Three trains in a row came in and went right on through without stopping, without even slowing down. The engineer of the last one was a big, white-haired guy who was laughing his head off as he flashed past. Then a fourth train came in, and this one stopped.

Only two of us on the platform made a dash for it: me and a young fellow in khaki pants and a brown sweater. The doors opened and shut, zip-zip, practically in the same motion. The train took off without us.

“What’s going on?” the young fellow whined at me. “I’m late for work—I had to run out of the house without any breakfast. But I can’t get a train. I paid my fare. Why can’t I get a train?”

I told him I didn’t know, and I left him and went upstairs. I was very scared. I got into a phone booth and tried to call my office. The phone rang for a long time: no answer.

Then I wandered around on that corner near the subway station for a while, trying to decide what I should do next, trying to figure out what was happening. I kept calling the office. No luck. That was damn funny—it was way after nine o’clock. Maybe no one at all had come in today? I couldn’t imagine such a thing.

I began noticing that the people going by on the street had a funny sort of stare, a kind of pop-eyed, trancy look. Charlie, the garage man, he’d had it. But the kid in the brown sweater on the subway platform, he didn’t have it. I saw a mirror in a store window and looked at myself. I didn’t have it.

The store was a television repair place. They had a television set in the window, tuned into a program, and I got all involved in watching it. I don’t know what the program was—two men and a woman were standing around talking to each other, but the woman was doing a slow strip. She was talking and peeling off her clothes at the same time. She had trouble with the garter belt and the men helped her.