Phillip’s mother drove us to the subway entrance. She put the car in park, then delivered a brief speech on how to survive in New York City. She told us to carry our wallets in our front pockets; to keep a spare $20 in our socks for cab fare, in case we got mugged; to never unfold a map, no matter how lost we were; to walk with the flow on sidewalks, not against it. She told us to stick together. She told us not to walk down any streets that didn’t feel right to us. Then she let us out of the car and drove away.

As soon as she was gone, I promptly relocated my wallet to one of my front pockets. Phillip disapproved. Carrying my wallet in the front of my pants would draw muggers to us like ants to a picnic. “Muggers feast on outsiders,” he said. “Better to look like you fit in, like you belong here, like you don’t have a care in the world.”

I followed Phillip down into the station. He walked up to a man sitting behind a large pane of glass. He slid money through a hole in the glass, and the man slid something back. Once their transaction was complete, I stepped up to the pane of glass. I shouted the words, “HOW MUCH?” through the hole. The man, looking annoyed, mouthed the words, “ONE TWENTY-FIVE.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out a handful of change. A line began to form behind me. I could feel their eyes boring into my back, judging me. They folded their arms and shifted from foot to foot. I realized that I was paying more attention to the people behind me than I was to counting out the correct subway fare. The line had grown to at least 10, maybe 15 people deep, and was still growing longer by the second. My heart pounded. All the coins in my hand suddenly looked identical to me. A man at the back of the line said sharply, “Let’s go! We’ve all got places to be.”

Then Phillip was at my side. He plucked a few coins from my palm and slide them through the glass hole. The man slid a tiny piece of chipped metal in return—a subway token. As I stepped away from the window, a couple of people in line broke into theatrical applause. My face burned. Phillip told me to ignore them. “New York is home to several million world-class assholes,” he said. He dropped his token into a tiny slot, then pushed his way through the mechanical turnstiles. I did the same.

A few weeks earlier Phillip had slipped on a patch of ice and twisted an ankle, leaving him impaired with a condition he referred to as “villain’s limp.” He’d worn one of his father’s Brooks Brothers raincoats, a navy blue one, which was at least two sizes too large for him. With his pronounced limp and oversized raincoat, Phillip managed to look very much like he fit in, like he belonged, like he didn’t have a care in the world.

A large hole had been cut into the concrete floor on the far side of station. Inside the hole, a set of stairs descended to the station’s next lower level. As Phillip stepped into the hole, a subterranean wind began to cycle through the station. It circled his form, causing the too-big raincoat to lift up and billow around him violently, like a curtain in an open window during a storm. The concrete floor beneath my feet began to shake. A mechanical howl came up from the level below us. Phillip looked at me over his shoulder. He shouted the words, “OUR TRAIN IS COMING!” above the wind and the howl. I watched his raincoat-clad form hurriedly limp down the subway steps, his left foot dragging behind.

Under normal circumstances, I’d run away from subterranean winds, trembling floors, and mechanical howls. I would have fled from these things, back up the stairs, back into the daylight. Yet, there was Phillip, my guide, heading towards these things, going still deeper underground. And, of course, I followed him.