce grin on his face.

And then the gunshots.

Four of them, in rapid succession. It happens so quickly. It’s not dramatic at all. I barely even hear them. They’re just another noise in the chaos. But suddenly everyone is panicking. We need to get out of the carriage, but we don't want to go onto the platform, so we squeeze through the scrum into the door between carriages. In the next carriage, people are hunched low to the ground, taking shelter behind seats. They know what to do. We do not know what to do.

Outside, the sky is dark with imminent rain. There's more shouting. I poke my head out of the carriage. A scrum of people is running down the platform towards us.

“Fight!”

“Nigga got shot!”

“That fat boy, they tore him up real good!”

Are those more gunshots? It's impossible to tell. And honestly, it doesn't matter — either way, the overwhelming instinct is to get the fuck out of here. Except for one thing: both the fight and the carriage we fled stand between us and the only exit. Howard Beach is an above-ground station, but it’s out in an industrial wasteland somewhere between JFK and the backblocks of Queens. The platform is elevated, and also lined with both cyclone fencing and razor wire, so just climbing down isn’t an option.

But thankfully, the solution to getting away is brilliantly simple, if somewhat nerve-wracking: traversing across the tracks, stepping carefully on weathered sleepers and jagged rocks, touching none of the rails for fear of being electrocuted. From there, we pull ourselves up onto the other platform, then dash up the stairs to our salvation: the AirTrain. This goes to JFK and thence to the E train, which will eventually take us home.

As we reach the concourse, the sky is the colour of... well, the barrel of a gun. Airport commuters in sports coats pull drag-bags and tote laptop cases. The disembodied station announcements and the air of impersonal, mechanical efficiency seem almost impossibly incongruous.

By now, it’s raining hard outside.

The shooting doesn't even make the news.