true crime

It rained last night.

I noticed it, pattering quietly against the windows in my bedroom, as I paused on my journey toward sleep to crane my neck around and identify the noise.  It was so soft that it almost sounded like a crinkling or a fluttering, and then I thought maybe it was water in the pipes from a shower upstairs.  But it was rain.

The weather is becoming more aggressively cold, a reminder that winter follows too closely on the heels of autumn.  I am resisting the ritual suiting up in all of my wintry gear because I don't want to jump the gun on it; I want it to be delightfully warm when I finally give in.

This means I wear a lot of pullover hoodies these days, carelessly casting off all of the advice about dressing for the job that I want (or am I? maybe what I want is a job that lets me wear pullover hoodies, hmmmmm?  HMMMMM?).  Sometimes I take a scarf, and sometimes I don't.  My fingers are usually cold, wrapped around the tupperware in which I carry my lunch.

This morning, when I and my pullover hoodie, Kate's computer (gotta help a sister out sometimes), and my lunch arrived at the T station, I found myself frantically presenting my Charlie card to the turnstile, again and again and again, as it buzzed nastily and told me alternately "SEE AGENT" and "NOT ENOUGH VALUE".

Unfortunately for me, my hoodie, the computer and the lunch, no agent was in sight.  Particularly distressing when the "SEE AGENT" is refusing to resolve into the usual "ENTER [valid until 11/30/14]" that I have seen for the past two weeks on this monthly pass that cost me $75.

I looked around, at the dark kiosk where the agent presumably ought to be, at the Dunkin Donuts bustling with coffee-drinkers and (apparently) cronut-eaters ("the cronut is here!!"), at the turnstiles, each of which I had tried in turn.  I walked back to the card-feeding station, that small contingent of boxy machines that plead for my credit card.

I swiped my Charlie card.  $0.25, it said - a residue from the days it was cheaper to load money onto the card because I didn't need the MTBA in any kind of daily fashion - and down below, monthly pass valid until 11/30/14.  THIS machine knows that I have paid for the privilege of riding the T this month.  Why doesn't that one?

I tried again and again, wondering if, for some reason, the turnstile was registering the quarter's-worth of value on the card before the monthly pass, if there were some way to strike those twenty-five cents from the record.  Finally, the frustration hit its peak.

Holding my wallet firmly in hand (I am a good citizen who has paid for my T pass, not a sneaky one trying to backpack on your ride), I entered closely behind someone else, touched my wallet to the contact as I passed through the gate, and it belatedly tried to close on me, buzzing insistently, now, and angrily.

I, with righteous adrenaline coursing through my veins, courtesy of my rapidly beating heart, passed through to the other side and boarded the train as the buzzing quickly faded out behind me, lost in the noise of the morning commute.

After all, if someone had been there to stop me, I wouldn't have had to sneak through in the first place.

I hope it works tonight or I'm destined to live a life of faux-crime until December.