The elevated platforms on both sides of the tracks were deserted except for a man, curled against the wall near her. Cigarette butts and used metro tickets, the refuse of commuters, littered the floor around him. A wine bottle under his head served as a pillow, and his chest rose and fell in fits. Against a trouser leg rested a cage with a bird feathered in white. A bottle clattered down the stairs far ahead.
She glanced in that direction. Anarchic voices echoed from some level above. Boots clunked with menacing heaviness at the top of the stairway. A youth, head shaved and wearing a brown shirt, swaggered down the steps and onto the platform.
He picked up the bottle at the bottom of the stairs and flung it onto the tracks below. It smashed onto the rails with a terrifying loudness.
The
