At the Train Station

I had passed the building every day on my way to and from work, but until today had never gone inside. Scanning the rows of people, I sat down near a brown-haired, blue-eyed woman in a tan coat. She wondered aloud at the unusually large crowd entering the station, and I explained that the 6:25 train to Manassas had been cancelled unexpectedly. The next Manassas Line train was not due for another hour, so those headed in that direction had taken the first train available to this transfer point. Here we could wait in the comfort of a warm station rather than on platforms open to the winter winds.

My seat companion and I chatted briefly about the usual trivia women bring up in such situations -- the challenges of commuting, of dealing with static cling, of cooking reasonable dinners in less than 20 minutes. We quickly discovered that we were both waiting for the same train and had husbands who would be cooking dinner for themselves that night. I told her I had three more stops to go; she said her destination was the end of the line. I admired her warm coat, and the jewelry she wore; she admired mine.

When I mentioned that I had never been inside the building before, the woman eagerly began pointing out some of its recent renovations.

"I think the ladies' room used to be over in that corner," she said, pointing to a section decorated with three fake palm trees. "And the men's room was over here. And that porch out back didn't run all the way around the building."

I grimaced at the thought of people urinating in the area where people now stood, then looked at the pattern of black-and-white tiles on the floor. Where we sat, the tiles were laid out in a checkerboard arrangement, but in the corners where the restrooms used to be, the tiles formed solid blocks of black with a black-and-white greek key border. The differences in the floor patterns were subtle, but suggestive.

I began to look around the station, trying to see which parts had been renovated and which parts had been left alone. The orange seats and black-and-white tile floor suggested that that the station had been redecorated piecemeal. At best, it was the work of someone with a very eclectic taste.

The walls were painted in white from the floor to a man's height, then continued on in beige to the ceiling. It looked as though someone had planned to paint the wall in one color, but then changed his mind two-thirds of the way through. The ceiling itself was made of a dark wood, like walnut, and crisscrossed with beams. At random intervals the architect had placed small square windows, set up so high only birds could look through them. I wondered what their purpose was and how they were cleaned, if indeed they ever were. Perhaps they were intended to let in light during the daytime. Right now the overhead lights were at work -- large, cream-colored globes bracketed in metal that resembled oversized Christmas ornaments. The lights produced a soft glow that gave a romantic air to the station, recalling scenes from Casablanca, It's a Wonderful Life, and other movie classics.

I looked at the door leading to the porch the woman had pointed out. The door was made of the same dark wood as the ceiling and topped with a rectangular window shaped like a stylized eye or two fish intersecting. The design was similar to a stained glass window, with small pieces of glass bound together with strips of lead, but devoid of color. The door was bordered above and on the sides with more windows shaped like lacey white fans. I noticed that the main doors of the station were decorated in the same way.

The P.A. system sounded a 10-minute warning for my train's arrival, then produced its characteristic hum. All around me I heard the rustling of papers and the click of briefcases as people put away their things. Outside the main doors I saw glowing red letters scroll along the announcement board, repeating the same message for the deaf.

Slowly I gathered up my things and stood up. I nodded once to my companion, then strode forward and blended into the crowd heading into the night.