81. Footsteps
In a different life, perhaps she could have become a ticket-taker on one of those terribly noisome engines that clatter through the city on the way to greater things. She likes the swift and pronounces accuracy of the conductor's hole-punch, which is harmless and more charming than a gun, and she imagines, on days when the world has grown into a heedless tangle of events, that she could be a traveler, a witness, tied inextricably to the great and roaring engine beneath her feet.