I was distantly aware that the guy who had pulled me through the hole had grabbed Shanna by the wrist, shoved a small nasal-spray bottle up her nose, and squeezed it. He was now dragging her limply compliant body onto the mattress in the corner.
He rolled her onto the bunched-up sleeping bag. She raised her head in a woozy stupor and looked from me to the man looming over her, dazed, apparently unable or unwilling to stand.
The man shook his head, irritated, and spun around to face me.
"You were supposed to come alone!" He seemed deeply flustered about there being two of us.
He searched the shelves and found a spool of thick wire, cut a length of it with the bolt cutters on the milk crate, and roughly bound Shanna's wrists, twisting the wire as if it were a tourniquet.
Then he turned to me.
I recognized him immediately.
It was the guy who had molested me on the crowded subway.
He must have dropped the note into my backpack on the train.
"I just wanted to tell you something," he stammered. He was sweating, now in a loose t-shirt that hung over bony shoulders. His sunken eyes darted between my sister and me.
Shanna lay back on the mattress and inspected the wire around her wrists curiously as if she were trying on a new bracelet, dazed.
I pulled myself up and sat with my back against the wall.
I remember vaguely understanding that I should have been afraid, but amidst the ketamine's fog I could only think to ask, dumbly, What did you want to tell me?
But nothing came out of my mouth. The drug was so strong I couldn't even speak.
This didn't seem to matter, though, because the guy stepped closer and answered my unspoken question anyway.
"I wanted to say that I'm sorry."
For a moment he just stared at me.
When I didn't answer, he grabbed a dark cigarette from a box on a bench and lit it.
The cigarette seemed to calm him. He exhaled the smoke from the side of his mouth, blowing it out through the hole in the wall.
"I shouldn't have touched you like that," he said quietly. "I'm sorry. It was wrong."
Then he started to cry.
