Last night, at 11:32, I was standing on a deserted train platform in a suburb just two towns from my own, my knees shaking with cold, my breath carving smoky curlicues in the night air. The streetlamp above my head buzzed and sputtered out as I stared down the long arc of track. It was silent, almost painfully so. In this sleepy town, half past eleven on a Saturday night might as well be three o�clock on a Tuesday morning. It was so quiet that I could hear my own heart beating. And then there was the slow grind and beep of a truck backing up somewhere very far away. And then nothing. I paced down the platform to hear the sound of my footsteps and then I stopped and instead I began to sing.

"Ah-ah-lay-ay-loo-ee-ya." It is an old song, a slow waltz of a tune that I first heard long ago on the radio sung by an aging Scottish folksinger. It crept out of the lower range of my voice, tentatively at first, then gaining strength against the silence of the winter night. Alleluia.

I had not intended to be standing on this platform at this hour. I had started my evening on a train bound for Chicago, where I let the tales of Odysseus slip from my fingers in order to watch the children sliding down the hills next to the train tracks on their red and blue and yellow sleds. I stepped down onto the platform downtown and slipped quickly between the other departing passengers onto the familiar streets of my old neighborhood. Skirting the river�s edge behind the opera house, I turned and followed the rails before ducking under the el tracks on Lake Street and up Wells. I like the streets under the el. I feel invisible under the el. There are unexpected views and hidden smells there. Because my usual gait bests many a casual jogger, I was twenty minutes early for dinner, so I strode through a more populated section of the neighborhood before warming up at the bar and meeting my dinner companion and kissing cheeks and how have you beens and let�s eat.

After dinner, we strolled north to the theater where a play that should have been terrible was both better and worse than we expected, but was at least mercifully brief. We stopped for steaming hot chocolate before hugging our goodbyes and let�s do it again soons. My watch told me to hurry. I jogged through the icy streets in my tall boots and brown not-lamb-but-something-like-it jacket, taking comfort in my own speed, and slid through the train station door with five minutes to spare by the clock on the wall.

Only there weren�t five minutes, because I was staring at an empty platform and the retreating lights even as the schedule board flashed a red light: NOW BOARDING ON PLATFORM 7. A young couple raced up next to me, the girl cursing, the boy looking frantic. The next train was not for two more hours. The next train would not get us home until two. The next train was too late. We were all too late.

There are moments when a small transgression of character can create an adventure just through the mere act of defying personal convention. As I stood on the platform wondering what to do next, this was going through my mind: I know myself to be responsible and frugal. In ordinary circumstances, I would call home to let them know and go to the lobby of a nearby hotel to wait for an hour and 45 minutes before coming back for the next train.

If I�d been thinking more creatively, I might have sprinted out to catch a cab to race the train to a few stops up the line. Instead, I listened to the request of the two college students from out of town who stood before me. They were lost. They did not know what to do, only that they had to get home earlier than the next train would allow. The girl stood there shaking with rage or cold, her white down jacket scuffed on the left sleeve from where she�d hurled her arm at the platform sign in frustration. Her boyfriend clearly wanted to smooth things over. �We could all take a cab,� he said to no one in particular.

The three of us dodged a woman who needed a conversation and who tried to convince us to wait the two hours for the train, but succeeded only in convincing us that a cab was the necessary course of action. I led our small group down the escalator and out the door to the street, where we started talking to the cabbie at the front of the taxi stand. He wanted $90 to make the trip. The girl started arguing with him, raving about how she fucking needed to get home, how she needed to catch a fucking morning flight, how the cabbie was criminal for even asking. I stood back to avoid the fray and my eyes lighted on a congenial panhandler wearing two jackets and threadbare gloves. He was standing next to the second cab and gesturing to me. I walked over. �You need to get a fixed rate," he said to me in a stage whisper. "Don�t let him use the meter. You need to negotiate a fixed rate. Here," he said gesturing to the cabbie, "talk to this guy.� I told the cabbie where we needed to go. �How much you wanna pay?� I paused. �How�s $60?� It seemed a fair price, it was easy to split three ways, and, if my cohorts bailed on me, I had the cash to pay the whole bill. �Okay,� he said so quickly that I wondered if I should have asked for less. But we piled into the backseat � me on the left, the boy in the middle, the girl on the right.

