Barefoot Express

Glancing down at my watch, I suddenly realized I had just ten minutes to leave my eighth-floor office, take the elevator down to the ground floor, make my way through the narrow back hallway to the employee exit, run the six blocks to the train station, then navigate through the evening commute crowd to the platform where my train would whisk me home from another long, grueling day of work.

I quickly scooped up all the documents from my desk and threw them into my bag so I could keep reviewing them on the train and ran out the door.

“The stairs will be faster,” I mistakenly told myself as I shuffled past the elevator while still sporting my five-inch heeled sandals that had been blistering both of my pinky toes since 10:00 a.m. But they were the only shoes that matched my red flouncy dress, so by God I was going to wear these shoes today.

By the time I reached the bottom of the stairs and made my way out the employee exit doors, I bent down and ripped both sandals off, not caring that I was running barefoot through the streets of New York, my shoes dangling by their straps from my fingertips.

I had to make that train. It was the last express train of the day. If I missed it, I’d be waiting another thirty minutes for the next train, which would stop at every station along my route, taking an additional twenty minutes longer than the express train. I’d be wasting nearly an hour of my life, simply for not leaving early enough or running fast enough to get onto the express. RUN!!!

My heart raced with recollections of my high school track days when the mile relay team counted on me to pull ahead of the other runners and hand off that baton. I could not let them down.

I picked up my pace, zipping in between pedestrians, spinning to get around people so I could position myself at the front of the crowd waiting at each red light.

I scanned the streets then ran across them against the lights if taxis and limos were at least 20’ away, bumping into people on the other side of the street blocking my path. “Excuse me, pardon me, so sorry!” I shouted breathlessly, while in my head I was yelling, “Get out of my way!!!”

I got to the doors of Grand Central, yanked the closest one open, and ran down the stairs. Quickly I scanned the board to ensure they hadn’t moved the express train to a different platform that night. It happened to me once before and I wasn’t going to make that mistake again tonight. “NOT Tonight!”

Platform 42. Crap. All the way at the end. I jammed my sandals into my already overstuffed bag and picked up my pace again. When I finally turned the corner onto platform 42, I noted it was devoid of passengers. That meant everyone who had been patiently awaiting the train had already boarded the train. I kept running, half saluting/half giving a peace sign to the conductor standing on the platform.

The “all aboard” had sounded and I jumped through the door of the first car just as it started sliding shut, immediately discovering that all the seats were taken, and a fair number of passengers were holding onto ceiling straps and standing in the center aisle.

“Ridiculous,” I thought to myself. “I’m not standing up for nearly an hour!”  

I worked my way through the cars as the train rumbled down the tracks, steadying myself as I passed from one car to the next, each as packed as the previous car.

When I finally made my way to the last car, there was a single seat left. I paused and considered my options. The man I would be forced to sit next to did not look particularly, how do I say this politely? Clean. He was not clean.

And why is he staring at me like that? I looked down and noted my now disheveled dress and filthy feet, stinging from being torn up from the rough sidewalks and streets. I slowly, ever-so-slightly lifted an arm to see if I detected any eau de body odor. I did not. I nodded with satisfaction. My deodorant was holding up.

I plopped down next to the man with a sigh of relief. He gave me a look of complete disdain and inched his body away from mine.

A few minutes later the conductor came through the car, shouting, “Tickets. Tickets. Show your tickets.”

I reached into my bag for my monthly train pass, which I kept in the front pocket of my wallet, slapping my hand all around the guts of the bag and rearranging everything but couldn’t find the wallet. Much to the chagrin of my seat mate, I started dumping out my entire bag. First my sandals. Then my stack of work documents. Then my make-up bag. Then my hairbrush. Then all the loose items from the bottom of my bag. My wallet was not there. I had no train ticket.

I slapped my forehead. “Oh my God. I dropped my wallet into my desk drawer when I came back from lunch and forgot to put it back in my bag,” I said to myself, but perhaps louder than I meant to. The man next to me rolled his eyes and continued pressing himself into the side of the train to distance himself even further from me as I started shoving everything back into my bag.

With each step, the conductor came closer. I started breathing quick shallow breaths, my face felt flush, my heart raced. “What am I going to do?”

“Tickets. Tickets please, Miss.”

“I’m so sorry sir, but I seem to have left my wallet with my monthly train pass at the office.”

“Well, you’ll need to pay for a one-day ticket now or get off the train at the next stop,” he responded, dismissively.

My thoughts raced and instantly I got a splitting headache. There was just one single stop between New York City and my stop just blocks from my home. And that stop was 125^th Street. In Harlem.

“I’m so sorry sir, but all my cash and credit cards are also in my wallet, back at my office, so I can’t pay for a ticket.”

“Then you’ll have to step off the train at the next stop,” he repeated.

“But sir. It’s Harlem. You’re going to force a woman off the train there alone, after dark? Simply because she forgot her wallet?”

“I’m afraid those are the rules ma’am.”

The train slowed and the doors slid open while the conductor stood next to me. He extended his arm to point me to the door.

With a huff, I picked up my bag and stomped off the train into the darkness by myself. And I clearly was not the type of person that people expected to be disembarking from the train in Harlem. Everyone on the platform turned and stared.

I squared my shoulders and snarled, muttering, “Don’t even think about it. I don’t have anything worth stealing. I left my wallet at work.”

“Poor little city girl ain’t got no money,” snickered one young man.

His buddy replied, “Ain’t got no shoes neither!”

Everyone on the platform laughed. My humiliation was complete.

I walked the entire length of the platform, down the stairs and around to the other side of the tracks to take the train in the opposite direction back into the city to make the entire barefoot trip back to my office to get my wallet, just hoping the security guards would still be there to let me back into the building.

I ignored the stares I got speed-walking barefoot through the city late in the evening, making it just in the nick of time as the guards were locking up. I rode the elevator back up to my office, opened my desk drawer, and there it was, my little nemesis, with all my ability to pay for anything or go anywhere inside its leather folds.

I slowly sauntered back to the elevator, made my way down through the lobby, waved to the security guard, meandered along the much less crowded sidewalks back toward Grand Central, waiting at the back of the groups of people at each red light to cross the streets, then pulled open the door of Grand Central with what little strength I had left, and looked up at the board to see what train I could catch to make my way home.

I had just missed a train and the next wouldn’t be leaving for thirty minutes. Of course I missed it. I sat down on a bench, took a deep breath, and patiently waited for thirty minutes for that train. It was a local. It was going to stop at every single station, and, if my math was right, I was going to arrive home three hours later than normal that night.

When I finally disembarked from that train and walked, still barefoot, the three blocks to my apartment, then made my way through the door, slamming it shut behind me, my roommate glanced up then scanned me from head to toe.

“What the heck happened to you?”

“A lot of things. So many things. No need to discuss,” I whispered, dropping my bag to the floor and heading to the bathroom, where I stood in the shower until I was certain that all the sweat, dirt and trauma of my day finally made its way down the drain.