"If I don't leave now, I'll turn into moss. Attach myself to a building
and ooze. But thanks for asking me to stay."
"Just giving you an opportunity to spore, kid," Carrie said, cocking her
damp head at the sound of more rain pelting the building, rising in crescendo
like a million bags of sand opening over its ceiling, each grain louder and
harder, their echoes ricocheting off the cold marble floor of the depot.
"Last chance to evolve into that green stuff I'm always wiping off the
kitchen window sill."
"Viva la Seattle," I said. "Thanks for the turkey. Next time you
transfer, consider going some place the sun shines once in a while, will ya?"
"Thanks for coming." She hugged me, a quick Windsong embrace, then
pulled back, prodding her glasses up her nose with one thin, unmanicured
finger. "Next time though, fly. Or convince this train that four a.m. is
not the best time to leave for Boise. I tried not to wake Alan when we left,
but I did. He's worried about his wife being out in the rain at this ungodly
hour, and when--"
"When I'm rich and famous," I said, settling onto the hard wooden bench
beside her and fumbling in my pocket for a cigarette. I didn't want to
discuss Alan The Unemployed, ever on the brink of something wonderful. My
brother-in-law. But at least he'd stayed with his wife. He hadn't gone
running off to greener pastures the first time a little crabgrass sprouted in
his own yard.
"When I'm rich and famous, I'll fly," I promised. "But as long as I'm
poor and struggling, bewildered and unloved--"
"Maybe not for long, kid. Look at that!"
I followed my sister's gaze to the entry door, swinging open on
protesting hinges to reveal a GQ advertisement. A whisper under six feet,
shiny chestnut hair, perfect arch of mustache, wide hazel eyes, square chest
and trim waist. All wrapped up in olive green Dockers and a white
sweatshirt. A pressed white sweatshirt.
Definitely ironed, and recently. He carried a gray denim duffel bag and
settled onto the bench adjacent to ours, fumbling with his ticket poking out
of the top of the bag.
He would have a beautiful smile, I thought, all white and even teeth. I
wanted to see that smile and unfortunately, I did. It jumped out for the
heavy set brunette who loped through the door moments later, draped in a pink
jogging suit and companionably settling in beside him to brush invisible lint
from his sleeve.
"Married," I said, exhaling a sigh of frustration. "Most definitely
married."
"Maybe not." Carrie leaned closer and used her free hand to grab my
cigarette and crush it into an overflowing ashtray. "It's what, fourteen
hours to Boise? Anything could happen. Behold Mr. Right."
"It's Amtrak, not The Love Boat," I reminded her. "Look Sis, I'm
twenty-nine years old. According to plan, I should be married by now. I
should've stayed married to Ben. I should have two point five kids by now.
It's been five years. Unless Mr. Right is legally blind, he'd have found me."
"Ben was a jerk. A rock solid bonehead."
"He was--is--a very successful geologist."
Why defend my ex-husband? Hadn't he left me for his secretary at Bronson
Silver Mine, walked out of our marriage because she made him fresh ground
coffee and salivated at every opportunity to type his cryptic notes? But I
defended him because I'd picked him, just as I'd picked our velour floral
print sofa and love seat, which had grown lumpy and sagging in his absence.
It was mine, though. My choice. I defended and clung to my furniture and my
heartbreak with equal passion.
"He should have studied the rocks in his head, not the ones in the
ground," Carrie asserted. "I hope he gets crushed in a landslide."
"Me, too," I said, but just to be polite. My gaze shifted from the
scuffed tops of my Reeboks to GQ Man and his jogging suited companion. She
was saying something, and the beginnings of another smile tugged the corners
of his mouth, finally wrenching his lips apart to reveal those beautiful
teeth. Chiclets. Perfect, even, and tempting.
"What are the odds," Carrie mused, folding her arms across her chest and
inclining her head like a bewildered parrot, "that he's not married?"
"A million to one."
"That he's not even traveling with her? That he's the one for you?"
"A million to two."
"You could really hit it off. Actually--" She broke off and craned her
neck across my shoulder. "I don't see a ring there, Chris. I think he's
single."
"And I think you're nuts." I eased her back against the bench, pressing
my palms against her shoulders and sticking my face close into hers. Her
eyes, behind the thin frames of her glasses, widened. "Look," I said
irritably, "I came here to have Thanksgiving with you because I love you, OK?
But you've got to quit playing Cupid with me. I had my go around, and it
didn't work out. I'm doing fine on my own."
She pressed her lips together and blew a quick breath between them,
Windsong and Doublemint gusting over me. "Sure," she said. "A secretary
with a stray cat and no hope. A young woman who's given up on love, resigned
herself to living alone forever and being a wizard at WordPerfect. Yeah,
that sounds about right as a definition of true, lasting happiness."
"Executive secretary," I corrected. "Frizbee isn't stray, either. I
picked her out myself, at the pet shop. And," I added, my voice rising,
"it's Word, not WordPerfect. Not for a couple of years now."
"I don't like to see you give up," Carrie said. "Keep dating, keep
trying. You can't quit. You can't just give up."
