I remember that he smiled as the train doors opened, one of those nuanced gestures that we have now forgotten because they exist only between strangers. This one said "you first." We ended up sitting next to each other in a row of three, and I was reading, and he asked what had led me to read this book—what in the title "The Sirens of Titan" had captured me. It was quite a title, he said.

I had forgotten how to speak, but it was okay, he asked quite simply what the book was about, and I stumbled along, giving too many details, because the stories were too precious to leave anything out. He said that he wanted his younger brother to read more—a good kid, he said, but without enough direction. The man thought that it was only a matter of finding the right book, and that the answer to his brother’s problems might be lying in my calloused hands.  The book was like a siren to the man, who thought, perhaps, that this was the chronosynclastic infundibulum he had been looking for—a place, according to the book, where all truths fit together.  Maybe even his brother's.

I said I thought his brother would like it because I imagined him like Holden Caulfield, too good for this terrible world, which was what made people think he was terrible. Although I was not this man’s brother, surely I had felt like him before, I had felt as we have all felt in our most naked moments. And although a book alone was not an answer to all that, it was at least a beginning.

I wonder, to this day, if he ever got around to ordering a copy.

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You can find Katy Tanzer on Instagram @katywritesaboutlife