I smoked a cigarette or two, painted my nails, smoked a little pot, and started to scribble into my journal as I waited for her. Knowing with the same sort of blind faith of young love that she was coming to see me off at the airport that one time; that despite not knowing when exactly she left, or what time train she would be on, she would in fact be here, and soon.
I couldn't imagine any other place I would want to be, than in my car in a parking lot in the cold early spring night, waiting for my love amid cobblestones and train tracks.
I watched train after train pull in. The one she would normally be on, if the subways weren't fucked. The one she would normally be on if the subways were fucked. It was creeping towards late, especially considering my horrible schedule, when I checked my cell phone for the thousandth time, wished immediately that it had e-mail capabilities for the zillionth time, and went back to trying to write while every two seconds craning my neck to see if one of the same 3 people milling about outside my car were her.
Finally the 9 something pulled into the station. Again I wrapped my white hand knitted thrift store scarf around my neck, pulled my black angora hat down around my ears, and went to stand by the platform stairwell next to the village taxi drivers who stood there trying to get fares...
The train slowed, stopped, and the doors opened. The last of the commuter rush scrambled to exit the train. I watched figures, blank faces, and gray smears wander past; some with purpose, some with ambiguous pace. There was a shrill ring, which signaled the closing of the train doors, and it rushed off to the train yard to hide for the night like some hen pecked husband. Still, I didn't see her.
The strangers that passed me were just like the other few trainloads of strangers. Nothing more than people with stories and lives and hopes and dreams trying to get home to their way of life, still waiting for the time when they could begin to live. Not her.
I stared sort of sadly down the station platform when quite suddenly it seemed to turn into Christmas morning. I saw her smallish figure, long black skirt, black jacket, big fuzzy green hat, ambling down the platform towards me with a kind of lyrical gait.
I laughed. Somehow seeing her caused a chemical reaction inside of me that moved me from my frozen half expectant searching to overjoyed in an instant. This was what I was waiting for down here at the end of the line.