The air is not exceptionally cold tonight, but my shoulders quiver with a chill I can't shake.

What I remember most is how beautifully the whites of her eyes, teeth, and ear buds stood out against her skin when I looked up.

I had been carefully running up the stairs to the subway, watching for ice and feeling the raw skin on my feet rub harshly against my borrowed socks. The train had just pulled up and a crowd of people wearing puffy black coats and iPods were crowded at the top of the stairs. We were all trying to get home. I picked up the pace, keeping my head down so I wouldn't fall, and was just about to reach the top of the stairs when I sank into her.

I don't know how tall she was, standing a step or two above me, but she was twice my size.

Excuse me, I begged. I just needed to get to the doors before they closed. I wasn't worried about getting stuck between them, though I've certainly heard stories. I had my mind on my feet and my eyes on her headphones. She started talking to me.

"You can't just push your way through somebody and expect to get what you want. You could at least excuse yourself."

She was clearly upset. I noticed the stairs and cold air behind me. I didn't back down though, hoping she would realize I needed to make that train. I put on my kind eyes and sternly stated my case: I did say excuse me but you had your headphones on. You didn't hear me.

I watched her take her ear buds out - the left and then the right. I listened to the beat now swinging around her neck. I was interrupting her song.

She kept talking. I started to wonder if she might push me down the stairs. I had my camera with me. I wondered if my camera bag would provide enough cushion to keep it safe or if I would land on it when I reached the sidewalk. Would my iPod slip out of the front pocket? My lens adapter would probably survive the fall - it was the only piece of metal in my bag. My train was still there.

I wanted to point out how I was on the right-hand side of the stairs, that the train was mere feet away from me, how it was common New York courtesy to let someone through to a stopped train because the conductors wait for no one. I wanted to point out that she was in fact standing in my way, not the other way around.

She just kept talking.

"Are you going to say something," she asked, "because I can stand here all night."

It's not in my nature to hit someone I've just met. I'm too polite. If I thought she might hear a word I was saying, or if I thought she was reasonable enough not to shove me down a flight of stairs I might have asked her what kind of night she'd had that left her with such an urge to lash out. Did her lover have wandering eyes? Did her MetroCard charge her an extra two dollars?

Instead I thought of the train, the stairs, and my fear. I apologized. I was sorry that she couldn't see that I was only trying to make the train. I was sorry that she thought the left side of the staircase was invented to compensate Her Royal Majesty's circumference. I was sorry that the volume of her music kept her from seeing me head straight toward her and from hearing my beg-pardon. I was sorry that in my rush I honestly could not remember whether I had bumped into her before or after excusing myself. I was sorry that I was too afraid of what those stairs would do to my body if I said what I was really thinking.

"You going to say something, girl? Or we gonna stand here the rest of the night?"

I faintly heard the melodic ding of the train's closing doors. The trains slow down at this hour and now I was stuck waiting in the cold.

My apology was short but it begged for my life.

"Next time you better watch yourself. Somebody else might not let you go."

I said nothing, refusing to acknowledge that she'd done me any sort of favor. Finally she walked around me and down the stairs. The platform was nearly deserted, with one man sauntering slowly toward me - no, toward the stairs. I suddenly felt alone and angry and frightened. My eyes welled from fear or anger or the chilly winds but a new found instinct to watch for danger kept my vision clear and my jaw set.

Each new sound of footsteps or voices made me sink more into the shadows. I had recently ended a two-year relationship but I could have used some company just then. The shopkeeper who had made eyes and smiled at me a few hours before was now leering his way back through my thoughts. The rush of confidence his looks had given me now made me feel vulnerable and I longed to have someone by my side who could make me forget what had transpired.

I was no longer single. I was alone.

Claudette fell over tonight and broke my favorite lamp. She’d been standing on top of the heater for so long that I thought nothing of it when the cats started sitting at her feet – Lola likes the warmth; Kip likes to perch. Claudette was never particularly stable on the heater. I think it was the heels she never, ever took off. I should mention that Claudette is a mannequin.

That lamp used to be my father’s and I have always loved it for reminding me of simpler times. When it’s been kept on long enough the dust on the shade warms and produces this homey, attic-like must. It smells like all the times my father and I played backgammon, watched the early seasons of Buffy, and fell asleep to Deep Space Nine. I remember the smell of his red felt-tipped pen when he graded papers under that lamp. There wasn’t much of a scent, really, so maybe it’s not the smell I’m reminded of but the small stains the pens made in the blue velour fabric on the couch my mom always hated.

I loved that couch. It had stripes.

I remember the smell of the cold on the window and how it mixed with the warm feeling of the lamp’s light while I sat perched on the back of the couch watching and waiting for my father’s car to get home from work. It’s always snowing in that memory.

When my mother moved out and took the dining room table with her, she left the lamp and I wondered why. She told me once that they split the things they bought together. My mother wanted the table so my father got the car. After she moved out, there was a big empty space where the dining room table used to be that would sometimes house a Christmas tree and possibly some toys. I may have made this up, but I imagine the lamp was always my father’s. He probably had it in his first apartment during his college years. He told me a story once about his roommate and her smoking habit. The story involved a cigarette and a ghost, I’m pretty sure, but that doesn’t seem at all like the kind of story my father would tell me. The cigarette sat on a side table under the lamp. Or it did in my head, anyway.

Most of the time, when I’m reading or listening to a story that takes place in or involves a house, I picture the last house my parents ever lived in together. If there’s a pool table in the story it’s always where the dining room table used to be, but most of the time there’s just a dining room table there.

When I was a kid, I used to sit and examine the lamp’s shade. It has white, swirly squares that remind me of the inside of an abalone shell but are more fragile. The squares are joined together like a stained glass window. For as long as I can remember one of the squares has been different. It’s just a simple piece of white plastic stuck haphazardly into the shade where the abalone square should be. It never actually fit. Two sides of it bubbled out because of the way the shade curves and when I finally convinced my dad to give me his lamp, the anomalous square went missing. Now there’s just an empty square-shaped space.

There’s an empty square-shaped space and a newly cracked square because of Claudette’s clumsy fall.

I’m looking at the emptiness of the wall she used to lean against. It begs to be filled but I hesitate to let Claudette back up there. Really, she’s not stable. It’s those heels.