Who are "the women who push?" To whom do they belong? They don't belong to Nicolas, because I know of these women, though they aren't my characters. Are they an unsophicated allusion to a communal history of subway patrons, a moment of intertext? Somewhere these women exist, pushing and shoving their way on to crowded subway cars, waiting for their moment in the sign. If this subway happens to be the Paris Metro, Barthes, himself, may have encountered these damsels and perhaps, in the exhale of a cigarette he connected them to some obscure passage in Baudellaire.