GRAND CENTRAL STATION

I watched the crowd distractedly for a while until just below, at the arrivals and departures information booth, an almost imperceptible movement caught my eye and made me forget my inner turmoil for a moment. In the queue waiting to be attended was as lightly rotund, elderly black man in a very loose-fitting raincoat…and behind him, almost stuck to him, was a short, pale-faced teenage girl who was jerking from side to side as if she wanted to jump the queue and reach the counter first to find out what she needed to know. As they were surrounded by a crowd of people, nobody realized when she slowly slipped her hand into the pocket of the raincoat of the man in front of her and stealthily withdrew a wallet… and then, without anyone noticing, she slipped out of the queue at once and began walking towards 42nd Street with the wallet in her pocket… and then it happened... something inside me, a reaction or a chemical impulse, a sudden glimmer, an irrepressible desire to act, to do something in response to the adversity and injustice in the world… I don’t know exactly what it was that moved me to do it, but instinctively I headed for the stairsand went down to the main concourse, intercepting the girl before she made it out to the street…