Midnight, Orange Line

Last night I went to a concert that ended late; it was midnight before I got on the T to go home. While nothing bad has ever happened to me on the T, riding it at night is a phobia of mine and I was should've-skipped-the-concert nervous about riding it by myself at that hour. I was planning escape routes and things to say if someone demanded my money.

In the Downtown Crossing station where I got on, a boy, late teens or early 20s, was studying the subway map and asked me how to get to Roxbury. He was cute enough to disrupt my normal standoffishness. I told him I was going that way and pointed him toward the track. We waited on the platform together and I was happy when he kept talking. He told me he was going to the mosque in Roxbury; I knew where it was and we talked about its recent opening. He was my height and very slim with acne and scruffy cheeks, and he had an accent from some nation in the Middle East.

We'd stop talking and watch for the train and then start talking again -- smalltalk, which normally I'm lousy at. He told me about how he was going to the mosque to pray because (he said it sheepishly) he'd already missed one prayer that day. When he finished praying he needed to eat a lot because he's supposed to fast during the day. (I asked if he gets hungry and he said with a sneaky grin, you just eat a giant breakfast to make up for it.) He's from New York, visiting Boston for one day, for reasons I didn't catch; had taken a Greyhound bus to get here. He asked if I was in *university* and I said no, not for a long time.

The T came and I sat beside him. He had on a blue hoodie and was holding his phone; I checked to see if it was an iPhone, but it wasn't, but he saw me looking at it and bashfully showed me his wallpaper, which was a photo of himself, I think on a bus. "Self-portrait?" I said, and he smiled. By this time I was smitten enough to start worrying about his safety and well-being after he got off the T. "Where will you stay tonight?" I asked. "At the mosque?"

He said no, that after he prayed he would head back downtown to look for a 24-hour cafe so he could eat all night before sunrise, for Ramadan. I remembered that the T stops running for the night; I tried to explain but I don't think he understood that he was certain to miss the last train and get stranded in Roxbury. He got off at his stop and said "Take care" and I said "You too." And I felt bad about him eventually discovering that the T had closed while he'd been praying, and I hoped he had enough cab money to get where he wanted to go.

But by then I was almost home too, and I'd been so busy talking I'd forgotten to be afraid. Whatever his name was, he was like my little T angel. I hope he got home OK.