One Last Stop

Niko knows immediately that something has changed between Jane and August. August doesn’t feel different now that she’s lost her virginity, and Niko reminds her that it’s a social construct.

While looking for a hair tie, August discovers a pack of batteries in her bag, wondering how it’s possible that Jane has been operating her radio without batteries. She texts Jane and learns that her cassette deck doesn’t have them either. She goes to find Myla, who concludes that Jane’s connection to the train must have something to do with electricity. It makes sense because Jane is always on the train when August gets on; Myla has tried to find Jane without August but hasn’t seen Jane. Attraction, Myla tells her, is also rooted in electrical impulses. The lights react to Jane, and August is keeping her here.

Myla suggests that if they can figure out what happened to Jane and how her energy got connected to the line, they can recreate the event. She doesn’t know whether that means Jane will go back to the 1970s or she’ll stay in the present.

August goes to see Jane on Thursday and explains what she learned from Myla. Jane is laid back about it all, and while she tries to distract August by touching her, August tries to come up with a plan. She feels as if different versions of herself are competing—one who is hopeful, one who was raised investigating a case, and one who came alone to New York.

Jane and August continue having sex whenever they can, and August continues to try to figure out how Jane got stuck on the Q. She breaks into the back office at Billy’s to find Jane’s application, which she uses to figure out when Jane got stuck. In addition, they start requesting songs on the radio back and forth for each other.

On Niko’s birthday, the group goes to a drag show, where Wes and August talk about how in love Niko and Myla seem. In turn, the couple teases Wes about his refusal to commit to Isaiah—and August about her being in love with Jane for six months before doing anything about it.

As she watches Isaiah—as Annie Depressant, the drag queen—perform, August thinks about how much Jane would love the show. It makes her want Jane to stay. She realizes that she’s in love with Jane.

August wakes on the couch in her apartment with her roommates and feels very hungover. Her coworker Lucie, who was out with them the night before, makes breakfast. Normally, Lucie would be at work, but she’s working fewer hours because, as August explains to her roommates, Billy’s is closing. Together, they decide to host a charity drag show.

They quickly begin to organize, planning on charging a cover and selling drink tickets—and thinking of who might donate supplies. The event will take place in mid-August, two weeks before the Q shuts down.

Amid planning, August receives a call from her mother, who tells her that her grandma has passed away. Suzette isn’t close to August’s grandma, so August doesn’t need to come to the funeral. However, she did leave August money. This surprises August because she’d never even received a birthday present from her. When August tells her mom this, her mother confesses that her parents had paid for August to go to Catholic school. August had always presumed that the reason her mother didn’t have a lot of money was that she was paying for August’s schooling. Instead, however, most of her mother’s money went to paying for the investigation into Augie’s disappearance.

August is furious, having taken out loans to pay for school. Her mother tries to explain that her parents had always judged her for having August on her own and that she didn’t want them to treat August like they’d treated her. This only makes August madder, as she never really got to see her grandparents because she thought they didn’t want to see her. When Suzette interjects that they treated Augie terribly, August bursts, telling her to stop talking about him and that people leave. She wants space for a while.

Looking at her pocketknife, she thinks about no matter how far she’s tried to get from her uncle’s case, the skills and habits she picked up along the way are still part of her life. She’s using them even now to help Jane.

On the train, Jane remembers that several tattoos represent her family members’ Chinese zodiac signs. As she talks, she carves her name into the Q, and August then carves hers next to it. When Jane sees August’s knife, she recognizes it, remembering the person who owned it. Augie. August has told her few details about her uncle, so it’s shocking that she knew the knife belonged to him.

She’d brought the file her mother sent her months ago on the Q, and the newspaper photo on the first page is of Jane, listed as Biyu Su. Her mom had traced someone who knew Augie to New York, and it turned out to be Jane.

Jane and Augie had lived together in New Orleans. Jane explains that he was loved by everyone he knew and that she remembers hearing him calling Suzanne on the phone through their apartment’s walls. She reveals that he died in 1973 when a gay bar was burned down by an arsonist. Thirty-two people died, Augie among them. It was not well-investigated, and the news refrained from mentioning that it was a gay bar. Jane moved to New York to get away from the sadness, even though New Orleans was the first place she wanted to stay.

For August, her uncle Augie was the superhero figure of her childhood. He left home after a fight with his parents—presumably one in which he came out as gay. August doesn’t know how to tell Suzanne that she knows what happened. She decides to wait.

On the train, Jane has a cut on her lip from someone who was intolerant of both her race and her sexual orientation. She hit him and is still upset. She admits that it’s been difficult for her since most of the people she loves are dead and she’s missed so much in the lives of those who aren’t. Life will keep moving on, and she’ll be stuck on the train. She thinks August will get bored of her, always growing older while Jane stays the same. Jane says that August made her realize that she was stuck, made her remember, and “maybe that’s worse” (295). It’s becoming too much for her, and she knows what’s happening between them is very real, and ‘“it’s beautiful, but it hurts so bad’” (296)

August doesn’t want to run away from what’s happening, and Jane asks her if she wants her to stay. August replies that Jane must want that too, to some extent, and while Jane concedes that, she doesn’t think she can hold onto it if it means feeling like she does. She asserts that she wants to forget, so August must stay away and start taking a different train. When August leaves, she tells Jane that she did everything for her, not just because August wants her to stay.

Two days later, she arrives at Billy’s and tells her coworker Winfield that they’re going to need a bigger venue for the fundraiser. They’ve already sold 800 tickets. To make matters worse, a water pipe bursts in the restaurant. When Jerry the cook goes into the office to turn off the water main, he discovers that August has been using the office to work on Jane’s case.

He points out Jane, and August is confused, since he’d previously said that he didn’t remember Jane. He reveals that he’d never forget Jane since she saved his life. One night in July 1977, she explained that she’d heard from an old friend and was planning on leaving New York to go back to California. She and Jerry went out and drank too much. When they were waiting for the Q, he fell onto the tracks, and Jane helped him out. Then, the blackout of July 1977 hit, and when Jerry woke up on a bench the next morning, she was gone. He assumed that she’d run to catch her bus first thing in the morning.

August thinks back to Myla’s theory that something must have happened that caused Jane to become stuck on the Q. She finds a postcard Jane had in her backpack that she’d held onto as a clue. She realizes that it was from Augie, who was in California and had convinced Jane to come back.

At home, August pieces it together. The power surge that caused the 1977 blackout was what stuck Jane to the electricity of the Q’s rails. If they recreate the event, they can get her unstuck. Wes points out that they can’t shut down all of New York again, so August plans to just focus on Jane’s line.

When Myla arrives home, she points out that cutting off a line and bringing the power on actually causes two surges: the one that takes it out and one that brings it back. She also points out that when the MTA cuts the power to the Q in September, it might just cause Jane to disappear forever.

Days pass, and August still hasn’t talked to Jane. On her phone, however, she finds a text from Jane telling her to turn on the radio. The DJ says, “This next one’s a request from a frequent caller, one with a taste for the oldies. And this one’s a goodie. It goes out to August—Jane says she’s sorry” (310). It’s the song from their first night together. A second text arrives; it’s Jane asking her to come back.