“What on earth am I supposed do with that? What kind of a response can you possibly think that’s gonna get you?” Her jeans were tight and her blouse was clingy, and untucking it was a process. "Like I'm just gonna what, roll this up I guess, right here on the platform,” she said, rolling the blouse over her ribs, "and just what, offer you my tits? for your inspection?" She pushed the fabric up till it cleared her bra cups and held it taut, fingers beneath her armpits.

At least it was one of her presentable bras. She stood there like a store mannequin, fuming, waiting now that she’d proved she could do it to see him wipe the smirk off his face. All he did was spread himself a bit more lavishly across the bench. Youths, she thought tartly. “So why'd you come over here for?" he asked.

“Because you fucking beckoned me is why!” My fault looking for a place to sit. "What in the world made me think you'd turn out a halfway decent guy.”

"I'm a great guy," he said, unruffled. “Women love me." He folded his arms and stared at her. She stood her ground. "So what's the holdup?" he asked at last.

“Yeah, women love you.” She compressed her lips and gave her head a little toss. "The holdup, great guy, is I’m waiting for you to tell me to put this back down so I can go."

“Sarcasm!” He chuckled. "Naw honey, when I said show em? I meant, you know, show em.”

Show em. Like he was with beads on a fucking Mardi Gras balcony. “I am not—” she hissed, too loud; she shifted her gaze left and right around the station, slowly filling up on both sides with commuters. She bent down to him partway and lowered her voice. “No way in hell am I—”

He waved his hand in the direction of the crowd and made a dismissive pfft. “Fuckin drones, don’t worry yourself about them."

"—gonna just ..." She straightened back up, crossed her arms and pulled the blouse over her head. She brandished it at him, looking exasperated. "And what am I supposed to do with this now, huh? Toss it on the ground?”

“Go on give it here," he said, reaching.

"Not to mention the bra," she groused, hands groping behind her, “I mean if you honestly imagine ..." She grimaced and fought with the clasp to get it open. “... think I’ll actually go ahead and …” Why even give him the satisfaction. She checked her annoyance, got the clasp straight, and without another word tugged the bra free. She let it dangle off her finger in front of his eyes a moment and then dumped it unasked into his lap.

"Nice ones," was all he said. She got a little jolt of pleasure from the compliment in spite of herself. He propped his shoulders back against the tile wall. “Decent shape. Bigger’n I thought. You oughta try and show some cleavage or something.”

“And you oughta try not telling women how to dress.” She had a half-reflex to cover up, but instead thrust her chest forward, hands flat at her sides. She stared over his head at her shadowy reflection, impassive as a ceramic troop on a parade ground. Fuck him if she’d stoop to eye contact. "Great way to meet girls, incidentally," she sneered. "Just exactly how a woman likes to be approached.

The roar of an inbound train started to crescendo. "Come on, don't be like that," he said. He gave with the puppy-dog eyes, and sucker that she was she melted a little. “You’re tired, sit down, take a load off.”

She sighed, and her shoulders slumped, but she made no move. The pointlessness of the whole pointless encounter weighed her down like a lead overcoat. She felt the warning gust of the train's arrival push hot against her bare, prickling back.

"No seriously, come on." He made a show of reducing his bench presence to give her room.

It was a warm day, the station had been a hike, she was sweaty and tired and footsore. She knew it was only encouraging him, but that open space on the bench just now was more than a body could resist.

The doors opened right as she sat down and she found herself looking directly into one of the cars. “There’s the train,” she said. There was no thought of moving off the bench though. She might have been watching a train in a movie. People streamed off past the pillars and onto the stairs, all of them intent on some destination offscreen; no one so much as glanced in their direction. She had to cast her eyes down once or twice just to be reassured her tits were still on display.

“Catch the next one,” he told her. He held his palm out; her phone was in it. “Gotta unlock this for me.”

