"She recalled a day when she had lost one of her contact lenses in Penn Station. This was in the days before Rudolf Giuliani performed the dubious miracle of making the homeless disappear from the stations and terminals of Manhattan. As she began her all but hopeless search, she became aware — presumably through the corrected vision of a single eye — that various vagrants were searching alongside her. In another moment an entire posse of the dispossessed was engaged in the search for the missing lens. It was comic and pathetic at once; why should people lacking a clean change of clothes care about a professional woman's corrective eyewear? Apparently, they cared quite a bit. After a few minutes of frantic searching, she looked up and saw her lens held out to her on the end of a man's chapped, grimy finger. 'Now make sure you wash this,' he said."