"I also quit coffee, remember? I don't miss that, either. You get a
lift, followed by a crash. Same difference."
"Chris, it's not the same thing and you know it."
"I quit dating, I continued, "for the same reason I quit trying to stand
up on water skis. Falling on my face at fifty miles an hour is no fun.
Look, I haven't dated in six months and I haven't evaporated. Quit pushing
me! If I wanted to start now, would I really go after a married man in a
train station at four o'clock in the stupid morning?"
Carrie made no response, her lips a round, silent "O". I hadn't realized
I'd been shouting. Not until I glanced over my shoulder and saw GQ Man and
his lovely bride staring. Her mouth was an "O" to match my sister's. His
Chiclets rested beneath a smirk, but his eyes, burning into my own for just a
moment, were ablaze with pent-up laughter.
"Well, I've seen the Space Needle and I've made a total idiot of myself,"
I said, turning back to Carrie. "I guess it's time to go home."
"When you quit dreaming," Carrie said anxiously, patting my arm as the
train approached the depot, "you're just dead."
"Really? I've found I just sleep better." But I draped an arm across
her shoulders and hugged her as hard as I could, one handed. It went over
better than anything I could think of saying.
Seattle was miles behind when the rain finally quit, the first pale pinks
and grays of sunrise washing the coach in warm pastels. I'd settled into my
seat, legs propped up on my bag, my eyes riveted to the window since leaving
the depot, engrossed in the beginning of a fourteen hour movie called The
Pacific Northwest From A Train.
It was glorious, greens and golds and open spaces and mystical fog and
scattered houses, thin lights glowing into wakefulness on the Saturday
morning following the biggest Indigestion Fest of the year. I watched for
over an hour before turning to the second feature, People On A Train Still
Digesting The Fest.
A scattering of crocheting women in the rows behind me, a young couple
with a sleeping child between them. The opposite side revealed an elderly
man bent over a ragged paperback, his glasses lowered against the pages, a
woman in a red gingham blouse swaying slightly to the rhythm of the train and
whatever music traveled through headphones from her Walkman, and, in the seat
across from me, settled companionably beside his gray denim duffel bag, GQ
Man.
He smiled, revealing no teeth but smiling nonetheless, and that's when I
realized I was staring. And that's when I quickly returned to the movie in
the window. His wife was in the restroom. Or in the lounge car, waiting on a
cinnamon Danish or some other glucose shot to start her day. She was his
wife. She was on the train. I had only to watch my movie long enough, and
she would appear. When I looked at him again, the lint flicker would be
beside him.
I waited through two tunnels and three quick forests, then cautiously
turned, and...
He was alone. Reading a thick paperback called Warrior, a hulking
caveman on the cover posed with spear raised before a shining intergalactic
vessel.
A few more forests, another tunnel, and a quick stop at a collapsing
depot in Podunkville, Oregon. Just this side of Sticksville, bordering The
Boonies. If she'd been in the restroom since Seattle, she'd by now met with
a dismal end and was splayed across the tracks snaking out behind us. If she
was still in the lounge car, she'd by now eaten all consumables on board and
would have to be removed at the next stop to have her overloaded stomach
pumped clean. If, on the other hand, (the romantic, dreaming hand I
mistrusted), a million to two shot was playing out, she didn't even exist.
My Dick Tracy sister was right, there was no ring. I squinted at the
hand turning pages, revealing more of Warrior's saga. No ring, no tan mark
known to sprout on the ring fingers of dolts and connivers who remove their
bands when traveling. If the sweatshirt was truly ironed, and I believed it
was, he'd done it himself.
I wrenched my gaze toward the window, but it was tackled in mid breakaway
by his. The book lowered, the smile broadened, and the lips parted to make
room for, "Can I help you?" I struggled in the Super Glue pull of those
hazel eyes for a moment and started to speak myself, but opted for something
that made more sense.
As he continued to stare, clearing his throat slightly and inclining his
head toward me, I grabbed my purse and bolted for the lounge car, the swaying
of the train and my own adrenaline fed frenzy conspiring to knock my shins
against three seats before I disappeared through the sliding door separating
cinnamon Danish and coffee from the most beautiful hazel eyes I'd ever almost
drowned in.
The lounge car. Refuge of a half dozen booths and a low counter of
plastic wrapped sandwiches, cookies, and fruit beneath a glass cabinet of
beer, wine, and sodas, overseen by a bored bartender of about twenty whose
badge announced him as, "Welcome Aboard, I'm Bobby."
I ordered a Coke and fell into an empty booth, which wasn't hard to find
because the only other lounger was a plump redhead whom I judged to be about
forty, working a crossword puzzle in yesterday's USA Today and sipping a
Budweiser.
She looked up as I sat down, then shrugged slightly and returned her
attention to the puzzle. I settled into the booth across from her,
comfortable in being ignored, preferring it to the blistering contact eyeball
game in progress on the other side of that sliding, swaying door.
Another minute tackling the pupils of those incredible hazel eyes
would've meant real trouble. I'd have started believing Carrie's theories.
