High Crime Area by Joyce Carol Oates

knew she would give him no trouble. Smiling sidelong at me like he knew me, or was pretending to know me, this was a game we’d played before, him and me. (Was it?) A woman seated close by decided to move to another seat, uncomfortable with Plastic Girl and now this new guy hanging above her, each of them drawn to me, as eyes were drawn to me generally, and right away the guy took her place before Plastic Girl could sit down. You could see that Plastic Girl was angry. Baring her teeth like she’d have liked to tear at someone with those teeth. I looked up at her appealing with my eyes, sorry! I was sorry!—but Plastic Girl shrugged and moved off, took a seat farther down the car that had just opened up. As the train lurched I could see her shaved head glowing like a bulb and the platinum-blond quills quivering like antennae. I knew: Plastic Girl would keep her eyes on me, she would not let me go so easily.
    The man beside me nudged me—it was the first actual touch of this night, I reacted with a start—asking did I remember him? Huhhh?
    Did I remember him? Dunk’s the name.
    Dunk! I did not remember any Dunk .
    Laughed to hear such a silly name— Dunk.
    Sure you do, sweetheart. You remember Dunk.
    Then realizing yes I’d met Dunk before. More than once before. Why I’d felt sort of strange seeing him, sort of protected-by-him, the way you do with some individuals, though not with most men, not ever. A few weeks ago we’d got to talking in the subway and he’d taken me for coffee (at Union Square). Possibly I’d been dressed then as I was dressed now. And Dunk in the fake-buckskin jacket he was wearing now, and his steel-gray hair pulled back in a little pigtail at the nape of his neck as it was now. (Had to smile at this little pigtail since Dunk was near-bald except for a band of hair around his bumpy-looking head he’d let grow to pull into a pigtail.) There was something old and comfortable about Dunk, pothead hippie from long ago. Dunk said he remembered me, yes he remembered Lorelei, hey did I know I’d broken his heart? Dunk made a weepy jocular sound like a wheezing heart might make but mostly he was needing to blow his nose which he did in a dirty tissue, making a honking noise so I laughed. That was Dunk’s power: to make you laugh. The dirty wadded tissue in his hand was the sign for in my pocket was a dirty tissue stained with blood.
    Dunk had been a psychiatric social worker for the city. Had to quit after twenty-three years and take disability pay to save his soul, he said. In the coffee shop at Penn Station he told me of his life lapsing into a singsong voice like a lullaby. You could see that Dunk had told his story many times before but Dunk had no other story to tell. He was very lonely, he would confide. His skin exuded heat like a radiator. Made me laugh—(almost)—how his right eye drifted out of focus while his left eye had me pinned. In the coffee shop Dunk paid for my coffee and for something to eat, Dunk believed that I was too skinny. He said that I would never mature if I was malnourished. He said that my organs would age prematurely and that I would die prematurely. He told me of his patient who’d threatened to kill him and he’d said what difference did it make, we’re all going to die anyway aren’t we. He’d been so depressed. And something terrible had happened to his patient, and Dunk was to blame though no one knew. Though Dunk would not confide in anyone except me.
    Then, Dunk said, he got bored with being depressed. I was listening with just half my mind. The other half yearning for you . By this time I’d realized that Dunk was not my destiny.
    This night, Dunk is asking would I come with him, we could have a meal together. Politely I said thank you, but I have an appointment with someone else.
    Who is my destiny? You?
    Whoever it was, I didn’t see. Never saw his face. Never saw but a shadow in