Khalika, all casual, reached inside her jacket, extracted a switchblade, flicked it open, and began to whistle through her teeth. She pulled a bandana from her pocket and began to polish the blade—an up and down motion; slowly, steadily—until the ugly, chalky bastard next to her got uncomfortable and moved several feet away. He wasn’t worried enough to take his skanky ass to another car, but appeared to be getting angry, frustrated. He kept his focus on the girl, occasionally glancing at Khalika and me. Whenever the girl looked up, there he was, scoping her with his speed-crazed orbs. “Just your type, huh,” Khalika called out to the girl, jabbing her thumb at the guy. The girl said nothing, lowered her head, almost smiled.

“Fuck you, dyke,” said the prince, to which Khalika responded, amiably, “Not even if they fumigated your ass and transplanted a pair of balls between those twig legs.”

I almost knew what she’d say before she said it, and I started to laugh. The girl just looked down again. That shut him up though. One look at her and most skels know not to escalate things. Khalika continued her polishing, like it was the best activity in the world. She held the blade at arm’s length and admired it. Finally satisfied, she flicked it closed and put it away.

A tall, chill Black guy eyed the scene with just the slightest show of amusement visible mostly around his eyes, which connected with Khalika’s. She winked at him. Some poor bastard, way down at the end of the car, was scrubbing his face, over and over, with a sheet of paper towel he pulled off a roll under his arm. He’d throw the used sheet on the floor, tear off another, and repeat the excruciating ritual. His face was like mashed strawberries, and still he scrubbed, trying to eradicate a stain somewhere in the coils of his brain. Another guy across from him, a Bernie Goetz type, watched everything going on, paranoid, ready to bolt at any sign of confrontation. He got off at the next stop.

A lurching drunk migrated from another car, stinking like a dead man dumped in the desert. He continued on, slurring the words to a song about not getting what you want, but maybe what you need, his breath wafting out like rotten meat in a pan you forgot about for a week.

“You said it, dude,” commented Khalika, but the guy just kept massacring the tune until he pulled a bottle from his pocket, laughed, took a swig, and disappeared into the next car. Another guy ground his teeth, describing to himself and us what he was going to do to some bitch who made off with his stash, if he could just find her.

Considering the hour, this cattle car was really jumping. Was it a full moon or something? I’d forgotten to check. When the train stopped at the next station, a sleeper suddenly bolted awake, looked at the sign, and muttered, “Fuck,” when he realized he’d missed his stop. He jumped up and flung himself through the closing doors. As soon as one traveler vacated, another took his place.

Besides the girl across from us, Khalika and I were the lone females.

That girl might not have looked like a pushover to anybody but a connoisseur. But what is my sister if not a specialist of the lawless, dead hours, of dead ends where even demons fear to ply their trade? She wears no masks. It’s all there, on her face. Like it or go fuck yourself. I am the one always trying on different faces, or at least I was. I didn’t know how else to be—how to keep contained what must be contained. I think sometimes that I have gone mad, in the shadows, although my sister assures me that is not the case. But I ask how can it not finally bubble up, lava erupting from your throat and spewing out in a geyser, covering everybody around you while you watch the skin fall off their bones in the molten ash of a fury you never acknowledged until the moment when no alternative existed?