Years later, they would auction off our possessions.

Reading the beginning of Girlfriend in a Coma, the part where two characters are stuck on a ski lift surrounded by complete darkness, the train became stuck under the East River surrounded by complete darkness.

We ended up being there for twenty minutes. A few minutes in, my paranoia and claustrophobia and fear of Sylvester Stallone's Daylight kicked in and I started interpreting any slight rumble of the air conditioning as a torrent of water rushing in from a burst in the tunnel, on its way to engulf the train and swallow me whole.

I started making escape plans. How do I open the doors? Where is the emergency window? I think you're supposed to open a few of the smaller ones to equalize the pressure before trying to swim out. And then where do I go? What about the children and the old people? People would read about this in the news and they'd know before they knew for sure that I was on that train. As I tried to figure out how to avoid a waterlogged death, a violinist started playing on the other end of the car, like the orchestra on the deck of the sinking Titanic. I gave him a dollar for his contribution to my moment, but didn't tell him that I would have given him much more if he had played "Nearer My God to Thee."