A dangerous thing to do. Plucking my heart out and having Welcome Aboard,
I'm Bobby run it through the blender on Liquefy made more sense, and would
ultimately, I guessed from experience, be less painful.
Another short forest and we clacked and rattled into the Columbia Gorge.
Crossword Woman raised her head and smiled, requesting a seven letter word
for "Hutch's sidekick."
"Starsky," I said, launching a two hour friendship. We talked, she
spewing details of her life as a clothing store manager in Provo, Utah, me
regaling her with my misadventures as an executive secretary in Boise. I'd
just finished the best part, my flawless coordination of an office Christmas
dinner for one hundred and fifty, seventy-two of whom were vegetarians, when
a very warm blast of Old Spice wafted in and asked if it could join us. We
seemed to be having such a good time, caught up in the camaraderie that comes
to strangers bored out of their minds and trapped within the swaying mass of
metal that is a moving train.
"Love to have you." Crossword Woman slid over.
GQ Man. Only that wasn't his name, because his name was David Searles,
and he was on his way home to Salt Lake City, where his job as an electrical
engineer awaited him. He'd only taken the train as a whim, after spending
Thanksgiving with his sister and figuring the train was cheaper, and much
more relaxing, than flying. "I just had a feeling," he said, not realizing
the line belonged in one of my sister's goofy dreams, "that it was time to
take a train trip."
And so did I, even as whole sections of my brain cocked their rifles,
prepared to fire at will on any thought of fate, romance, or kismet my sister
had planted in my head over yams and too much white meat. But the
sharpshooters wearied as the train clacked on, the forests fading to the
rolling, open hills outside LaGrande, Oregon. Fell asleep at their posts
completely as we talked into Idaho, sharing blissful similarities in our twin
love of our jobs, our solitary positions in life (which we chose to dub
'independence'), and gently touching on quickly passed over, muffled mentions
of loves gone bad and the hopes that one might someday go right.
Electricity between us? Enough to fire up New York City with a glow
visible all the way to Kansas.
By Caldwell, Idaho, I believed. In romance. In dreaming. Probably even
in God, who had slipped when he'd failed to deliver Sunshine Barbie on my
tenth birthday and completely fallen when no earthquake disrupted by brief
appearance in divorce court. Where had fourteen hours gone? Morning had
evaporated into afternoon and melted into dusk, and through it all I'd
floated in those hazel eyes and that starched white sweatshirt, blissful
until the conductor's announcement that we were approaching Boise forced me
to my feet, adrenaline again pumping, my shin banging against the table.
"I'm off next," I said. "I've got to get my bag."
"Let me give you my number," David said, nodding at Crossword Woman as he
stood, as unsteadily as me. "And I want to get yours..."
But Amtrak waits for no woman. If I didn't get off, I'd be stuck in Twin
Falls or worse. Frizbee would run out of food, water, and human affection.
Responsibilities beckoned, yanking me out of my dream and plunking me face
down in my gray but predictable reality.
I stumbled to my seat, grabbed my bag, and, turning quickly to cast one
furtive look behind in hopes that David might actually be behind me, number
in hand, stepped off the train into the cold marble and musty wood that was
the Boise depot.
My feet were leaden as I stared hopefully into the open doors, standing
aside as the woman under the Walkman stepped down with hips swaying, then
reluctantly followed her toward the station. The doors closed, and he was
nowhere.
I walked slowly through the depot and out the wide doors to the parking
lot, my eyes searching the dim light of evening for my little red Spectrum,
mentally flogging myself with Should Haves. I Should Have realized how close
we were to my stop. I Should Have just called out my number to him. I
Should Not Have lost him, missed out on a huge opportunity to test drive love
at first sight, people destined to be together, gut feelings that scream,
"YES!".
The echoing blast of the train's whistle punctuated my defeat as I jammed
my key into the driver's side door and twisted. Regret landed in my stomach
with a cold thud and stayed there, a dull, flat brick getting soggier with
each breath I took.
"Hey...hey, wait a minute, will you?"
I whirled, keys jutting between my fingers, a poised weapon ready to
attack whoever was shouting at me in a dark parking lot a few days after
Thanksgiving. Ready to gouge, to rip, to...
"This is crazy."
David dropped his duffel bag and jammed his hands into his pants pockets.
"You were gone," he said. "So I thought, 'what the heck', and came after
you. I guess I missed my train, huh?"
My lips moved, but my brain failed to deploy the word troops and I could
only stand dumbfounded as he fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a narrow
strip of paper.
"My number," he said. "Look, I know this sounds nuts, but if you could
take me to a hotel, and maybe give me a lift to the airport tomorrow,
well...I'd really like to take you to dinner or something in between. I just
really felt...back on the train..."
"I know," I said, and that's all my brain gave out.
Unlocking the hatchback, I tossed my bag in, leaving room for his. OK,
so it was a million to two shot. But somebody had to be those two, I
thought, unlocking the passenger door. And maybe a million wasn't really so
many, if you hadn't forgotten how to dream.
