I felt him staring at me so I kept looking down at my book. No longer reading, just pretending to stay busy. Then he walked over to me and spoke. “Where are you?”
And this, I thought, is how I will die. My punishment, perhaps, for not listening to my mother when she begs me not to ride the train alone at night. My mom would be a wreck when she learned of my kidnapping. Devastated to lose her youngest daughter, but on her good days she’d manage to laugh and call me a fool. After all, she’d told me so.
“Where are you? In the book?”
I turned to look at the man speaking to me. “Oh! I’m almost done.”
“And what do you think?
“I think it reads like poetry.”
“If you like ‘Giovanni’s Room’ then you should read ‘Go Tell It on the Mountain.’ It’s his best one. Have you read Baldwin before?”
“Only ‘Sonny’s Blues.’ My creative writing teacher in college liked his work a lot.”
“Well, he’s the best writer we had. I’m still reading him now.”
“What are you reading now?”
“ ‘Giovanni’s Room’ — again.”
He pulled the book from his bag and showed me his edition, newer looking than mine.
“Do you mind if I take a picture?” I asked.
“O.K.,” he said.
I thought it was cool that I was reading the same book as a stranger on the subway. But I also needed to show my mom.
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