The worst, she says, is cleaning up after young women. Makeup smears are everywhere and need to be scrubbed off. Not that young men are better. They leave dirty clothes on the floor.

“Their socks smell,” she says.

By the time she leaves work, she’s ready to be home. If not for her husband, there would be no easy way for her to get there.

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It might be called public transportation, but Metro isn’t for all of the public. Left out are those members of the public who work late into the night cleaning hotel rooms, serving drinks and washing the dirty glasses, or vacuuming under the desks in your office tonight.

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If it’s a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, the last train home to Branch Avenue, near Dunn’s Clinton, Md., home, will have just pulled out of the nearby Mount Vernon Square station when she’s leaving work.

Even during rush hour, the bus isn’t much of an option — a nearly two-hour journey with a transfer.

At midnight, Dunn’s fastest route home, according to Metro’s online Trip Planner, would involve waiting until 3:03 a.m. for a bus, taking it to the Anacostia Metro station, and waiting for it to open at 5:37 a.m. to catch a train. It would be getting light by the time she walked through her door.

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Some of Dunn’s co-workers burn a chunk of what they earn on Lyft or Uber. Others drive and pay for parking. Dunn relies on her husband, Ron Christopher, to do what Metro can’t.

They met five years ago on a bench waiting for a bus in Panama City, Fla. He chatted her up. As they were about to get off the bus and go their separate ways, he got the sense she wanted to keep talking. He gave her his number. The rest is history.

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On the nights when Dunn works late, Christopher often spends the time looking for a part-time job online. “At my age it’s not easy finding work,” he says. But it would mean his wife might not have to work so hard.

Around 11 on the nights his wife works, Christopher, who is 72, will turn off his computer, get dressed and drive 45 minutes to get her. Then they’ll drive the 45 minutes back home.

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“I’m not going to leave her out in the dark waiting for the bus,” he says. “Her safety is paramount to me.”

Metro’s board voted Thursday on whether to restore the hours of service Metro had before 2016, when it decided to close stations earlier to leave more time overnight to catch up on long-neglected track work. Before then, stations closed at 3 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and midnight other nights, late enough for more workers like Dunn to catch the last train home.

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But the later hours were rejected. Board members from Maryland and Virginia worry that going back to the later hours will mean having to do repairs during busier times. And the Federal Transit Administration has warned that extending the hours could delay and possibly jeopardize $1.6 billion in federal funds for Metro, because then the FTA would have to assess whether the change would affect track safety.

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Metro’s board is considering $3 subsidies for late-night ride-hailing trips. But $3 would barely pay the tip for the $20 Dunn would have to shell out to get home.

Until the politicians figure out what they’re doing, Christopher will keep heading out into the night.

“I made a good choice, didn’t I?” Margaret says of her husband.

But really, what else is he supposed to do?

“I don’t have a choice because of the Metro system,” Christopher says. “I have to pick her up.”

Got a story about riding Metro or have a question? Send it to kery.murakami@washpost.com or @theDCrider.