She was at the end of the car when the old man emerged at the other end. "My Queen," he called out plaintively. "My Queen, do you think so little of me?"

"You've given me no reason to think any better," she yelled. "You crazy bastard- you tried to push me in front of the train!"

And as the train lurched suddenly, the wheels shrieking, Susan was flung, helter-skelter, onto the nearest seat. For a moment, her head spun from the shock of it; but when she saw the old man approach her, she scrambled up on her feet. "Stop," she barked, as if she really possessed any authority. "Stop where you are!"

But the ancient continued towards her, relentlessly. "My Queen, do not be afraid."

"Fat chance of that! I warn you, don't come any nearer-"

"My Queen, I love you as my own daughter. I have known you since Cair Paravel."

"What?" Susan stared at him. "What did you say?"

"Cair Paravel." As the old man precisely annunciated the strange, melodious name, Susan felt a twinge of recognition. It was as if she were recalling some misty fragment of memory somewhere. Like something from a dream, or a dream within a dream...

"You remember the name."

"I- I don't know," Susan stammered. "It must have been in a book somewhere. I read all sorts of things when I was little."

"No," said the old man. "You lived there, Daughter of Eve. You were the Queen. You reigned there, with your brothers and sister- wise and good and pure as the dawn."

Susan only gaped at him, rather like a deer that had run in front of Alan's Packard when they had vacationed up in the Catskills last summer. "I saw you," the old man continued dreamily. "At the tournament. The one that was held before you sailed off to Calormen. To be wooed by that dark prince." He paused, and looked away. "I never had seen anything so beautiful in my life," he went on, almost to himself. He closed his eyes, and convulsively clenched his ancient, veined, liverish hands. His voice became thick. "After my brother sent me to that institution- I-"

At that, she sat up, and looked at him sharply. "What institution? Bellevue?"

"Yes," the old man said absently. "That's what they called it..."

He paused, and a gentle smile crossed his face. For a moment he looked almost normal- a whimsical old man feeding the birds in Washington Square Park- instead of some stentorious biblical prophet.

"Herman. Yes, Herman... he was my brother. He thought I spent too much time alone. He never had too high an opinion of my facilities in the first place." He chuckled, tapping his hands absent-mindedly against his bewhiskered chin. "Well, so he sent me to Bellevue. He always liked to take care of the family."

"I'm sorry," Susan whispered. Of course, she scarcely meant it, but she would say anything to placate this maniac. God, what she would do for a policeman... or Alan. Dear, dear Alan. As her grip on her purse tightened, his pale face with his untrimmed brown hair and horn-rimmed glasses flickered in her mind. She would never take him for granted again. She would go to his poetry reading- she would stop complaining about his deadbeat bohemian friends- she would even go to San Francisco with him- she would do anything, just as long as she could see him once more...

"Yes, yes. It was horrible. But, you see- in the long run- it was a good thing."
As hard as she tried, she could not keep a note of incredulity out of her voice. "Was it?"

"Oh yes." He leaned closer. "For," he whispered, "I found Narnia!"

Her voice cracked. "You- you did!"

"Yes." He cackled. "The last place where that nurse would ever dream."

"A wardrobe?" said Susan, before she could stop herself.

"No- close enough though." He rubbed his hands with glee. "A janitor's closet!"

"A janitor's closet!"

"Oh yes, with mops and brooms and bottles of bleach and disinfectant and everything. That's what it was during the day. But during the night-" He paused again, for dramatic effect. "A portal to another world!"

"Really?" said Susan, her voice becoming feeble. "I never would have dreamed-"

"No! No! Who would have? I jumped into it- just to hide from the nurse- and before I knew it- found myself- whisked into an enchanted kingdom!"

He turned away from her, slightly, and stared off into space, transfixed. "With a castle, and centaurs- and fauns- and talking beasts! It was everything I had ever dreamed of. All these great crowds of marvelous creatures were streaming into these stands beneath the castle, to attend a grand tournament. The pennons flew; the trumpets callled; the armor of the knights gleamed. It was like out of a children's book." And he gazed back at her, his eyes shining. Like Miniver Cheevy, thought Susan, suppressing a hysterical laugh.

"Maybe, she said, "because it was out of a children's book."

"No," he said fiercely, "it was real! Real! And no one can tell me otherwise! I saw YOU there, Queen Susan."

"Me?"

"Yes. You were seated upon a throne on a dais, in the center of the grandstands. You were garbed in rose, dark hair falling like a river down your back, and a circlet of gold upon your lily-white brow- reigning like an angel over the assorted throng. I understood their language, you know. I understood the whispering. How you and your fair brother were about to journey south to the country of the swarthy princeling who was fighting so bravely in the lists, against the other knights of your country."

"Rabadash," she murmured, pressing a gloved hand against her suddenly heated face.

