I wander around a free city zoo in a large city park among those serving life sentences. All of them innocent. Placard: Please help keep our animals emotionally healthy! Do not run. Do not yell. A gibbon screeched, relentlessly. A little girl screeched back, relentlessly. Her parents laughed. Hawks, bear, puma, tiger. August’s humidity smothered them listless in cramped quarters. I hurry from this misery to a narrow section of the park, where a towpath runs parallel to a twenty-foot wide canal.

I’m sixty. I’ve read enough stories, heard enough stories. I’m on high alert when I walk alone. In empty parking lots and stairwells. Across solitary coastlines. Through possible-ambush forests. Along deserted dirty canals. A decade ago a friend proclaimed we no longer had to worry about sexual assault, as if our ability to attract rapists ended with menopause.

I don’t plan to let down my guard.

It’s just me on the path. At first. I walk fifteen minutes before settling on a grassy bank to chug from my water bottle. I remembered a zoo visit as a kid, when I stood wide-eyed before a lioness who rose from the rear corner of a bare concrete box. She crept forward, up to the scratched plexiglass between us, eyes filled with what I thought of years later as despair. I stare at the muddy water.

I turn from the canal. Behind me, a dense copse of oaks, or a lair. To my right, him. Small, then less small. Unkempt, unsteady, coming up the path. I tighten the grip on my water bottle. Escape options: Outpace him 30 yards to the footbridge. Plunge into the channel, emerge on the other side. I see myself through his eyes. A woman fleeing. Away from him. This is not who I want to be. This is who I’ll always be. I’ve read enough stories, heard enough stories.

I’ve had enough close calls to know I’ve been lucky.

He’s fast, faster than I’d figured. I freeze at the crunch of footsteps on gravel. I’m on the ground still, a disadvantage. Breath shallow, nerves taut. I screw the cap on my water bottle, act normal. At a four-foot distance, he pauses. I look up at his smudged face, framed by wild dark curls tinseled with gray.

I’m nearly close enough to touch his faded sweatshirt, too warm for the day. He’s empty-handed, no backpack. I meet his blue eyes with mine. Eyes filled with what looks like resignation.

“Hi,” I say, because he’s human.

“Hi,” he says back, then keeps walking.

I am safe. I am lucky.

He follows the path. Veers slightly left, then right, shouldering burdens. He is small, then smaller. He pauses again, turns back to look at me, and crosses the footbridge to the other side.