The elderly woman kept talking into the intercom.
The cardigan woman came close enough for me to reach her. The younger passenger raised her phone.
They approached together.
Neither stepped into the space just behind me, and I realized they were leaving me somewhere to go.
I shifted my feet toward that gap.
Another woman approached.
“I don’t think you understand, sir,” she said, reaching into her bag, “but all of us know what to do with men like you.”
They were leaving me somewhere to go.
“That so?”
She nodded and held up her hand.
She’d closed her hands around her keys just so.
The younger woman aimed her phone at his hand on my arm. A fourth woman, a stranger with a grocery tote, stepped close and planted her feet.
The cardigan woman said, “Last time. Let her go.”
“All of us know what to do with men like you.”
