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…