The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith

that her ticketed and his unticketed body might pass through together, as one. It had never failed him before, this tactic, but here came a hand, heavy on his shoulder, and he was taken to the next level of punishment: a gray-haired woman sitting behind a pane of glass. Her left leg was in plaster, resting on a pile of books that in turn was balanced on a stool. Her spectacles hung from a chain. A plastic name tag, printed in a font meant to approximate the natural sweep of a human pen, said
Gladys.
    Alex smiled.
    “Can I get one from Mountjoy, please.”
    Gladys cupped her ear theatrically, International Gesture for
Come again
?
    “You waan what? You goin’ Mountjoy?”
    “No—no, I just
came
—”
    “Bwoy—speak into de ting; me kyan hear you.”
    “I said, I just
came
from Mountjoy—”
    “So, you want a ticket back dare?”
    “No, I—just—the machine at Mount— There was a train coming, so I just jumped—”
    “Oh, I see. You can call me Cassandra, young man, ’cos I see, I see.”
    “No, look. Right. No. Let’s start again. Wasn’t like that, was like this: I just—there was no time to buy . . . so I . . .”
    Alex faded. The woman reached for a long piece of homemade something—two pencils bonded with an elastic band—and slipped it down into her cast. Scratched.
    “So, what you are sayin’—and feel free to correct me if I am perchance mistaken—is dat you skipped de fare; you jus’ skip it like it
nutting
—”
    “Wasn’t like that—”
    “—dareby
ignoring
de executive and legislative decrees of our government—”
    “Is this . . . ? I mean—in the wider sense—necess—”
    “—not to mention de
explicit
conditions of travel as set out by de London Underground, available for perusal by anyone
wid eyes;
as well as
violatin’
a communal code of fairness and
right doin’s;
as implicitly held by your fellow passengers—”
    “Yes, ha. Very good. Look, I’m actually running—”
    “—and last, but
by no means least,
making a nonsense of your own personal conscience wid regard to an
imperative morality
which, if we don’t feel it in our bellies, we will find articulated in Exodus: Thou. Shalt. Not.
Steal.
”
    Sometimes Alex thought that if you got all the part-time mature students in the world and laid them head to toe around the line of the equator strapped down in some way so they couldn’t move, that would be a good thing. Ditto anyone in night class.
    “Ten pounds, please, young man. Wid de fare on top.”
    Alex didn’t have ten pounds so he handed over some plastic, which made the woman suck her teeth, lift her leg off the
The Last Days of Socrates
and go hobbling to the back of her box to get the mechanical swiper thing. She swiped, she passed it through, he signed, he passed it through, she held it up next to his card, he smiled. She looked at him with suspicion.
    “Is dis yours?”
    “What? Is there something wrong with it?”
    She looked at the card again, at the signature, at the card, and then passed it back to him.
    “I don’t know. Mebbe wid you. You look like you sick or someting. Like you goin’ to fall over.”
    “Sorry, Gladys, are you a doctor? Or a prophet? I mean, as well? Or can I go now?”
    She scowled. Called for the next person in line. Alex grabbed his flask from the counter. Stalked towards the exit.
    OUTSIDE, HE TOOK a sharp left, intending just to run the length of the street, turn left and walk straight into the auction house. But he had not counted on the sales. On the women. The sun was low enough to spotlight them, they were outlined very precisely. They put Alex in mind of the Chinese shadow puppets of the old Tangshan theater. They moved fast and did not blur. So beautiful! In through doors, setting off tinkling bells, back out, doing it again. Handsome, quick, lithe: deer doing the hunting for a change. There was a chasm between this and the manner in which Alex shopped (a sort of blind lunge from store to store, and only for