Lexicon

so badly. She didn’t want to think about that. This time there would be caution. There would be thirty miles of desert traversed by foot, and no one would see her coming because what she was doing was unimaginable.
    Once she had the word, she would begin the next stage of her journey, to DC. When she got there, she would rip out Yeats’s heart, just like he had torn out hers. What happened after that didn’t matter.
    • • •
    She spent a lot of time on trains, reading dictionaries. She wore a hoodie and pulled it down, in case of cameras. She could ride all day for two dollars and never be in the same spot for more than a few minutes. The last service was around two, so then she had to find a place to sleep, but that wasn’t hard. She had done that before.
    Sometimes she nodded off on the train. She tried not to, because she feared waking up to poets moving through the carriage, no way out, but it was kind of unavoidable. The dictionaries were not very interesting. So when she felt her head drifting toward the glass, the factories or fields passing by outside, she let it happen.
    The day after she ordered her space blanket, she drifted awake to find a man sitting opposite, watching her. She was half out of her seat, words forming on her lips, before she realized he wasn’t Eliot. He wasn’t anybody. She sank back into her seat. Her head was full of terror; it always was, coming out of dreams.
    “Sorry,” said the man. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”
    “That’s okay.” She was getting her bearings. The man was about forty, nicely dressed, sweater, a good watch. She talked to such people sometimes, as a precursor to persuading them to give her money.
    “That’s a lot of books. Dictionaries?”
    She nodded.
    “Are you a student?”
    “Of life,” she said. People liked this kind of quippery. It caused them to open up. “I just read them for fun.”
    “Dictionaries?”
    “Yes.”
    “That doesn’t sound like fun. That sounds awful.”
    “
Awful
used to mean ‘full of awe.’ The same meaning as
awesome
. I learned that from a dictionary.”
    He blinked.
    “See?” she said. “Fun.”
    “That is actually fascinating. What else?”
    She looked at her notes. She had notes. “
Cause
has changed. The definition used to be ‘to make something happen.’ Now they’ve added, ‘especially something bad.’”
    “They’ve changed
cause
?”
    “They’ve noticed a change. Dictionaries record common usage.”
    “I thought it was a panel of professors,” said the man, “at a university somewhere, deciding what words mean.”
    She shook her head.
    “So it’s bad to cause something now?”
    “Yes. And to join causes, probably. Because of semantic leakage.”
    “Well,” he said. “You are the most interesting person I’ve met all week.”
    “Thanks,” she said, but she was getting a bad feeling. She was regretting this conversation. “My stop is coming up.” She packed her dictionaries into her bag.
    “Do you have somewhere to sleep tonight?” She didn’t say anything. “I’m sorry, that didn’t come out right. I mean, are you okay? You don’t look okay.”
    “I’m okay.”
    “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m sitting close enough to smell you.” His expression looked genuine but she didn’t like his eyes. There were a lot of tiny muscles there and they were not consistent with the rest of his face. “Is there any way I can help you?”
    “Thanks, but no.” She stood up. “This is my stop.”
    “Mine, too.”
    She sat. “My mistake.”
    He leaned forward. He did this slowly, like he wanted to get it right. “Do you need money?”
    She hesitated, because she did need money. But not from this guy. She didn’t even want to compromise him. She just needed to get away. Her eye was starting to hurt.
    “Whatever trouble you’re in, I can help. I’m a lawyer. I have money. No strings. I see an intelligent young woman who needs a helping hand. That’s all. Say no and I won’t bother you anymore.”
    The train stopped. The carriage was almost empty, the platform bare. She waited until she was sure the man wasn’t moving, then stood and walked quickly to the doors. She got there in time, hit the button, stepped off, and kept walking. A night breeze stirred her hair. She wanted to look around but kept her head down, in case of cameras.
    “Five hundred dollars,” said the man, right behind her. “Look at it.” She ignored him. “Are you stupid? Just take it.
Take