Old Man Playing Mobile Games

The older man and woman sit across from me on the train, a wheeled walker in front of her. He stares down into his phone, which is how I know that the tinny, repetitive, nursery-rhyme-sounding instrumental music is probably coming from him. She stares off into space as he stabs and flicks at phantoms on his screen, while the music loops over and over its irritating, mournful evocation of a blank-eyed child sitting alone in a room turning a crank on a music box, forever.

I breathe deeply, trying to calm this strange mix of grief and anger simmering in my chest, until they finally get off the train at 42nd Street.