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    FEMALE PASSENGER: So he gets over it. What about the other phobias?
    L TRAIN: The subway is a watershed for him. Once he gets over me, it transfers to his other fears. He gets so he can fly again, no problem. Eventually he’s flying back and forth to and from Colorado—he even starts to enjoy it, the way he did as a kid. This is Fourteenth Street. Stand clear of the closing doors, please. The next stop is Sixth Avenue .
    FEMALE PASSENGER: That must feel good. To overcome that sort of thing.
    L TRAIN: I don’t want to be overly dramatic here, but when you’re released from that kind of emotional bondage, it feels like a miracle.
    FEMALE PASSENGER: So New York is good for him.
    L TRAIN: In a lot of ways, yes. We toughen him up. This is Sixth Avenue. The next and last stop is Eighth Avenue .
    FEMALE PASSENGER: You heal him.
    L TRAIN: I’m not sure I’d go that far.
    FEMALE PASSENGER: But it’s such a happy ending. He literally goes down and faces all his darkness and fears, then emerges as a whole person. It’s a spiritual thing, like Ishmael reborn from death into new life.
    L TRAIN: The subway is just the beginning, a threshold. You have to remember that in and of itself, riding the subway is really no big deal. Five million people do it every day.
    FEMALE PASSENGER: So you’re saying he runs into other problems?
    L TRAIN: I’m sorry to say that yes, yes he does. Problems much bigger than the subway. This is Eighth Avenue. This is the last stop on this train .
    FEMALE PASSENGER: How’s that even possible?
    L TRAIN (Comes to a complete stop, opens doors.): Look, this has been a real picnic, but you need to step clear of the train now.
    FEMALE PASSENGER: How about you tell me just one of the problems?
    L TRAIN (Doors remain open.): This is the last stop on this train. Please exit the train .
    FEMALE PASSENGER (Waits, expectantly, but is greeted only by silence. Exits train, disappears into a crowd moving up a stairwell.)

RED HAIRICKSON
    O ne night after skating the Autumn Bowl, I give my new friend Ted a lift to the subway. Ted’s a ginger whom I’ve never seen smile, and who skates the bowl like someone with a death wish. We have mutual acquaintances back out West—he shared a house in L.A. with an old college buddy of mine. His full name is Ted Erickson, although our mutual friends refer to him as Red Hairickson. But he seems like he has a bit of a chip on his shoulder, so I’m not about to call him that.
    I drive him through Greenpoint toward the Lorimer stop, where he’ll catch the train to his place in Bushwick.
    “Bushwick? That’s pretty far out there, right?”
    “Thirty minutes by train. A long haul, but the rent’s cheap.”
    “I hear you can still score pretty cheap rents here in Greenpoint.”
    “Yeah, but I’d never live in this neighborhood.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “There was a huge oil spill here back in the fifties. A total catastrophe. All the oil is still underground, trapped in the soil.”
    “No shit?”
    “No shit. They say benzene vapors still leach up from the ground. Benzene causes leukemia, and this place has one of the highest rates in the country.”
    Ted seems, again, sort of permanently aggrieved, so I’m not sure I believe him. If this is true, then why haven’t I heard about it before? Back at home it takes a couple Google searches to corroborate: I’m now living just a few minutes from the site of one of the worst environmental disasters in history.
    Starting in the mid-nineteenth century, oil refineries and bulk storage facilities metastasized on the banks of Newtown Creek. Exxon Mobil or its predecessors own the majority. In 1950 a subterranean explosion rocked Greenpoint, blowing manhole covers thirty feet into the sky. The blast was mostly forgotten until 1978, when the Coast Guard discovered a massive oil slick on the East River. The slick turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg for the largest oil spill of the twentieth century: further exploration