Shuteye for the Timebroker by Paul di Filippo Page B

You think that’s it?”
    She seemed to be calming down a little—or was I just deluding myself? She still stood taut as a bowstring, almost ready to snap. Perhaps if I humored her, I could get her to sit down, at least.
    “I don’t know,” I said. “I never thought about it that way before. Perhaps you’re right though. Sometimes you read a page in your book, look up, and you’re halfway across the city. Other times to go a few blocks down here can take forever.”
    She nodded rather too violently, as if what I had said confirmed her worst fears. A tear leaked out from under her glasses and crawled slowly down one cheek. I wished I could see her eyes.
    “Forever,” she said after a few seconds, looking as if she wanted to spit. “Jesus, how I hate that word. It’s so fucking big and cold. It’s like a stone in my stomach.”
    She left off wringing her hands and laid them both across her stomach. She bent forward violently, as if someone had gut-punched her. It was as if she were the magician’s assistant in the sawed-woman trick and something had gone wrong and now she was feeling the toothed blade pulled back and forth across her soft flesh.
    “Hey,” I said, really concerned now. “Why don’t you sit down for a minute?”
    She unfolded herself gradually-—as if the pain were receding, or perhaps had been only remembered—with an immense effort of will and energy. She looked straight at me. At least I think it was straight at me. Those damn glasses made it almost impossible to tell. She could just as easily have been looking over my shoulder at some nightmare vision conjured up out of her own brain.
    Suddenly I felt that maybe, in looking at her, I was doing that also.
    “No,” she said, now somewhat more self-possessed. “No, I don’t want to sit down. I want to stand here and look where we’re going.”
    With that she turned again toward the window set in the door and practically mashed her face up against it, as much as her glasses would allow. I wanted to say: If you’ve ridden this train so often, surely you know where you’re going. But something kept me from speaking.
    I wondered what the driver beside us—if he could hear us through the closed door of his cab—thought of our crazy conversation. I wondered what I thought of it. Was it worth pursuing? Shouldn’t I just leave this poor distressed kid to her private sorrows and move to another car? What right did I have to intrude?
    I was just turning to go when her voice brought me back.
    “Hey, mister, it’s lonely in this car. Won’t you look out with me?”
    I hesitated. Then I heard myself saying, “Sure. If you want me to.”
    She didn’t say anything to that, so I assumed it was OK.
    I moved beside her and she shifted to give me some room at the window. It was a tight squeeze and our hips ended up touching.
    Her clothed flesh was as cold as the water that dripped from the station ceilings in winter. Her touch seemed to suck the living heat from my body.
    But I couldn’t find it in myself to desert her.
    Together we stared at the scene hurtling by, as if it were some television broadcast from hell.
    Just beyond the door was a small platform extending out a few inches. Three or four weak-looking chains were strung across the edge of this precarious ledge. They were all that would hold you back from falling onto the tracks if you stepped out.
    But I had no intention of stepping out. Why had I even briefly considered it?
    Beyond the nose of the car the tunnel was a claustrophobic, stygian alley, relieved here and there by puny lights outlining emergency exits to the surface or certain inscrutable valves and switches. The train’s own headlights barely diminished the overwhelming darkness that continually rushed forward at us. The track was littered with random rubbish: paper cups, spikes, boards, pipes, rags. I wondered how the drivers could stand to confront this senseless, monotonous, utterly ugly vista hour after hour. What must