At six am the woman at the train station wears a black jersey vintage Anne Buck minidress with black lizard-skin appliqués on the shoulders. Her unbrushed hair is a cool champagne, chopped, with an eyelash-grazing fringe. Sunglass-wise, she's Ray Ban, hair wise she's Nico. Black Topshop ballet flats on her narrow feet, and a leopard-print cotton trench coat draped on one arm. A Hermes Kelly bag on the other.

She stands next to S on the platform and I look a little too long. She's tilted the Ray Bans up, and her chestnut-brown eyes have tiny creases at the edge. No makeup. Two little lines across the top of her nose when she giggles, which makes me look quickly away.

Booted, S is an inch shorter than the Ray Ban, maybe an inch and a half. So many surfaces like this we've known. Six weeks in motion. Lost luggage in Milano, spilled coffee and burns in Venice, the trouble in Prague. Passport stolen. Wagon lit from Rome to Paris. Overnight from distant cities. Back in New York, she's run thin of patience.

Another time there'd be shared stories, swapped clothes. They are the same size, zeroes, both perfectly capable of hi-lo styles, both with the bones to carry it, plenty of height. White silk Chanel blouse, dark Mark Jacob jeans. Betsey Johnson sixties colors, or punky-black-and-white striped minidresses with opaque tights and Balenciaga boots high on the leg. A draped Stella McCartney gown with a vintage silver belt from Southpaw, a little faux fur gilet. Shoot them in the high air of spring. Take them down to skinny jeans and ballet flats, an alchemy of desire. Black clad Bedouin girls hawking beads in Arabia, college girls atop spitting camels, the mind floats possibilities downstream like the swift gray Hudson beside you, your own private harem.

Turning lightly on the stiletto heel of her orphan boots S speaks. The empty marquee retains the river light at dawn. Her words ricochet off suited bodies and sensible shoes hitting the parts of me on the platform still listening. I get her back again, the art of her neck, the high shoulder, the shapely ass in seven jeans.  Never again she says. Then: don't fuck with a woman who writes.