After each train leaves, the subway is empty except for Carmen, and then about a minute later the first person descends from above until the slow trickle fills up the platform, then another train comes and clears it out again, and Carmen can’t help but think of the filling and draining of calcium in a synapse, the molecular beat of the thing; that this part of the city is like a chthonic alien organ with some opaque function. Occasionally the perceptive among those who pass notice with a quirk of interest the beautiful young woman planted in the middle of it all, biting at her fingernails, fanning herself, watching, waiting for something unknown and unsayable. And ever so often the automated voice addressed independently of listeners—“Stand clear of the closing doors, please.”

Eventually the people become less numerous. In the lateness of the night her mind begins to imagine scenarios, to play them out again and again on a loop, as if some part of her is daring something to happen, is waiting for something drastic. Instead the night just gets later and later and the people fewer and fewer, until finally entire trains are coming and going without the entrance or exit of a single soul. And Carmen is becoming half-terrified of the menacing long platform next to her, which extends into that subterranean realm . . . The scenario she imagines is that of a creature, something huge but lithe, something with an animal head, peeks from the side out onto the platform, a bull’s head maybe, leering at her, its mouth gaping and panting, its eyes impossibly dark and lewd upon her, and eventually the image becomes so strong, and the expectation so intense that she suddenly bolts from her wooden seat, pushing through the turnstiles and in her flight continually whipping around to look until she reaches the safety of the surface.

Carmen sticks to lighted paths all the way back to her apartment, deriding herself for being silly but also deeply glad when she arrives back in that cool safety and closes the door behind her, locking it. She is wiping the sweat from her brow, is adjusting the thermostat even further downward, when, turning, she pauses. Kierk’s Hello Kitty notebook sits on the seat of one of her kitchen chairs. It had somehow gone unnoticed, the sly thing. Kierk, in his rush, hadn’t taken it this morning. Or maybe she had unconsciously hidden it last night in her sleepy state? She picks it up gingerly and thumbs through the pages, blocky with text. It was strange that Kierk hasn’t contacted her about it, tried to get it back.