By the time we got to the highway, she had rolled down the window and was vomiting down the side of the cab. The boy held her hair and rubbed her back. I passed her my half-drunk bottle of water. The cabbie passed her the last third of a roll of paper towels. �Sorry,� she said to me when she was finished. �I spent a little too much fucking time on a fucking barstool tonight.�

�Is she all right?� the cabbie asked anxiously. �Does she want some gum?�

�No thanks, and she�s fine,� the boy answered. �She just gets carsick.�

�That�s right. I get carsick all the time,� she echoed and spat out the window and rolled the window almost all the way up. The cab driver sped up and the girl dozed off on her boyfriend�s shoulder while he and I talked. They go to a college many of my high school friends had attended. They were just in town for the weekend. Her parents lived in a town near mine. �Where did you go to school?� I thought he meant high school, because we�d been talking about the city where he was from and I�d mentioned that I�d graduated from high school there. I told him, but no, he wanted to know where I went to college.

I was caught off guard. College is ancient history for me now. No one�s asked me where I went to school in a long time. At some point it becomes irrelevant. But he didn�t think to ask where I worked. He asked where I went to college.

There was silence for a while as the cab sped down the highway and the couple dozed. I looked out the window at the fog rising off the snow, at the neon signs near the airport, at the other cars we passed. Soon we pulled off at the exit. I handed the driver a quarter for the toll basket and we rolled through the fog. The girl rolled down the window again. Again the boy held her hair and the cabbie slowed and the cold air swept through the cab.

The driver drove the winding roads slowly and toward the center. I remember when we first moved out here that I did the same thing. I was unaccustomed to roads that were free from the urban phalanx of streetlights. I liked to drive with my headlights pointing directly at the reflectors on the center line when the road was deserted so I knew I was staying on the pavement.

When we finally arrived at the train station two stops before mine, the boy muttered to the girl, �I have twenty, do you have the rest?� She tossed her purse at him and got out of the car. �My wallet�s in the front pocket. I�m starting my car so we can get the fuck out of here.�

She disappeared, leaving the car door open. The boy fumbled through her wallet then fumbled through his own, then through hers again. He counted out $32. �I only have $32,� he said disconsolately. �That�s okay. I�ve got it.� It was what I had expected. Embarrassed but grateful, he thanked me profusely. "It's no problem," I said. I wanted to say, "You deserve better than getting stuck with the bill. You can do better than being the one who holds her hair." But I just smiled, handed his $32 to the cabbie and got out. I handed the cabbie $40 and made sure he knew how to get back to the highway. By the time I got out of the cab, they were gone.

Why did I get involved with them? Was it because I wanted something unexpected? Because I felt a maternal concern for them? Because they reminded me of my younger self? Perhaps a little of all three, but, I think, most of all the third.

There is only one problem. I was never them. I was never that girl. I didn�t bleach my hair. I didn�t drink until I vomited out car windows. The only time I threw up after drinking too much was on my twenty-second birthday when my friends Wendy and Janelle had taken me out to a bar and told everyone it was my birthday and that they should buy me drinks. And since there was nothing better to do and I didn�t want to be ungrateful, I drank them.

I was never that boy either. I never took care of people who abandoned me to deal with the mess they�d created. I never held the hair of someone who didn�t really need help. I didn�t spend my time with people who openly demonstrated their disrespect in such a way.

Maybe I was repressed (there are those who have accused me of that). Maybe I was too dedicated to the life of the mind to want to waste time getting wasted. Or maybe I just didn�t know how. We all have our youthful transgressions, but mine were of a different bent and usually resulted more from ignorance and lack of diplomacy than from self-abuse or the abuse of others.

I walked around the station building, now closed, and crossed the tracks to wait under a streetlight. The night was cold, but not unpleasantly so. I felt the quiet wash over me until I had to make a sound. �Alleluia,� I sang to the night. Somewhere on the other side of the tracks a distant traffic light turned from green to red to green again. I stood under the fizzling streetlight staring at the tips of my boots until the slow sweeping arc of the headlamp of an approaching train broke my reverie. And the bells began to ring.

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