My cell phone number is on there. See it?” She pointed to the number. “You can call me anytime. My name is Meena. If things don’t work out with your boyfriend-if he turns out to be mean to you, or hurts you in any way-I want you to know you can call me. I’ll come get you, wherever you are. Day or night. And listen…,” she added. “Don’t show this card to your boyfriend. This is a secret card. For emergencies. Between girlfriends. Do you understand?”

Yalena just gazed at her, smiling happily.

She didn’t understand. She didn’t understand at all that Meena’s number might literally mean the difference between life and death for her.

They never understood.

The train pulled up to Forty-second Street station. Yalena jumped up.

“Grand Central?” she asked, looking panicky.

“Yes,” Meena said. “This is Grand Central.”

“I meet my boyfriend here,” Yalena said excitedly, grabbing her huge roller bag and giving it a yank. She took Meena’s card in her other hand, beaming. “Thank you! I call.”

She meant she’d call to get together for coffee sometime.

But Meena knew Yalena would call her for something totally different. If she didn’t lose the card…or if Gerald didn’t find it and take it away. Then give her a fist sandwich.

“Remember,” Meena repeated, following her off the train. “Don’t tell your boyfriend you have that. Hide it somewhere.”

“I do,” Yalena said, and scrambled toward the nearest flight of stairs, lugging her suitcase behind her. It was so huge, and Yalena was so small, she could barely drag it. Meena, giving in to the inevitable, picked up the bottom of the girl’s incredibly heavy suitcase and helped her carry it up the steep and crowded staircase. Then she pointed Yalena in the direction the girl needed to go-the boyfriend was meeting her “under the clock” in the “big station.”

Then, with a sigh, Meena turned around and headed for a train back uptown, so she could get to Madison and Fifty-third Street, where her office building was located.