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twice as long as the run on the subway. She dragged her MetroCard through the slot with a well-practiced swipe, pushed through the turnstile, and headed down to the platform to catch a train that would drop her off virtually under the hotel. As the train rattled to a halt, Eve glanced at her watch. She wouldn’t get there in time for dinner, but that was all right—most of the people she would be talking about tonight wouldn’t be getting any dinner, so why should she? But she knew she would arrive in plenty of time to be on the dais when Monsignor McGuire was ready to introduce her. So it would be all right. She stepped into the car, sank onto a vacant seat, and was about to read through her speech one last time when a rough voice spoke.
    “You Miz Harris, ain’t you?”
    The woman was clinging to one of the poles in the middle of the car, perhaps to steady herself against its swaying as the train moved on, but more probably against the cheap red wine that had obviously been her dinner. The bottle—its neck sticking out of a crumpled and stained brown paper bag—was still clutched in her hand, and even as she gazed blearily at Eve through bloodshot eyes, she raised it to her lips, tipped it up, and sucked out another mouthful. As a few drops of the dark red fluid dribbled down her chin, she thrust the bottle toward Eve. “Want some?” she asked, her words half questioning, half challenging.
    Eve felt the man next to her shifting in his seat, and didn’t have to look at him to know he was adjusting his newspaper to block his view of the shabbily dressed woman who seemed to be carrying all her possessions in three layers of plastic garbage bags so ragged that tufts of dirty material were bursting through in half a dozen places. Behind the woman, Eve saw two other people edge away before the woman could focus her attention on them.
    Eve hesitated only a moment, then met the woman’s gaze straight on. “Actually, there’s nothing I’d like better right now,” she said. “But I’m on my way to make a speech, and I’m not sure I should.” The woman seemed to weigh her words, turning them over in her mind as if seeking some hidden meaning. As the train began to slow for the Canal Street stop, the man next to Eve stood up and scuttled toward the door at the far end of the car, as if afraid of getting too close to the woman who was still clinging to the pole. As another man started edging toward the empty seat, Eve patted it and smiled at the woman. “Why don’t you sit down?”
    The woman’s eyes widened slightly, then darted first to one side, then the other, as if she couldn’t quite believe Eve was speaking to her. Half a dozen people were watching now, and the woman seemed about to bolt. “At least put your bag down for a minute. It looks heavy.”
    Finally, the woman made up her mind. Plumping herself down on the seat next to Eve, she placed her bag between her feet, keeping her hand on it as carefully as if it were a case of diamonds. “Most people look the other way,” she said.
    Eve folded up her speech, shoved it into the enormous leather shoulder bag she always carried, then groped around in the bag until her fingers found what she wanted. When her hand emerged, it was clutching a large, Hefty trash bag, one of the extra thick ones with drawstrings. “Maybe we ought to put your bag in this,” she suggested. “It might be raining pretty hard when you get off.”
    “Might not get off till tomorrow morning,” the woman countered truculently.
    Eve shrugged. “According to the weather report, it might rain for days. Besides, isn’t it always nice to have new luggage?”
    Suddenly, the woman smiled, and let go of her bag long enough to stick her hand at Eve. “I guess it’s true what everyone says about you, Miz Harris. My name’s Edna Fisk. But everybody calls me Eddie.”
    “Everybody calls me Eve,” the councilwoman replied. “At least my friends do.”
    Through the next half-dozen stops,