My original plans for tonight were pretty exciting: I was going to come home, put my feet up, and drink beer, eat popcorn, and watch season 4 of LOST all night. But because I’m trying to work extra hours at the part-time Bookstore gig (so I can buy new shoes soon, my feet are begging), I called this morning to find out if anyone had called out: yes, several, but, bad news — all from day shift. Good news! Since people called out for day shift, extra hours were available for night shift. Did I want to come in? Damn right.

So around 4pm I caught a ride out of the Office with one of the team leaders, and boarded the Metro at Grosvenor-Strathmore. I tried to nap, but the shuddering every time we came to a platform seemed to indicate to me that sooner or later the train would go out of service. Sure enough, at Cleveland Park, the operator asked everyone to disembark.

People looked around in confusion as I and a blonde chick and a few others stepped off the rather crowded car. The operator repeated the announcement. A few more got off. Then again, and just about everyone else got off. There were two people still on the car. One was asleep, the other was just sort of sitting there staring off into space. The blonde chick stepped back onto the car to tell the sleeping woman that the car was being taken out of service, but the sleeping girl didn’t speak English, or didn’t comprehend. Blonde chick gets off. The doors to the car close. At about this time, Sleeping Girl and Staring Space Guy both seemed to realize that they should have disembarked.

Too late. Train was moving. In cars further back, I saw a few other people sitting here or there, apparently completely oblivious to the fact that the train was mysteriously empty and that they were en-route to a maintenance facility.

That’s sort of a nightmare of mine: I’ll be napping, miss my stop, miss the train going to the last of the stations at the tail end of the rush hour, and wake up at midnight in a dark train parked in a desolate rail yard somewhere. Has anyone experienced being on a train that’s been taken out of service? I assume Metro sweeps the cars at some point to kick people off … but that’s a guess.

It happened to this woman.

A few minutes ago, during a discussion at the Office job about past employees some of us half expected to see walking back in with a Tec-9 who would lay waste to us all, I was either disappointed or oddly elated to learn that my coworkers felt that, although, admittedly, I look like a homicidal psycho mass-murderer, I do not have the internal anger or resentment to ever be so capable.

I’m aware that with my build, and my usually shaved head, and my somewhat patchy red beard, I appear to be somewhat intimidating. This strikes me as funny when I consider that I cry at Field of Dreams, hum Christmas music to myself, build castles out of Lego, and the most intimate I’ve gotten with any living creature in the last couple of years has been cuddling with my cats.

Wear a long black coat, though, and a coworker’s mother at the Bookstore thinks I’m going to commit armed robbery. Walk bare headed on a cold Friday night in Adam’s Morgan and nobody mugs me. Stare down a taxi while crossing Cathedral, and apparently I’m a bad ass (I think I’m just stupid, there). Coming home to the Woodley Park Metro, and women pick up their pace to outdistance me (this might be that after a long typical thirteen hour day, I’m kind of sweaty and smelly).

Last week, a bunch of kids were trying to tape up a centerfold to an ad on a Metro train. I was sitting at the rear of the car, at the rear of the train, alternating between napping and trying to read and looking out the rear window at the passing tunnel. One of the kids noticed as I glanced in their direction, and said, “Shit, he’s looking!” and they dropped the centerfold and walked to the other end of the car, apparently assuming that the evil looking white dude was about to emerge with firearms in hand and waste them all. Really, I’m just hoping to get off the train without someone asking me to contribute to some school fund or something.

I guess there are worse things than having potential muggers take a look at me and assume I’m capable of some Bond-ish acts of violence that would leave them beaten and crippled, but, y’know, sometimes it’d be nice to have a cute girl give me a look other than “OMG you’re so totally a rapist killer, aren’t you?”

Alas.

Someone is speaking over a PA, I force my eyes open and crane my neck looking for the station marker. I force myself to my feet and haltingly make my way off the train, shouldering against the throng of K-streeters.

Three girls working the café. A handful of customers, I’m one, a cream-cheese filled pretzel for my dinner. “You want a tall cup of ice water, don’tcha?” she asks. “Big, not tall.” The latter is Starbuck’s “small.” I want something to last. I want to go back to sleep.

