I enter the subway car and stop short. I can’t proceed beyond two feet without maneuvering around two large lion-colored dogs sprawled by the feet of a guy who looks like Johnny Depp immersing himself in the role of an itinerant man suffering from a disease that has left him thin and in need of constant medication through a tube wrapped around his upper left arm and secured by stretchy mesh/netting. After a while, he smoothes down the dogs’ bandanas, one blue, the other red, that say, “SERVICE DOG.” I think he wants people to know he’s not being inconsiderate.

A woman in red T-shirt and jean shorts and hair that looks like a “Mama’s Family” discard, who’d been seated on the opposite side of the subway car, several seats down the row to my left, who’d also been regarding the service dogs, comes over and sits to my right after the man and dogs exit at Times Square. She makes a negative remark about the trio, thinking she has an ally in me. I tell her the man was obviously very sick and I have nothing but compassion for him. I want to insult her crossed eyes but refrain.