It's been five days since I first saw you on the subway. I've watched you several more times, enough that I could set a clock by the sight of you passing in the trolley car -- if the trolleys ran on time, that is.

You're not in the same seat every day, and sometimes you stand. I like that; it allows me to get a better view of your body. You seem to favor blue-colored work clothes -- ink-dark suits and pale dress shirts -- but so far my favorite is the charcoal gray two-piece you wore on Tuesday. Against it, your skin and eyes glowed like an August sunset.

On Wednesday, the train stopped very close to my window again, and I watched as you mouthed the words to the song on your headphones. I can lip-read well enough to know that it was Patrick Wolf's "Augustine."

I suppose that's why, when I dreamed of you Wednesday night, you were singing "Augustine" to me as you peeled off my dress and pressed me to my narrow mattress with your mahogany hands. You were still in your suit, now a little rumpled from the day's affairs, and you forced your thigh between mine. I rocked my cunt -- the only part of me I was allowed to move -- against the expensive fabric until my orgasm shook me from the dream.

Awake, I cursed in the darkness of my room, which seemed too big in your absence.

Can you imagine how dark it is in here at night? Sometimes I cover my tiny window and light a candle, because the walls are made of cinder blocks and very little in here will burn. Mostly, though, I don't risk the light after-hours. There are too many homeless wanderers, many of whom would be happy to discover a young woman living alone in their midst. So I have learned to find everything in the darkness with my hands, like a blind person.

I don't know, yet, whether you saw my first post. Other people have, though. Some emailed to ask me whether the Transportation Authority knows I'm down here. They know, in the same way they know about the stragglers who sometimes camp in the abandoned Eureka Station. Most of the time they look the other way, rousting them only when a disparaging article runs in the local newspaper. If you ask me, the city would prefer to have the homeless underground, instead of on the streets -- they're less visible down here.

I've offered to pay the Transportation Authority a monthly rent, but they refused, saying they wouldn't be able to explain the revenue if they were audited.

That said, I don't consider myself homeless. I've got a good income, a bed, a small portable toilet, an electrical outlet where I can plug in my computer and my hot plate, a collection of good clothes for when I venture out, and piles upon piles of books. I even rigged up an Internet connection by splicing one of the lines that services the closest Muni station. When I need a bath, I hike out to Forest Hill Station and swim in the Laguna Honda Reservoir, which is abandoned after dark.

Anyway, I'm itching to know more about you. You haven't replied, so maybe you don't read Missed Connections. Maybe your friends do, and will tell you that a tunnel-dwelling woman is looking for a well-dressed Indian gentleman who rides the 8:27 L-Taraval.

If they don't, I'm going to have to figure something else out.

Cody