The ring

I'm riding the train, and I swear there's a ring under the seats opposite me, but it can't be, no, it can't be - and you can't just dive, crow-like, after everything that glints, because you end up picking up a lot of tin foil and washers and looking like a jack ass. But after a long, long look (I am riding to the end of the line) I determine that no shit it really is, it's a fat, men's gold ring with a setting (how do you lose something like that? I guess you're playing with it and it drops and there is only so much you can look and look between everyone's knees during rush hour and besides it's your stop and you have to go to work and you didn't hear it hit the ground so maybe it fell into your attaché case after all). Aaaaand (where was I?) and so I am on the train and we are nearing the end of the line and now there aren't that many people on the train so I could go for it, I would just have to deal with getting my prissy lecturing clothes dirty but JUST THEN a mean, mean old man gets on with his granddaughter and they sit right across from me (she is turned around in her seat, looking out the window at the passing city and singing quietly to herself and he tells her to turn around and shut up and she obeys, neither fearful nor pouting because she is used to him by now), the two of them sitting right there above my ring, and he's catching my eye every time I try to steal a glance at it and glowering at me and god knows I'm not going to crawl beneath their legs but maybe, just maybe they will get off before I will, but they don't, they get off at my stop (which is, I admit, not quite the end of the line but the second-last stop), and maybe I can grab it after they get up but no, there's no time, it's my stop and I have to go to work.