Victor Kerlow Dear Diary:
I’m standing with my back to the doors on a crowded uptown A train from Canal Street to Pennsylvania Station. Sitting to my left is a woman with Chinese takeout having lunch. To my right is her friend, separated by a number of bodies.
The friend says to the sitting woman, “Can I have my soda†There’s no way the two of them can reach each other, so I stick my hand out. The woman looks at me, I wink at her, and she hands me the soda, which I transfer to her friend. She takes a slug and hands it back (she needed her hand free to hang on in the moving train) and I hand it to her sitting friend.
A few minutes pass and the sitting woman reaches out with the soda. I take it and pass it on.
The transfer happens three or four times, and at no time is a word exchanged among the three of us.
The train pulls into Penn Station, the doors open behind me, and as I turn to step off, I feel a poke on my hip. I turn around and the woman looks up and says, “Thanks, hon.†And I step off the train into the crowd.
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