As the train surged uptown, it seemed to Katya that hundreds of years had passed since her last glimpse of Warsaw. She fumbled with her subway map, wishing for the simplicity of her home city, the byways and shortcuts she knew like the way to her bed in the dark. She was trying to follow the color-coded signs and to watch carefully the names of the passing stops, but her English was still unsteady, and her unfamiliarity quickly became uncertainty. Somewhere in the middle of the map a crowd pushed into the car. More people boarded at the next stop, filling the train until there was nowhere to move, and nothing to hold but the backs of coats and strange shoulders. The temperature of the car rose, and the air began to sweat on the windows.
Katya could no longer see the names of the stops through the congestion. She thought they had just passed Columbus Circle, but she wasn’t sure. She asked a tall man whose elbow was exploring her shoulder blade. “Seventy-second is next,” he said, and closed his eyes as though sleeping.
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