His train left late. Very late. 8:15 by his watch, more than seven hours past the scheduled departure he’d counted on, and they were just now pulling away from Union Station. Fat, greasy snowflakes thudded down onto South Canal Street.
He should have flown. He hated flying! And this storm had threatened to close O’Hare, and he had made his choice. The wrong choice. He should have flown.
He was going to lose her.
Six hours on the phone the day before, six hours of pleading, and still she said she’d be gone before he got home. There had been too many business trips, too many weeks away, not the life she had imagined when she had come to live with him. Omaha was cold. She knew no one. Six months she’d tried, first the sweltering fetor off the Missouri River in August and now the endless weeks of bitter wind out of the Arctic, and still she would have been willing had he been there. But he wasn’t there, was he? And now she was heading to New York to meet with her old employer, and then back to Siena when the paperwork was ready. And gone.
Her train left at quarter to six in the morning. He’d hoped to walk in that evening — just a couple hours from now — apologize, tell her that as soon as she’d hung up he’d called his boss and quit. He could take that job in Council Bluffs. Two-thirds the pay, but they could live on it. They could live.
There was no they. It was already dark.
He was going to lose her.
He took a deep breath. No sense panicking. With luck, he would be there an hour or so before she left. He could rush home… no. She always arrived early. He would wait for her at the train station. He’d have an hour. They could drink coffee, talk. He would stroke her hair. She always loved his touching her hair. He had never before seen hair that curly. She wore it loose, a thick cascade to her shoulderblades, like Venetto’s Lucretia Borgia but thick, a raven blue-black. He would bring his palm to her cheek, look into her cinnamon eyes, kiss the bridge of her perfect nose. He called it that, anyway, had called it perfect when first they kissed, chuckled at her puzzled look. A high, peaked bridge, just prominent enough, belonging on a fresco on a chapel ceiling backed with gloriole and wings. My god, she was beautiful.
A knot loosened in his gut, just a little. He would talk to her. He would remind her why she left Italy. Her father’s temper would be no less vile, and now that she had defied him to move to America! He knew the thought of her returning was as hard for her as him. He would persuade her.
A tap on his shoulder startled him. The woman across the aisle. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know you were sleeping.”
“I’m not sleeping,” he said. Fat chance on this trip. “Just… thinking.”
“Oh. Well, I only wanted to ask you… have you ridden on this train before?”
He had.
“It’s my first trip across. I’m headed to Salt Lake City.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“My son goes to Brigham Young. He’s getting married next week. I think he’s too young. And his girlfriend! I haven’t met her, and I’m sure she’s perfectly nice. But she’s seventeen years old! I don’t understand why kids have to rush into things, do you?”
“No ma’am.”
“Oh, I’m bothering you. I’m sorry. I get so wound up when I meet new people. We don’t see a lot of new faces in Dowagiac. My husband-rest-his-soul used to cluck at me. ‘Don’t talk people’s ears off, Emily!’ he’d say. He always had something clever to say.”
He nodded, once, a little curt, and then regretted it. It wasn’t this woman’s fault he’d brought this love of his to the brink. He gave her a thin mitigative smile.
“Anyway. I only meant to ask you if the train always goes this slow. Seems like we’re going pretty slow.”
She was right. They were just passing under the Tri-State. They should have been half-way to Naperville by now. Emily flagged down a conductor. “Excuse me, miss. Why is the train going so slow?”
“Our train has been delayed due to heavy snow, ma’am.” The conductor had obviously been asked this question more than a few times already. “Safety regulations require that we maintain a speed of 45 miles per hour in conditions such as these. Should the weather clear and conditions permit, we will resume our maximum legal speed of 79 miles per hour. I am sorry for the delay, and thank you for your patience.” The conductor nodded in his direction and walked wearily down the aisle.
A feeling gripped him that felt like… what was it? For a moment he felt an odd detachment. It was as if he was peering, from a safe distance and through binoculars, at the dark band of miasma constricting around his heart. Claustrophobia. He was trapped. He had sealed his fate when the train doors shut behind him. He was stuck here. He wanted to get out of the train, to run the rest of that damnable track to Omaha. That 580 miles of rail had for one short, stupid moment seemed his deliverance. Now it was his damnation. He had lost. A sob battered the base of his larynx. He fought it.
Red tail-lights flared against new banks fresh-plowed off I-80. They passed the train one after another. He saw himself walking the old hardwood floors of their — his apartment alone, cold. That damned squeaky board by the closet! She was the only person he’d met who could walk the hall without treading on it. In a few hours she would carry her suitcase down that hallway, the floorboard not creaking as she passed, and meet the taxi that would deliver her to the waiting 5:44 eastbound California Zephyr. He would not see her again. She had made that plain. It hurt too much.
He headed for the Lounge Car.
Dawn came and the felted tongue, the pulsing temples, and for a moment he did not remember. And then he did, and groaned. The sun was up. His train creaked along past snowy hills, dormant oaks bearing white banners atop their stiff brown limbs. He shivered, leaned up against the window to his left, pushed his naked temple up against the glass to cool it.
Up along the adjacent set of tracks, just coming into view around a broad curve at a tedious, storm-slowed 45 miles per hour, was an oncoming train.
The band of dark around his heart ratcheted inward, tighter. He stared at the other train, a silent chant in him, please, please, please. Just a glimpse. One last look. At least give me that: to take one last knowing look, to know the moment of separation. Please.
The train’s headlights near-dazzled him. He blinked frantically for a moment trying to clear his vision. And then the cloud of blue-black curls, the perfect nose, and cinnamon eyes smiling at an animated, bearded face, and the stranger was smiling back at her. And then she was gone.
The conductor walked down the aisle swinging a ringful of keys on her finger. “Excuse me miss?” Emily was waving for attention. “How many miles are we from Omaha?”
He looked at his watch.
Ah, the loss of love. Even worse, the loss of love we think we’re responsible for. And when it’s too late, it’s just too late. *sigh*
You should write for a living.
Ouch.
It’s a bit like the first few times you drink way too much, and realize you should have seen it coming several glasses ago. Nothing for it but to hold on, ride it out, and tell yourself that it will be OK. Not a very romantic comparison, but apt in the comparative effect on one’s judgement.
One eventually learns. About the drinking, anyway.
Write for a living? I think he does. What I want Chris to do is to move down here and tell me stories for a living. I could listen to these forever.
My God. It should be illegal, what you do with words.