Cue up the intro to “Gimme Shelter” by the Stones, which will continue, sporadically, in the background throughout Khalika’s version of a girls’ night out.

We descended into the gullet of the subway a few blocks from the Envy—down, down into the claustrophobic, airless tunnels to the dripping platforms that, in these hours, were the stuff of horror movies. The screaming, gyrating train lurching to a stop, a pause in its grim, repetitive mission—loading and disgorging the lost, the disenfranchised, the pregnant, the doomed revenants. One or two unlucky voyagers might never make it—devoured by whatever lurked in the alleys, the dripping tunnels, the exclusive clubs of a city deemed by visitors as “a great city to visit, but you wouldn’t wanna live there.”

Not unless you have more loot than an Egyptian pharaoh, that is. Then you could look down from your penthouse at the abject devastation and sip your cocktail, secure in the knowledge that it could never invade your lavishly appointed, armed camp, fuck up your shit beyond all recognition and be gone before you drain out on the Italian marble floor, the perfectly faded antique Aubusson carpet. Ask Dick and Bianca. Ask any of them. Safe havens exist only in the imaginations of those without any.

We dropped our tokens in the slot, following along behind a few other hunched, subterranean sleepwalkers, graveyard shifters, feeders on the unwary, the dozing. A few unhinged spelunkers seem to have started a mini-craze—shoving oblivious, would-be passengers to the tracks below. I thought of Dawn of the Dead, a perennial favorite, and Return of the Living Dead.

But with my sister, there was no fear—ever.

My twin spoke. “Wake up and grab your crotch or something—you look like a victim. The meat wagon is coming.”

I was a little anxious about being included in her magic orbit again after so many weeks, but I was traveling, by subway in the wee hours, with my badass sister. I couldn’t stop smiling.

“Emily’s filthier coach approaches, minus any civil fellow travelers. Maybe a couple weenie wagers for giggles?” She made a fist around an imaginary dick, moved it up and down, grinning. A shivering dude on the platform spat into the rails and gave her a sneering sidelong look. That made her repeat her performance until the guy moved away.

Khalika shrugged. “Dunno what his problem is.”

We laughed at some graffiti on the white-tiled walls—a smiling giant hard-on with balls done in magic marker, a cryptic scrawl: “Filthy cooking bastards” and a straightforward “Jennifer sucks cocks in hell with her mom.”

“Well, I have a cunning stunt in mind tonight, my little equine goddess. Just watch. What do you want to bet that as soon as we get on that rolling fart box, choices will need to be made?”

“Isn’t that always the way it is?”

“Pretty much.”

The platform was quiet as an isolation tank, except for the steady drip of dirty water plinking on the tracks from the street above, echoing off the cruddy walls, and puddling in the spaces between the rails. Our coach roared and clattered in, came to a wheezing stop. We got on and Khalika motioned to sit down across from a girl who looked both bored and nervous. She wore a green army jacket with a sweatshirt under it with the hood pulled up, shadowing her face.

Talk about a victim. This girl was practically flashing a neon sign. Khalika spread her legs wide enough to nudge the nasty looking druggie she’d deliberately sat next to, whose own thighs were also spread to the max. He had a face like congealed oatmeal with a couple of raspberries tossed in. She made eye contact with him; he looked away. They hate that—the eye contact—makes them think you’re packing something they don’t want to deal with. Like maybe you’re a plain-clothes cop or an off-duty one. I saw that the guy had already mentally crossed us off his list of ladies to mess with, and he fixed his eyes on the poor little green riding hood across the aisle, who averted her eyes, like almost every woman would.

But not my sister. Not me. Not anymore.