I take the last seat on the train next to an old woman with a hen on her lap. “That’s a wonderful specimen,” I say, eyeing the hen like a hungry fox. The old woman just sticks out her tongue like a petulant child. It’s my son’s fifth birthday, and I’m late for the party – but when the train starts moving, I realize it’s going in the opposite direction. The ticket-taker looks down at me, scoldingly, as if to reprimand me for getting on the wrong train. He punches my ticket, then reaches across the seat and grabs the old woman’s tongue, punching it as though it were paper. The hen jumps from her lap, strutting down the aisle and flapping its wings, as the train stutters into the next station. “That’s my cue,” I think, swooping up the hen as I head to the doors, happy to have found the perfect present for my son, at least.

In the bakery, a girl stuffs herself with raspberry tarts. The baker tosses back his head as he lifts the back of his hand to his brow. It’s a bit like something from a Greek play, when the girl’s mother pinches her thigh, then takes a bite of her ankle . . . if only the girl had been more attentive of her figure, or her mother more attentive to the girl (who’s still a little doughy around the bust, her mother quips). The baker slides her back into the oven until she rises a firm, flaky crust, but he’s neglected to lower his hand from his forehead. His hand just sticks there, flexing, independent of the arm. Is he making a pass at her? Meanwhile, the oven’s now a gigantic snowshoe tramping toward the Arctic.

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