She knew for a fact the phone had never left her purse. She’d have shown him, but the thought of having to dig it out of there made her practically weep with ennui. She tried to blink the thing out of sight. “When could I have—”

“Yeah I always grab these first thing,” he said. “That’s your talisman. You with all that sass, though, you distracted me.”

She touched her thumb delicately over the home button, half surprised to find it real. He took the device back and started doing stuff with it and she immediately lost interest. The northbound shut its doors and unmoored itself, sliding lazily forward a few feet; its unhidden counterpart was disgorging passengers on the opposite side. The twin departures merged into a single prolonged shaking; in the deep hush that followed the station seemed to have forgotten even the idea of trains.

A solo woman, late middle age, made her way down the tube trundling a balk-wheeled shopping trolley behind her. She parked at a couple yards’ distance from them, letting the wall have her back, closed her eyes and closed herself away in her private bubble.

He seemed to have put some kind of game on the phone. It was hard for her to make sense of the screens. The intensity of his focus, bent over the device elbows on knees, the ease and fluidity of his gestures, made him more attractive to her than she’d thought at first. She decided not to mind too much about his not asking permission. Give him a little space, she told herself. He’d had more than his share of tongue-lashings from her as it was.

He paused and glanced up at her sidelong. “What’s up?”

“Um …” The sudden attention flustered her. Had she been about to say something? “How old are you?” she blurted out.

“Twenty.” He shrugged and went back to his screen. “Tell me that makes me a late bloomer. Still kinda getting the hang a little.”

God you really are just a kid. She felt a sudden small heartbreak for him, his inexperience, his ill education, the unearned arrogance that hadn’t been knocked out of him yet. “Listen,” she said gingerly, “if um,— I’m sorry if I mighta come off a little mean before …”

“If.” He looked at her side-eye.

“I mean—” She stole a glance at the shopping-trolley woman and turned a little further into him. “I don’t want you to think I’m some kind of a killjoy, you know? It’s just,— handsome guy like you, there’s so many better ways—”

“Better how?”

“See, it’s this kinda thing," she sighed. "Look I know how they coach you guys; neg her, never let her finish a thought, keep her off balance: and it’s based off just bullshit psychology, first of all, and then—” She felt her face getting flushed and tried to collect herself, slow her breathing. He’d put the game aside; they were face to face now. “Doesn’t it just get tiresome? at some point? keeping the pose up? Don’t you ever want to just, ease off a bit?” She half closed her eyes, as if to show him an example. “Let things take their course. Cuz all that dominance-display stuff, honey I tell you, it’s just not the turn-on—”

“Well, you say that …” He scraped his thumbnail against her nipple and she mewled and lolled her head back. Smug bastard, she thought. Still, he had her dead to rights: the evidence was right there, pink and puffy and chafing hard between his fingers. It was like that any time she got aroused: she still bore the sting of overhearing a boy in junior high call her “mini donuts.” She was unbelievably wet. “I mean, I’m sure there’s some girls …” she purred. He was mauling both nipples now, alternating the pressure. “We’re not built all alike.”

A squeak and clatter down the tunnel bruited the approach of the Howard train. She’d got so comfortable on the bench she almost regretted it, though it did seem like they’d gone a very long time without one. At least the platform wasn’t overcrowded. He took his hands back, drawing an involuntary groan of disappointment from her. But she was so much calmer now. He’d been sweet to help out.

She remembered the point she’d been wanting to make. The noise rising, she put her mouth close to his ear. “All’s I’m really telling you is, you open yourself up a little, a woman can be so much more to you than—”

“What if I don’t want more?”

The sudden hardness in his tone hit her like a slap. She pulled back. “If you don’t—”

“What if she’s just a mouth to me?” A brake screeched. She felt the unmistakeable gust of arrival. He loomed over her, eyes flashing. “What if all I want’s a blowjob?”

Reflexively she shrank into herself. She bit her lip and cast her eyes down. “I don’t think anybody’s saying, you know, don’t have your blowjob. Of course you have your blowjob.” The tension made her giggle at the word, and her gaze flicked to his crotch. “I bet you’ve got a yummy cock,” she said dreamily, and immediately wanted to clap a hand over her mouth at how corny she was being. “It’s just, isn’t it nicer if—”

“Fuck nice.”

