Knocking

Note: Subway trains and broken staircases - most often, staircases under construction - are frequent images in my dreams. The university / multilevel shopping mall with a Starbucks is also a frequently recurring dream theme. I am with <PERSON>, my best friend from elementary school, a Swedish blonde who was very popular with the boys in later years while I was her ugly friend. Two boys from our class are there. We are all adults and we are talking about going for lunch. I am having trouble with something (perhaps parking my car?) so I lag behind as they start for a lunch place. <PERSON> waves at me as she goes toward the university because she has a class in an hour. I decide I would rather go to Starbucks in the university than tag behind <PERSON> and <PERSON> to go to some fast-food place full of stuff I cannot eat. So I veer off and go into the mall / university looking for the Starbucks, hoping to find it in the hour I have before class. Unfortunately, I enter the complex and find myself in a stuffy furniture store section that appears to have no way out to the rest of the mall. I do see a staircase that seems to be under construction. I see that some steps are there. I ignore it and keep looking. I find a set of concrete steps leading down into another hallway, but as I approach the crevice I find that the steps are against the wall and I am standing next to a vertical drop. I will have to jump to reach the stairs. I decide to put my handbag down and try it. A passer-by is urging me on. I throw myself against the wall and land on a step. The passer-by cheers me and then makes as if to throw my handbag to me, but he considers this a moment and then runs off with my handbag. I have no way to get back up there to chase him. For a moment I wonder whether I can make him come back and throw me my handbag, but then I dismiss that as unrealistic. I go down the steps and I am on a subway platform. I do not know whether the train is going to take me south or north. If north, I will end up in the Starbucks section of the mall. If south, I am out of luck. A train comes and nearly knocks me over. I do not get on it. I leave through a doorway... ...and find myself under a very low ceiling about to crawl out through a small opening that looks like a bird's tail. In a moment I realize I am under a plane!! I panic and scramble to get out. A worker is there and tells me I should not even be anywhere near the runway. I ask the worker how to get to Starbucks and he tells me to just go through that door behind him. I head toward it. That is when I wake up.