on the trainOn the train from Penn station going home to wherever home may be, there is always a lot to look at. Fashionably dressed babies, probably better dressed than most of the women in their twenties or so, just getting by on their meager paid intern salary. Then there are the established looking businessmen in their suits. They take up two seats with their bags and coats that are more important than human lives, just to return home to open the solitary can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup by nine, hopefully. Then there are the moms and their bratty six year olds, coming home exhausted from that lovely Broadway show, comparable to the cost of the textbooks the college students who commute pay for and never open. / There isn’t usually much chatter, mostly excuse me’s and is this seat taken? so it was surprising to hear conversation coming from down the train car. A girl, about 16 or 17 or so, was stumbling down the car. She looked like she hadn’t eaten in a few days, a few months, her skin looking lack luster and her hair dull and stringy. She kept asking for gum. / That’s when one of those businessmen, if you could call him a man answered. He looked out of place in his suit on the train. He was handsome and young and the cooperate world had not yet aged him. He looked about 23 or so and was connected probably by an uncle or cousin or something to get the job. He offered the girl a stick of five gum, the kind that came in a black foil wrapper, and he offered her a seat as he closed the file folder filled to capacity.