“Hey.”

The voice jolted me out of my trance, and I almost drop my book.

There’s only one person with me in the aging subway car. She’s young, and really pretty. Her hair’s a disheveled mess of neon pink spikes that ends just a millimeter before it covers over her hazel eyes. There are black lines of dried mascara running down each cheek, but other than that, she looks perfectly composed.

“What are you reading?” she asks. Her face betrays nothing but curiosity.

I don’t know how to respond at first. Strangers don’t talk to each other⁠—especially not in empty subway cars at three in the morning.

Eventually, I manage to say something.

“Ernest Hemingway.” I shift my fingers down the cover of the book so she can see the title. “The Old Man and the Sea.”

“Is it good?” she asks.

“Y-you haven’t heard of it?” I say before I can stop myself. I feel awful as soon as I do.

“Nope,” she says, apparently unoffended. She smiles a little, as though it were a joke. “I guess I don’t know much about Mr. Hemingway. What's the book about?”

As she talks, the train decelerates, and both of us shift in our seats. A sterilized recorded voice tells us to watch our step.

The doors open, and for a moment there’s silence. There’s nobody on the platform to get on, and there’s nobody from the train getting off.

Then the doors shut, and the canned voice buzzes aloud again, and the train rumbles and whines, and static noise fills the space between us, again.

For some reason, it’s easier to find my voice in the blanketing noise.

“It’s about a man, who dreams about big things.” I say, swallowing. “But he’s just an old fisherman. And all he knows how to do is fish.”

I think I sound like an idiot. But the girl’s makeup-smeared eyes are locked on mine.

“Then what?” she asks.

“Then, he catches the biggest and most beautiful fish he’s ever caught before.” I meet her gaze as I speak. “And he knows that this is the most important thing that could ever happen to an old fisherman like him. But when he’s trying to get back to shore—”

“Stop.” The word drops from her lips like a stone. “Don’t tell me how it ends.”

The train slows down again. The doors open again, and a sterile dead voice tells us to watch our step as no one but ghosts steps through the open doors.

Neither of us speak in the silence.

When there is noise again, the girl laughs, tiredly. She reaches into the kangaroo pocket of her pull-over hoodie, and retrieves a box of expensive cigarettes and a metal Zippo.

As she lights up, my eyes involuntarily flick towards the smoke detector nailed into the corrugated metal wall near the ceiling. She notices my glance.

“Don’t sweat it, chief. I don’t think they change the batteries on those things anymore.”

She inhales on her cancer-stick, and when she exhales I can see her breath rushing like a river out of her nose.

“Shit,” she says.

Her voice warbles, and for the first time I notice that her eyes are red and swollen. A fresh line of black paints its way down her left cheek.

“You okay?” I try to sound reassuring, but I fuck it up and I think I sound scared instead.

“No,” she says, but she stops crying. “It’s just…”

Her eyes glance up towards the broken smoke detector. They trace down the sides of the walls, where the peeling chrome finish exposes rusty brown splotches underneath.

“Nothing gets fixed anymore,” she says. “And I’m just… trying to pretend that I’m okay with that.”

Another lurch as the doors open. Another silent stop where nothing happens and nothing changes.

When the train is moving again, she gets up.

She takes one step towards me, and it looks like she’s about to take another, but then she hesitates, and she stops and puts her foot back down next to the other.

“What does,” she says, “the old man dream of being?”

“It doesn’t say. All it says, is that he dreams of lions.”

“Okay,” she says.

The next time the subway stops, during the stillness and silence, the only sounds are her footsteps as she steps off the train and onto the platform.

When the train starts to move again, our eyes meet.

She smiles, drops her cigarette, and stomps it out.