As we skirted Baltimore I finally began to relax. “Can I ask you a question?”

“That is a question,” she pointed out. She had a really confident attitude, but I noticed that her nails were either cut or bitten short.

“How many runs like this have you made?”

“Counting this one?” She pursed her lips. “Two.” The “railroad,” she explained, had been organized by former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who had turned down the opportunity to flee to Canada and supposedly was moving around the country in disguise, setting up safe houses and way stations. “He’s become an almost mythical figure,” she said. “You know, like Sasquatch.” I noticed she had a very pleasant voice, feminine with a backbone. “There are all these stories of him popping up all over the country. People claim they’ve seen him driving an Uber, pretending to be a power company lineman, even walking around wearing dark sunglasses being led by a guide dog.”

The farther we got away from Washington, the more relaxed she became. She was an actress, she said, which allowed her to move easily and often without attracting government attention. That’s why she had been recruited.

Suddenly it all clicked. That’s why she had looked so familiar. “You’re the cell phone girl!” I said with the delight of recognition. I repeated her line from the ubiquitous commercials, imitating the pseudo-sultry voice she used in those spots. “Everybody else is just talk. We’re the whole deal.” We laughed together, and for a brief moment the tension was lifted.

Laura, it turned out, was her real name. “Actually not my real real name,” she clarified, “but my real stage name. Somebody else was registered with SAG under my name, even though that wasn’t really their name.” She considered that, dismissing it with a chuckle. “That doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?”

“Ah, show business.”

She had spent the prior eight months working at the National Theatre. She had done a variety of roles, her favorite of which had been a witch in The Crucible. She hadn’t been picked specifically to be my escort, she had just had the day off from work, but it was fortuitous that we’d already met. She explained the procedure to me, cautioning that everybody was new to this, so we might have to make some adjustments on the run.

“Literally,” I said.

She would go with me to the first station, which was just on the fringes of Pittsburgh. If we were stopped, we would claim we were in a new relationship and sneaking away for a brief vacation. “That’s when I blush and steal a glance at you,” she said, stealing a glance at me.

Assuming Pittsburgh hadn’t been compromised, she would hand me off there. She didn’t know who would take me from there, but they would have their own cover story. “When you reach the border, you’ll be instructed when and where to cross safely. Canada’s being great about all this, they haven’t announced it publicly, but they will offer political asylum to anyone who puts one foot down…” She looked at Mighty Chair and paused, probably wondering if she had said something offensive. “Well, you know what I mean.”