The service manager, leaning in the door of the break room: “You want to clock in early?” Call outs.

“I don’t want you people tracking my purchases,” the lady snaps, from sweet-grandma-type to queen bitch in point one seconds, and I drop the royal blue card back under the counter as she flicks a credit card across the wood and glass counter at me.

Pointing down the aisle on the upper level. “Straight back, far left corner. Make a sharp right at that last pillar and you’ll see the section. Third shelf from the top.”

The employee restroom is in use, and the store detective – tiny Latina, earings, tattoos, cropped and spiky black hair: tough – is tapping her foot outside the customer men’s room demanding over the radio the location of the nearest male manager. I open the restroom door gingerly with my foot and hear the unmistakable sound of male masturbation. “…just call the police!” the manager’s voice echoes down the store.

At the registers, a line. Pointing at the small print. “See where it says the coupon expires at the end of July? I’m afraid they meant the July five months ago.”

“I’m looking for that book … by that author … it’s got a red cover!” The phones are ringing, three people are talking to me at once, and I’m being paged to look for a hold by someone at the registers. I point down the stairs. “All our red books are there.” He believes me, but I don’t tell him we’ve got red books in our non-fiction stacks, too.

I’ve come from nowhere, a shelf away, “What do you want?” I don’t hide the edge in my voice. He’d just found one of the store-use phones on a pillar, found the page button: “Is there anyone who can help me? I’m looking for a book but no one is wandering around.” I kill the phone with my index finger, wonder how many times I’d have to smash the handset into his skull to kill him.

“You don’t need a token for the bathrooms, but, sir, I’d rather recommend you go elsewhere today.”

“I’ve never actually heard of Bizzaro Sex Monthly, sir, but I don’t know if that’s actually something we carry?”

“Why, yes, I am aware there’s a dead squirrel stuck to our sign.”

At the registers, again, “I got an e-mail that said you had it!” A Christmas CD. We don’t. She’s near tears as she holds out the crumpled, printed, poorly-worded e-mail. I point out the relevant paragraph and she comes apart. “Information can help you–” (find a store that has it/ order one for you/ give you tissues) but she’s already pushing her way out the front door. She’s left a book on the counter. I put it on the shelf behind me, raise my hand, “Next!”

A one minute lecture over the wire on restroom manners because our events manager found the employee toilet un-flushed, audible to the customers in the vicinity of the registers because there are four of us, four radios, in such close proximity the earpieces don’t sufficiently muffle her. My customer, with the messenger bag, and the bike helmet, looks curious. “I washed my hands,” I say, presenting them palms open.

I find a stack of new hard-covers tucked under a table, hand one to a customer who was looking, a few paperbacks tucked under my right arm. I stop in section, re-shelve them one by one, stop at the last, glance left, right, flip the book open, read half a page.

“Attention, customers: the time is now 8:55pm, and our store will be closing in five minutes, at nine o’clock sharp. At this time, we’d like to ask you to bring your final selections to the register so that you might avoid a last minute line. If you’re–“ new girl from Cards is waving her arms at me, trying to get my attention, but why? “…uh, if, uh, if you’re not buying anything, please gather your personal belongings and make your way out of the store. Again, it’s 8:55 and we’ll be closed in five minutes. Thanks, have a good day,” the last, all rushed.

We’ve been closed for two minutes. “Will you stop hovering?” the customer snaps, a stack of books he won’t be reading, that I need to re-shelve, under his protective gaze.. “I only need a few more minutes.” “We’re closed, sir, you’ve got to leave.” My feet are killing me. I can’t wait to sit down, wish I had a blunt object on hand.

The cart is empty. Eric the cashier is putting the last of the magazines away. Night crew is pushing huge black carts with swaying stacks of books from the elevators. “Go home,” the service manager says, pointing towards the gun-metal steel door that leads to the lockers, the stock room, the break room, the time clock.

It’s colder coming out of the station at night, glancing north, towards home. A bus rumbles past. One aching foot in front of the other. The alley is damp. I whistle Christmas music. Sleep is one step closer.