What would you have done?

I keep thinking about something that happened Friday night.

It was a little before 6 o’clock. It was dark and raining downtown. Lots and lots of people were out and about.

I stopped our car across from Europa on Wall to let my wife out. I was then going to try to find a place to park and go meet some co-workers at the Steam Plant for a quick beer. Then I would go back to Europa and join my wife. She was going to read while she waited.

As I watched my wife walk to the restaurant, I heard a soft knocking on the passenger’s side window. I saw a girl peering in at me. She might have been 17. She could have been 20. As I said, it was dark.

I rolled down the window a few inches.

“Can you give me a ride home?”

She didn’t seem distressed. There was no hint of panic in her voice.

I told her the truth. I was on my way to meet some people and was already late.

She nodded in acceptance and backed away. That was that.

Only I keep replaying it.

What if she needed help?

Yes, I am aware of the reasons that letting her in the car could have proven to be a mistake. I live in 2014, too, you know.

But I hate to think I might have turned my back on someone who could have needed assistance, though she did not ask for it.

Maybe she was just wanting to be out of the rain. Perhaps she gets rides that way all the time.

Or, of course, she was planning to say that I assaulted her if I didn’t give her a hundred dollars.

Later, when I told my wife about it, she suggested that I could have asked, “Do you need me to call the police for you?”

I wish that’s what I had said.

What would you have done?