The Last Train Was Not My Train

Photo: Unsplash.

I boarded the last train with the confidence of someone who had taken it hundreds of times and the attention span of someone awake for eighteen hours.

The carriage was nearly empty. I sat down, closed my eyes, and congratulated myself for catching it. Twenty minutes later, the announcement named a station I had never heard of.

I checked the map. The colored line beneath my finger was not merely wrong; it was enthusiastically traveling away from home.

At the final stop, three of us remained. One passenger had made the same mistake. The other claimed he intended to be there, although he studied the bus timetable with growing despair.

There were no buses. The taxi app showed one car, forty minutes away, driven by someone named Star Captain. We waited beneath a vending-machine light and divided a packet of crackers from my bag.

Star Captain arrived in an ordinary silver sedan. He listened to our story, looked at the empty station, and said, “This happens every Friday.” It was Thursday.

The ride home cost more than dinner and took us past the platform where I should have changed trains. When I finally reached my building, the first train of the morning was due in twelve minutes.

Since then, I read the destination before boarding. Usually twice. Confidence is useful, but apparently it does not operate the railway.