The NE corner exit expects the commuter to step down two steps near the metro card machines, walk approximately four paces before stepping up again, this time about five steps. After walking around the curved tiled tunnel, the person wishing to exit to the NE Corner then walks up the usual ten steps to the street, rising between the two green painted iron railings and, in the case of the NE corner exit, under a wooden scaffold.
There is another exiting option which produces you a few feet away in the middle of Eastern Parkway on the 'island.'
The sign advertising this exit option reads 'NE corner Island' which sounds to me like a beach town with tourist shops and sandy children.
Why would someone exit the subway early in the morning carrying two coffees?
Perhaps she loves some coffee shop so much that she rides the train a few stops down and then a few stops back every morning in order to drink that particular cup. She's not on her way to work, she does not pass this loved shoppe on her commute she has no commute but she wakes up with the rush hourers and rushes out a few stops down and buys the two coffees and brings them back to bed. One for her, one for her lover who hasn't even awoken yet.
When he does wake up, at the sound of the lock turning, he will not sit up started and disoriented, expecting a burglar. He will roll over tiredly appreciative. He thinks there is something decidedly tender about the girl's devotion to this particular cup of rich nutty coffee.
Were he to wake up a morning without her, he thinks, taking a tentative sip- the coffee is always the perfect temperature by the time it reaches him- Were he to wake up a morning without her he is sure he would go himself a few stops down to this coffee shop and buy this cup of coffee. It will keep the idea of passion and choice alive in his life. He has learned that he can always, and is in fact entitled to, get what he wants.
The girl sits on the edge of the bed and sips her own cup, smiling at her lover like she is a sneaky thief who has gotten away with something.
What she has gotten away with is being extreme and being understood in her extremity.
After a few weeks she will no longer feel like feeling this way is a sort of theft from the ordinary world. She will, like her lover, begin to feel entitled to this feeling and the word entitlement will, along with other such extreme and powerful words, loose its negative association and become as tasty as the coffee.
Or perhaps...
...the girl exiting at the NE corner of Franklin Ave with two undrunk white paper cups of coffee- down the steps, up the steps, up the steps, under the scaffold, in the morning- perhaps her friend bought her two cups of coffee before he went to work. They split a cab but not the price of the cab the night before and so he has paid her back with double coffee for her day.
She walked into the subway tunnel with him for no reason other than because she was awake, too early, as early as rush hour but without a job. She walked down into the tunnel and swiped him through with her unlimited metro card. He went to work, she walked out of the tunnel, and you presumed the rest of the tale.
The carrying of undrunk cups of coffee at 8 in the morning does not necessarily imply the possession of a lover who understands your extremity- though it is a good clue, and were I Sherlock Holmes and solving the mystery of the girl with the coffee cups, I would not hesitate to presume as much from the evidence.
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