As if the night watchman or a lonely ocean captain, Vince sat firm. Attorneys, addicts, artists; a disorganized drudgery saturated his space. Every few minutes they would step off to the platform, a cyclic sea of workers, joining then deserting.

In the moments when the subway lights would hesitate, Vince liked to think they shared a disconnected companionship, alone together in the dark.

For fractions of a second, they weren’t peeking sideways at his torn jacket and sweatpants. Sometimes if he kept one eye closed while they boarded, he could open it, adapted to the dark, and watch everyone in the bleak moments when they couldn’t watch him. He oversaw the traveling throng in both florescent flicker and cold darkness, noting their faces and the logos on their clothes, the muscles of men and the legs of ladies. Businesswomen with handbags, prostitutes with familiar tears in their stockings, all players fitting roles in his head that the last mass discarded.

A brunette socialite slipped through the doors of the first car where Vince, observing absolutely, sat at his sentry perch. A 37-year-old woman playing the role of uptown window shopper, she stood holding a subway support bar and a luxury shopping bag. It wasn’t until the lights had faltered and Vince had cast her into a non-speaking role that he recognized her shape completely. The safety of brotherly darkness suddenly brought homesickness and a hurt that pushed his companions into the coming light – this background character, an extra in his short subway show, had a real name. If she hadn’t changed it, her last name would still be the same as his. Almost ten years in the past – millions of stops ago – she was Gabrielle, and she was his wife.

It was typical, in the course of his travels without destination, for companions to ignore and occasionally deride Vince. But no insult stung more intensely, no verbal debasement struck harder and deeper than the thought of her bored gaze turning to amazed recognition and disgust.

A drowsy lookout abandoning duty, Vince closed his eyes.