Subways at night are a haunt for screw-ups, Elsa Díaz thought nervously, picking polish off her pinky nail. I shouldn’t be here.


Wednesday practice with the soccer team at NYU, where she went to grad school, had lasted much longer than usual, and then some of the girls had wanted to go to 16 Handles (despite the fact that they were still wearing their tiny mustard-colored shorts and cleats), and somewhere along the line she had checked her watch and found it was eleven o’clock. Now it was almost midnight, her body was covered in a sticky film of dried sweat, and she was trapped on a subway car that was eerily empty, or almost empty, anyhow.


Across from her sat a curvy blond girl in tight hot-pink pants and hoop earrings so wide, they could have made a loop around the ball that they dropped every year in Times Square. She was staring into space, with headphones on her ears and a noisy wad of gum in her mouth. At the other end of the car was a homeless man wrapped in a puffer coat on top of a windbreaker on top of a fleece jacket under an open sleeping bag. He was lying on his side, taking up six orange-and-yellow subway seats. He had a choppy greasy beard and his eyes were completely hidden under the brim of a grey hat with earflaps. His feet were planted in a pair of leather army boots that were falling to pieces. He was groaning loudly in his sleep. Sometimes he shrieked.


Right now he was quiet, muttering something about gunfire. Elsa shivered with fear and revulsion.


The subway car was empty except for the three of them. It was an old scuffy car, in desperate need of a paint job, or a mop, or better yet, the scrapyard. There were names and messages carved into the walls and seats. The scratched windows were dark and empty. In Elsa’s confused, exhausted state, it seemed as though there was nothing beyond them – that the whole universe was just this one nearly empty subway car hurtling through space.


"Blood in my boots,” the homeless man mumbled painfully.


Just then, the subway stopped, the doors thunked open and a man in round wire-rimmed glasses, a tweed suit and an incongruous Yankees cap stepped on. His worried brown eyes swiped back and forth, rested on the homeless man for a moment, and then settled quickly on Elsa’s and the girl’s corner. He came over and sat next to Elsa.


“UNNGGGH!” the homeless man groaned with renewed vigor.


Elsa looked down at her hands, which had taken on a slightly purple cast in the subway car’s fluorescent glow. The skin was soft and smooth, and the nails had been painted scarlet by her friend Maria the other night. She remembered a time not so long ago when her red nails had been ragged, and her skin red and raw. Her Puerto Rican parents had owned a Mexican restaurant in Montgomery, Alabama and she had worked there in the evenings washing dishes from the time she was nine years old. Nights full of dish soap and days full of school. Elsa never wanted to wash dishes for a Mexican restaurant again so she got perfect marks without fail.


When she got to high school she realized that grades weren’t enough – to escape the dish soap world she had to be perfect. Elsa joined the soccer team, the volleyball team, took free art classes and volunteered at an old people’s home. She learned to dress herself so that kids accepted her and adults approved of her. She became committed and responsible and well-rounded. The night before she left for Alabama State University, she washed dishes for her parents’ Mexican restaurant and cried for joy. Her parents hugged her and asked what was wrong, and she didn’t explain because she didn’t want to hurt them. Being perfect was going to save her, but it would also take her away from them.



And into a dark, smelly city full of crackheads, she thought wryly.



“FIRE!” the homeless man wailed.


She realized the man with the glasses was nudging her. “How long has he been doing that?” he asked, with a small smile.


She rolled her eyes. “Hours, probably. It’s putting me on edge. I wish he’d stop.”


“Same here.”


Across from them, the girl turned up her music so that Elsa could hear the tense beat of the rap she was listening to. Elsa hated rap – it was the music of dropouts. It reminded her of the kids she’d grown up alongside, learned to interact with but never relate to. They were not on the road to perfect; they had swerved off the edge long ago. You could pick out people like that real fast. In fact, you could pick out any type of person pretty quickly.


“You know,” the man said, “I once sat at a bus stop for half an hour with a homeless man who was singing this old song…it’s supposed to be a duet, but he was singing both parts…it went, Anything you can do, I can do better, I can do anything better…”


“Oh, I know that song!” She laughed. “Why didn’t you just get up and leave him?”


“Well, it was pouring rain, for starters,” he retorted. “I’d just walked three blocks through sheets of wind and spray, trying to get to this bus stop, and when I finally got there there was this ragged, drunken man bellowing out a one-sided duet in the most tone-deaf voice you can imagine. Do you know how disappointing that is?”


Elsa smiled. The man reminded her of an old history teacher she’d had in high school, who told jokes in class and bumped her grades from B pluses to A’s when she needed him to. “I can only imagine,” she said.


“My wife loves that song.” He faltered, lifted his baseball cap and scratched his head uneasily. “It’s from a musical we went to see a long time ago.”


“Oh,” said Elsa. “How long have you two been married?”


“She left me,” he said, an odd note coming into his voice, something she couldn’t quite place.


