He ran his hands through his hair, or where his hair would have been if he hadn’t shaved it before he left. So his scalp, really. He ran it over his scalp.

He was sitting in the belly of the train now. He suddenly felt like his personality, his sense of self, was being digested, broken down and separated chemical by chemical, and mixed with the other selves on this train. He was one with the tall, rangy fellow with the long hair and the ratty Pink Floyd shirt across from him; one with the squat, butch, Polynesian woman in a business suit standing above; one even with the odorous fellow he could only assume was homeless, passed out snoring in the back of the train.

It was a thrilling moment for him. To feel really a part of something, not separated from it. Not wanting it, but having it and even being it. And if it means you give up a piece of yourself, isn’t it just as well anyway? What is it that you have that isn’t worth sacrificing for never being alone ever?

How could he make her see it that way?