“Okay, I get it, sure.” She felt a surge of frustration bring her near tears. She looked for the shopping trolley woman, lost now amid the scrum of boarders. “Don’t you see though, the trains, all these people in and out, for the girl it’s degra—”

He stuck his hand under her chin and caught her by the face, pushing her cheeks in painfully from both sides and wedging her jaw open. “No more talk.” He forced her into a nod, nodding along with her. “Time we use that mouth for what it’s meant for, whaddaya say?”

What could she do but agree? Again the platform filled with thunder. She agreed and she went on agreeing, fervently, and forgot what she was agreeing about, and the thunder rose again and receded till all she could hear in the whole empty space were the soft wet grunts of a girl getting her throat fucked.

When he was done he let go of her hair and kicked her off the bench. Her head was buzzing. He was so big she felt like she was out of her body. She stood facing the wall, gaze wandering idly about, and gradually the buzzing subsided and the El station reassembled around her and she came back to herself. She’d been out shopping. She was on her way home.

He said “Hey” and tossed her her blouse. She stared at in her hand as if it was a message he’d given her to decipher. She glanced at the bench and saw a black bra lying next to him. “What’s that doing there?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Here when I sat down.” “It’s a good bra though,” she said, “somebody’s going to miss it.” She pursed her lips and consulted her memory. “Actually I think they have a lost and found in here, you want I could, uh …”

She felt him scrutinizing her face and blushed, and lost the thread. He made a gesture of swiping his fingers alongside his nose. “You got a little somethin,” he said, and she mirrored him, though she was sure she didn’t. She looked in her hand, spread her fingers, watched a strand of some kind of mucilage thin and break between them. “Nope, nothing there!” she said, smiling and showing him. “My mistake,” he drawled. She licked the stuff off.

“You’re gonna want this back.” He reached toward her holding her phone out. “Oh! Right,” she said, trying to place how she’d come to give it to him. “It, uh … everything okay with it?”

He shot a thumb up. Big thumbs too, she thought, and scolded herself for her inappropriateness. “Just gonna want you to take a few pictures is all.” She wrinkled her nose at the screen. “Pictures,” she said, “what you mean like selfies? Why am I—”

“Verification thing, it’s technical, don’t—” He waved a hand. “It’s all mapped out for you already, just; you get home, you do what the phone tells you to, snap snap you’re done! Easy Pete.”

“Well …” She dropped the phone in her bag and kind of batted her eyes at him. “Lucky for you I’m the kind of girl who knows how to do what she’s told.”

“So do what I tell you then, put your shirt back on.”

From not far off the tunnel growled. She turned toward the track and pulled her blouse around her ears, wondering the place wasn’t absolutely thronged by now. “Think it was a holiday,” she said, “long as this train’s been.” She had to peel her jeans partway down to get tucked back in but no one nearby seemed to pay any mind.

When she turned back she noticed him staring at her tits. She grinned. “Scratchy,” she said. The sound in the tunnel was rising, and he put a finger to his ear. “The fabric, I mean. How come they’re all puffed up like this.” The cars descended shuddering and racketing into the station. She gestured at her chest. “Normally I don’t cover up so much,” she yelled; “I figure you got nice ones, why not show em off?” He winked.

Such a great guy. She waved him a flirty toodle-oo wave and joined the press of salarymen pushing into the cars. She wanted to catch his eye again from inside but found herself trapped in the space between doors, and no view. Once they got going she relaxed, let her tits bounce, enjoyed the increasingly obvious attention her mini donuts were garnering her. You gotta get out of the bra habit, she told herself. The train elevated out of the tunnel into the afternoon sunlight. She closed her eyes and daydreamed what kind of selfies she’d be posing for when she got back, and thought what a kick it’d be if she could do them with her nips out.