I could have grabbed at her jacket and tried to tear some other wires loose. But there were fat pockets of goose feathers between me and the wires. A slippery nylon shell. No touch, no feel.

No hope.

I could have tried to incapacitate her. Hit her hard in the head, knock her out, one punch, instantaneous. But as fast as I still am, a decent swing from six feet away would have taken most of half a second. She had to move the ball of her thumb an eighth of an inch.

She would have gotten there first.

I asked, ‘Can I sit down? Next to you?’

She said, ‘No, stay away from me.’

A neutral, toneless voice. No obvious accent. American, but she could have been from anywhere. Up close she didn’t look really wild or deranged, just resigned, and grave, and scared, and tired. She was staring up at me with the same intensity she had been using on the opposite window. She looked completely alert and aware. I felt completely scrutinized. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything.

‘It’s late,’ I said. ‘You should wait for rush hour.’ She didn’t reply.

‘Six more hours,’ I said. ‘It will work much better then.’

Her hands moved, inside her bag.

I said, ‘Not now.’

She said nothing.

‘Just one,’ I said. ‘Show me one hand. You don’t need both of them in there.’

The train slowed hard. I staggered backward and stepped forward again and reached up to the grab bar close to the roof. My hands were damp. The steel felt hot. Grand Central, I thought. But it wasn’t. I glanced out the window expecting lights and white tiles and saw the glow of a dim blue lamp instead. We were stopping in the tunnel. Maintenance, or signalling.

I turned back.

‘Show me one hand,’ I said again.

The woman didn’t answer. She was staring at my waist. With my hands high my T-shirt had ridden up and the scar low on my stomach was visible above the waistband of my pants. Raised white skin, hard and lumpy. Big crude stitches, like a cartoon. Shrapnel, from a truck bomb in Beirut, a long time ago. I had been a hundred yards from the explosion.