There was a train malfunction last year while I was coming home from work and I had to take a bus to another train. While there, I met a girl who had an armload of shopping bags and kept asking when the bus was coming or if it was the right bus. I set her straight and she told me she was from Cleveland. For the next ten minutes, I heard all about the Cleveland Cavaliers and how the Cleveland public transportation system never had problems like this, and how she had gone to see the Cleveland symphony last summer. When a tour bus pulled up, I had to tell her not to board that and to get on the CTA bus pulling up behind it. While I was on the bus with her, I asked why she was in Chicago anyway. She said she was a medical student and had come to take a test to get some job in an emergency room. The job, of course, was back in Cleveland. They had just held the test here in Chicago. She thought that she’d passed and was celebrating by going up and down downtown Chicago, shopping along Michigan Avenue. Finally, the bus took us to an underground train station and we were separated when the train got too crowded and the conductor asked for everyone still on the platform to wait for the next train. The doors slammed shut in front of me and the train carried me off as she waved.