“Excuse me, can you help me?”

I heard this question as I sat, hunched over a book, on an overcast afternoon at a Brown Line platform on the Northwest Side. But a single woman, alone on an El platform, enjoys few things less than solicitations or unwanted advances from strangers. I steeled myself for a confrontation as I lifted my eyes from my book, the automatic “sorry” already halfway to my lips. But the word died on my tongue when I saw the young man standing in front of me.