She writes: A sign appeared in the subway entrance: BACKPACKS AND OTHER LARGE CONTAINERS SUBJECT TO RANDOM SEARCH. Fair enough, I thought: only objects are affected: and who can argue with pure chance? That week, card tables appeared, and cops sat behind them waiting, exactly like three-card monte players, except that they looked bored to tears. But you couldn’t help thinking: hadn’t they now become the target? On the day I was stopped–just by a glance, and a gentle voice saying, Miss, do you have a moment? – I was triumphantly innocent. I was motioned aside, as if my indulgence were being asked for, not my obedience. What did my suitcase contain? Almost nothing. I wasn’t even planning a journey. A stapler jammed on a bent staple. A rolled-up bra, clean but a little yellow at the cups. Cherry chapstick, a tube of clove lifesavers, a metal box of Altoids. No pamphlet, no thumb drives, no Guy Debord, no Murray Bookchin, no Judith Butler, no Franz Fanon, just the letters I write and never mail, tied with a cheesy ribbon. A map of Nova Scotia. The location of the little cottage with moss-green shutters and an almost-view of the almost-ocean was marked with an X that I had enhanced to a star in my enthusiasm. The cop smoothed the wrinkled paper with a pale young thumb. He searched with infinite weariness, opening the stapler, counting the staples, examining the bent one gravely, running his hands in the shirred pocket that attaches to the suitcase lid. He didn’t open the mints but rattled the box and held it to his ear. His dog watched indulgently: invited, it took a quick sniff, rolled its eyes, minced to the end of its leash and sat to sniff its own paw, perhaps to clean its nostrils. The crowd, that I had once been part of, surged past me: pieces of people: clever buttocks under a cut-off denim jacket, matronly swollen ankles, the authoritative crease of Armani slacks. Many eyes sought mine, and many with compassion: hold your own! Don’t be cowed! We are with you! An innocent woman, they seemed to know, is more vulnerable than a guilty one. She marks a threshold. And the officer began putting the things back, each carefully in its place, though in truth nothing had had a place, while the dog watched pensively; its attention it seemed had turned to a private sorrow. The brocaded sleeve gestured; it’s yours now, you can touch the handle. He zipped the zipper, snapped the snaps, cleared his throat with a faint wince, and turned to face me. –Why the suitcase, when you and your lover won’t be going to Canada?