"See?" The old man crowed with delight. "You do remember!"

"I don't remember anything," she said, although she felt the whole world swimming in front of her. Rabadash? How could she remember that ridiculous name? She could have made him up, she could have sworn it. But for a moment she could have said he had been as real as her brothers and sister; if she closed her eyes, she could see that ruthless handsome Calormene sultan's son; listen to his rustling silks, and smell his perfume, of heady spices, and attar of roses.

I'm losing my mind, she thought frantically. I have never met anybody like that it my life- save that Indian lady and her husband who lived next to me in my old flat in Tottenham and who treated me occasionally to curry and vindaloo- and they were nothing like this Rabadash person! I must have gotten the idea for him out of my old copy of the Arabian Nights. She did, after all, have such an active imagination when she was a girl.

But still- it seemed so real-

"Oh, but you do. Don't deny it," the old man crowed. "I see the truth in your eyes."

Susan's lips thinned. "How long did you stay in- in- this place you call Narnia?"

"Not long. Until the tournament ended. But it felt like years. I wanted to stay there, for the rest of my life. But He-"

"He?"

"Yes, you know. The Lion. He," said the old man, with a transcendent air. "Gold as the sun, with eyes like fire- he came up to me, and told me I must leave. 'Return to your own world, Son of Adam,' he said to me, in a voice like a bell, deep and pure. "This place is not for you.' And I begged him. I begged to him to stay. I told him I could not bear to go back to that place, with the barred windows, and shock treatments, and the nurse; and although the Lion was obdurate, in not allowing me to stay, he took pity on me, and said I could see Narnia in my dreams. And with that I had to be content.

"And so I returned to the hospital, and it was as bad as I feared. But-" and he chuckled again- "I had my dreams! Yes! And I saw you, my Queen, and I knew- I knew- that I could come back to it all again! That this country of flowers and ever shining summer- that is my real place, not this dull concrete hell populated by human rats and dogs! You are my sign, my icon. And we," he hissed, his eyes glittering like a zealot's, "shall return to Narnia... together."

"You're mad," choked Susan. "Perfectly mad!"

"No, no," he cackled. "That is where you are wrong, my Queen. I am perfect, perfect, perfectly sane! For you miss your brothers and sisters, do you not?"

Despite herself, she gasped, and the old man's smile grew, if possible, even wider, until she thought his face would split in too, like an overripe melon.

"Well, my Lady, I have seen them. I have seen them, reigning blissfully in the true Land... as pure and shining as angels... with none of this filth that you find here."

"Filth?" she said faintly. "What do you mean by that?"

"What do I mean by filth?" he spat. He whirled around, waving his arms wildly. "When we go aboveground- take a look around you! Smell- breathe- this Sodom, this Babylon that we live in! Look around at this place- this city- of pimps and whores, rapists and sodomites, beggars and thieves! This place- where thugs shoot children in the back- and hopped-up arsonists incinerate old women in their sleep- and girls spread their legs for their dope habits! I know the life you left behind. I know what you have become. You, you of all people, can be so much more. You who were once a queen, a goddess among men, golden, glorious..."

The old man then gave her a hard, merciless stare. "Now... you are only another woman." He said 'woman' with such contempt that she, despite herself, started shrinking back into her seat. "Just another skirt, a frail, a cheap secretary," he sneered, "who slaves away, a cog in a company machine!"

He paused again, significantly.

"And there is only one way to restore you to your former glory."

"What," she said, unsteadily. "By pushing me in front of a train?"

He rolled his eyes upwards, and spread his hands apart, as if he were Billy Sunday himself. "Death is not an end, but a restoration."

"Maybe," Susan cried, "but I'm not ready to die just yet!" She thought, frantically, of Alan, her friends, walking through Central Park, traveling down to Brighton Beach to get steaming hot knishes at Mrs. Stahl's, then greedily eat them while walking along the Boardwalk towards the roller coasters of Coney Island...

"Aslan," she said, for the first time in years. She paused as the name left her lips- the mere act of saying it gave her a sudden conviction, a rush of courage. "Aslan wouldn't want me to die."

"Aslan!" The old man's gentle, evangelistic air disappeared, and he hissed. "How do you know what he wants?" He stabbed at her with a gnarled finger. "You've become nothing but a faithless, gutless creature. Only by taking this final step can you possibly redeem yourself! And only with my help can you succeed!"

Susan pulled herself out of the seat, and pulled herself up to her full height. Her eyes blazed, and her black hair, so carefully styled as she had left the apartment, was flying about her face in disheveled strands.

"What," she snarled. "Do you think you're Aslan?"

As she said this, the lights in the car flickered; once, twice; then the subway ground to a full, screeching stop. As the doors opened, Susan sprung out and bolted- like the White Stag, that she perhaps once hunted, in another life, when she was a Queen.

***