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“Then I feel free to jump over. Cop comes, I’ll explain. I have to stay someplace tonight and I’m sure they’ll have the mugging report or I’ll ask them to call in for it. They’ll see why I tried beating the fare, if I’m caught, and they’ll look at you as if you’re nuts. Not nuts but just wrong for carrying out your job so much.” Clerk, without looking up, points to his ear and then the closed hole while shaking his head. Dan goes to the turnstiles. Climb over or crawl under? Each seems an effort. Looks back. Reading the paper. “Come on,” rattling the gate, “buzz me in.” Clerk looks at the clock behind him. Nearly three? Dan can’t quite see. Once — Fiftieth and Broadway stop — watched unobtrusively from the platform — late afternoon last week — fare beaters sneak in by slipping through the turnstiles. Started counting and one of every seventeen people got in that way though a few by going over or under. He try it, one of the arms will pin his waist to the stile’s side just when the police come. Would seem easier to go under and goes under and over to the platform edge to see if a train’s coming. None. Looks back. The paper. Who’s he fooling? — he’s looked at me. Platform pay phone. Had a dime he’d call Helene to say “Complications — finally on my way.” Do and she might say “Forget it, much too late.” Come on, train, come on. Hopes it’s the local which he’ll take all the way to a Hundred-tenth. Looks back: paper, clock, stair exit, never me. Hole where the train could be coming: dark as far back as the next station. But this is Sixth, so at the Seventh Avenue stop or even Forty-second or Thirty-fourth, just to throw the police off if the clerk did call them, he’ll change for the D, if the train that comes is the E or F, but if it’s the D, take it to Fifty-ninth, though maybe changing cars along the way, and change there for the Broadway local.

Suddenly has to pee and walks toward the other end of the platform. “I’ve reported you now, striped sweater,” clerk says over a loudspeaker somewhere, “so you better pray a train comes soon and on it isn’t a transit cop, which at this hour every train’s supposed to be.” Takes off the sweater and pushes it through a trashcan flap. Has to pee badly. Men’s room locked, but he wouldn’t have used it, and hates to do this but does, zipping down his fly just in time, with a train coming into the station on the other side and his back up against the last pillar on the platform onto the tracks.

“You there, you filthy slob,” a man shouts from the downtown platform after Dan turns to pee against the pillar because he can’t stop. Train goes, nobody over there or on his side, zips up, train on the uptown track’s in sight but don’t get your hopes up as it could be at this hour the train to pick up money from the token booths or one to collect the trash or clean the tracks.