The Five-Forty-Eight” is a 1955 short story by John Cheever published in The Stories of John Cheever, though it may have been published previously. The story is about a businessman, called Blake, who is accosted on a train, at gunpoint, by his former secretary. The woman is mentally ill, and is particularly upset with how Blake left her after a one-night stand and then fired her. The story is noteworthy because its focus is primarily on the Blakes’s perception of those around him, from which stems an anti-social history. Though the woman’s mental state is somewhat deteriorated, Cheever communicates that her perception of reality is more advanced than Blake’s.

From the story: “He tried to summon the calculated self-deceptions with which he sometimes cheered himself, but he was left without any energy for hope of self-deception.”