At Union Station

"Delia's memories of that moment were as golden and smoky as two inches of whiskey in a thick tumbler."

I'm beginning to read Cavedweller by Dorothy Allison in the waiting room at Union Station. It smells of fast food and leather seats that have been sweated in for years.

Lines of schoolchildren in matching, oversized t-shirts shuffle by, bracketed by adults wearing lanyards. The hippest teens you've ever seen sashay past in ripped jeans and electric yellow off-the-shoulder shirts. An old hippie with a cane and a beaded drum walks slowly past. A woman who reminds me of my mother, with her blue eyeliner and short, black perm asks me anxiously why her phone call to her daughter isn't going through. "We're supposed to meet at this train station, but she doesn't know what time. She's a nurse." she says.