Elsa didn’t know what to say. She looked over at the homeless man and almost jumped. He was staring straight at them, holding his layers of quilting in place, his eyes watery and accusing.


“Bad!” he roared. “He’s coming, boys!”


“Freak,” the man in glasses mumbled, and Elsa chuckled.


Just then the train stopped. Elsa peered out the window, hoping the station sign would bear some name that she recognized, but they weren’t stopped at a station at all. She settled back into her seat, irritated. There must be train traffic or something.


The lights flickered, and suddenly half the lights in the train were gone, the homeless man’s half. Elsa saw the shadowy form of the homeless man’s head jerk from left to right. Then he swayed to his feet. Her throat seemed to seal itself with fear.



The man in glasses put a hand on her arm, as if to protect her. Then the lights clicked back on.



It was okay. No one could hurt her in a fully-fluorescent subway car with this funny old man behind her. “That was freaky,” she said, turning toward him with a smile. The lenses of his glasses flashed opaque and eyeless in the light. He smiled back at her, but there was something wrong with his smile. It was…appraising, almost. And hungry.


“She left me,” he said. “Oh, yes.”


The lights went off again, and her stomach turned. She could see nothing. Was the power out? She opened her mouth to say something and closed it again, suddenly aware that the man’s touch on her arm was heavier than before. Floating out of the darkness beside her was a voice higher and scratchier than should have belonged to anyone on the car:


“Anything you can do, I can do better…”


Across from her someone inhaled sharply, probably the blond girl. Elsa’s own breath was rattling out from between her teeth. She felt like she should be gasping for air but there was something sticky lodged in her throat and she was afraid to make a single sound. The man in glasses let his hand slide along her arm to the back of her neck. The dark was alive with his cold touch and her own fear and the sound of breathing and all the things she could not see but sensed.


Something glinted in the dark, an inch from her face – the lenses of his glasses. “Anything you can do, we can do…”


A strangled sound escaped her throat and she slammed her fist into the dark, into the solid warm meat of his forehead. He grunted and for a moment his hands fell away. She was up in a heartbeat, screaming in one long, never-ending syllable, ready to run into the darkness.


Instead she hit a pole and fell to the floor. There was a terrible, wobbly whine in her ears and her head was throbbing. The man in glasses fumbled for her body on the floor and then she felt his breath on her cheek.


The lights flickered on suddenly and she saw his upturned face gaping in confusion at something above and behind her. The lights went off and he howled. She felt his body lifted clumsily off of hers and heard a crash. More screaming. A dull thump. The lights came on and she saw the blond girl jamming open the door that led to the next car. The lights went out again and Elsa rolled onto her stomach to see what was happening to her attacker.


When the lights quavered to life for the last time, it was quiet. The fight, if that was what it had been, was over. The homeless man was sitting astride the man in glasses, his parkas in a heap behind him. He looked disconnected, as though he wasn’t sure what had just happened and didn’t see the need to trouble himself with finding out. His legs stuck straight out and the toes of his boots were swaying back and forth, slowly and precisely. The man in glasses was lying unconscious on his back, blood leaking from his nose. His head was between the homeless guy's swaying boots. His glasses were smashed on the floor.


Just then, the door at the end of the car slid open and the blond girl forced her way in, looking frantic. She stood in the doorway for a moment to take in the scene, and when it finally registered that the man in glasses was unconscious, her sigh of relief suggested that she had just slipped out from underneath the weight of a crushing load.


“Oh, thank God,” she said, and stumbled forward to embrace Elsa. Her words came out in a rush. “I didn’t want to leave you but I was so scared and all I could think of was getting help so I went and the conductor says he’s getting help oh my god are you all right? My name is Tracy.”


Elsa suddenly found herself sobbing into this stranger’s arms, Tracy’s arms. Finally she controlled herself. “Thank you,” she said weakly. “That was brave of you, to do that.”

“You’re the brave one,” Tracy said. Then she leaned back, holding Elsa’s face at arm’s length. “What’s that on your forehead? Did he hurt you?”

“No. I fell. He…” She jutted her chin at the homeless man. “He stepped in before anything could happen.”
They sat there looking at him for a moment. He didn’t seem to notice or care; his eyes stayed on the toes of his leather boots. Elsa knew that this was probably the moment to thank him, but she had a feeling he wouldn’t hear her if she did. He was already far, far away in the mystery land of his mind – who knew what instincts of compassion or anger had brought him back for those few seconds it took to save her?

Tracy took Elsa’s hand and squeezed it. Then she frowned. “What’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“At his collar. It’s a gold star on a blue ribbon.” She leaned forward a little. “At the top it says Valor. Is it some kind of medal?”

Elsa didn’t answer; she leaned toward him and touched the badge in wonder. As she sat there, her fingers resting on the beaten metal, a thought bubbled up quietly in her head:

The universe wasn’t just a nearly empty subway car hurtling through space. It stretched much, much farther beyond what she thought she knew.