The subway car before him is full—not Tokyo full, but enough that the straphangers struggle to keep their elbows out of each others’ faces. On the platform, two people stand between him and the open doors. He does not want them to go in. If they go in, he’ll have to decide whether to go in too. If they go in, he’ll have to weigh the struggle of pushing himself into the passengers nearest the door versus the embarrassment of someone cutting past him and doing the same. If they go in, he’ll be responsible for how late he is going to be.

In front of him, one of the two takes off her backpack, holds it low, and steps across the gap. She is attractive and if she smiled at the two business men she wedged herself between, they’d probably smile back. But she does not smile here.

He looks pleadingly at the remaining one, then glances away before anyone notices. Through the window, he sees a row of seats occupied solely by a to-go cup of Panera coffee and a latex glove. There’s a foot-wide gap between the seats and the crowd. If only someone could clean that up. Even use a long-sleeve-covered arm and knock the mess to the floor discretely, people might fill that space.

The other takes a small step toward the doors but before she crosses the threshold a man wearing a leopard-print carpet swears loudly. The vagrant walks along the yellow-painted edge of the platform up to the open doors. “Make room, you candy-ass suckers.”

He rocks backwards slightly and exhales.