Chapter Four
“I thought Alistair was a boy’s name,” the lanky train conductor mumbled with a smug underbite smile as he checked Alistair’s state ID and scanned the digital ticket on her phone. Alistair pointed at the chunky headphones she was wearing. She wasn’t listening to music, but he didn’t need to know that. This was a regrettably necessary tactic for a young woman living on her own in the city. Be prepared for everything you hear, act like you didn’t hear anything. The train lurched and started moving, into a dark sub-Manhattan tunnel, on its way upstate. Alistair slouched down, favored coat across her lap. She pulled her hoodie over her head, planted her feet on the back of the seat in front of her, and cracked the spine of an old paperback of Ursula Le Guin short stories, using t
