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A vole? A dozen or so onlookers were clustered at the top of the escalator. Below, near an exhibit of storage sheds, more gawkers stood outside a red ten-by-ten unit with faux gingerbread detailing and vinyl hanging planters on the windows. Thirty-seven hundred bucks—I’d talked a client out of buying one by telling her she’d also have to hire seven dwarves to go with it to get the full effect. The white resin planters outside the shed were slightly askew and a trio of smaller pots overturned. When the guards reached the lower level, the crowd parted and that gave me a somewhat better view down the nonworking escalator.

That was good. I wasn’t alone. In the same way flight attendants and fire drill captains always know their exit strategies, women who occasionally have to walk in New York at night develop a survival strategy. It was second nature. We knew when to cross the street to avoid an unsavory character. We knew not to recite our telephone or credit card numbers out loud in a crowded bar, not to flash cash at an ATM, and not to leave half a drink on a table and then come back and drink it. These are in the collective New York memories, the way farm kids automatically know cow stuff and children in seaside towns know about the tides.

Absolutely nothing,” she said. ” But this time she dismissed him the way you’d shoo away a pesky child. He looked vaguely familiar—pale, with straw-colored hair and a mischievous Tom Sawyer expression on his face that could get you to paint the fence for him and thank him for it. The faded T-shirt read Happy Valley, and tied around his waist was a denim jacket covered with dozens of souvenir patches. He could have been any of the young workers hustling around the Wagner Center on Manhattan’s West Side on this early spring morning, but he wasn’t.