faith in me, huh?”
I pause. “You are not nuts,” I say.
And the words ring and ring again in my lead like an echo of a scream in the valley of Whitechurch. I hear the words, and I think about everything, and I am suddenly, physically tired.
And weary of selling this.
“Well, nice try anyway. But thanks.”
The train is about to go. Train noises come out of it. A bell rings, and some goof in a flat-leaded train-guy hat starts yelling. Pauly looks suddenly desperate.
I smack him. “Dodo, don’t cry. I’m sure she got on the train already.”
He then smacks himself. Lilly is never, ever, late for anything, trains, movies, walks in the park, nothing. We, on the other hand, are late all he time.
Paul smacks me, once we are moving and he’s loosening up. “And don’t call me dodo,” he says.
So here’s what we do. We crouch low and skulk all cloak-and-dagger trying not to be seen is we head for the rear car. Why?
“Because she’s gonna just die from the surprise when we meet her there. The train would be too easy.”
“And Lilly dying is what we want , is that it?”
He pulls me by the arm, through three cars m the ugly old oily old Amtrak diesel as we head for the last seats in the last car. We pause, like a couple of criminals, each time we exit one car and are about to enter another. To take a quick peek. It’s a funny feeling, this hiding-from-somebody jazz, very foreign, very made-up and play-actish. Because, it occurs to me, Pauly and I slither and pound the streets of Whitechurch day after day, visible to all, but the feeling is nobody notices, cares, or half the time sees us. Now that we’re headed out, where we should be anonymous, it’s the other.
We stop short before entering the rear car. We are standing on that steel-mesh grate above the apparatus linking the two cars, and we just hover there for a few seconds. Not because we have to—the car is absolutely empty—just because we do. The wind is hard and slashing. The train feels twitchy, as if it is bolting through a line of tacklers who keep trying to knock it off track from either side, like there is a force working against us getting to our destination, but that force is wasting its time. Fifty million trees shoot by at fifty million miles per hour and the clean biting north-country air mixes with the greasy Amtrak air and that’s what we breathe. Train-ride breathing.
“I love this shit,” Pauly says, taking it in deep. He has stopped completely, and turns around to face me. His eyes are closed. I’m about to echo his statement when he decides to add another. “And I love you, cocksucker.”
He’s banging me in the chest with his pointer finger as he says it.
I’m really mad now, though I cannot quite figure what is setting me off. I think I’m going to scream at him and throw him off the train, but I can’t decide in which order.
“I paid for these tickets,” I scream into the wind, and all he can do is laugh at me before turning and sliding open the door to the rear car. I let the door slice between us rather than follow. Giving myself a few seconds before going on. Pauly knows I’m doing this, probably already knew I would, and does not wait. He heads straight for the back, and sits in the bench that faces me.
I let the wind beat me this way and that, close my eyes like Pauly did, suck it all up. Feel like I could ride like this for a while. But then without warning, it starts pissing down rain. Like it seems to do every damn day around here unless it snows.
I take the seat facing Pauly, as the seats are all face-to-face, like Amtrak has some kind of investment in people getting to know each other.
He’s looking out the window, and I know what he’s thinking. “I read it rains every day in Hawaii,” I say, pleasantly enough to sound plausibly optimistic, but not so much I sound like a dimwit.
He turns on me. “You see any goddamn palm trees out that window?”
I do not look out the window. I know what
I pause. “You are not nuts,” I say.
And the words ring and ring again in my lead like an echo of a scream in the valley of Whitechurch. I hear the words, and I think about everything, and I am suddenly, physically tired.
And weary of selling this.
“Well, nice try anyway. But thanks.”
The train is about to go. Train noises come out of it. A bell rings, and some goof in a flat-leaded train-guy hat starts yelling. Pauly looks suddenly desperate.
I smack him. “Dodo, don’t cry. I’m sure she got on the train already.”
He then smacks himself. Lilly is never, ever, late for anything, trains, movies, walks in the park, nothing. We, on the other hand, are late all he time.
Paul smacks me, once we are moving and he’s loosening up. “And don’t call me dodo,” he says.
So here’s what we do. We crouch low and skulk all cloak-and-dagger trying not to be seen is we head for the rear car. Why?
“Because she’s gonna just die from the surprise when we meet her there. The train would be too easy.”
“And Lilly dying is what we want , is that it?”
He pulls me by the arm, through three cars m the ugly old oily old Amtrak diesel as we head for the last seats in the last car. We pause, like a couple of criminals, each time we exit one car and are about to enter another. To take a quick peek. It’s a funny feeling, this hiding-from-somebody jazz, very foreign, very made-up and play-actish. Because, it occurs to me, Pauly and I slither and pound the streets of Whitechurch day after day, visible to all, but the feeling is nobody notices, cares, or half the time sees us. Now that we’re headed out, where we should be anonymous, it’s the other.
We stop short before entering the rear car. We are standing on that steel-mesh grate above the apparatus linking the two cars, and we just hover there for a few seconds. Not because we have to—the car is absolutely empty—just because we do. The wind is hard and slashing. The train feels twitchy, as if it is bolting through a line of tacklers who keep trying to knock it off track from either side, like there is a force working against us getting to our destination, but that force is wasting its time. Fifty million trees shoot by at fifty million miles per hour and the clean biting north-country air mixes with the greasy Amtrak air and that’s what we breathe. Train-ride breathing.
“I love this shit,” Pauly says, taking it in deep. He has stopped completely, and turns around to face me. His eyes are closed. I’m about to echo his statement when he decides to add another. “And I love you, cocksucker.”
He’s banging me in the chest with his pointer finger as he says it.
I’m really mad now, though I cannot quite figure what is setting me off. I think I’m going to scream at him and throw him off the train, but I can’t decide in which order.
“I paid for these tickets,” I scream into the wind, and all he can do is laugh at me before turning and sliding open the door to the rear car. I let the door slice between us rather than follow. Giving myself a few seconds before going on. Pauly knows I’m doing this, probably already knew I would, and does not wait. He heads straight for the back, and sits in the bench that faces me.
I let the wind beat me this way and that, close my eyes like Pauly did, suck it all up. Feel like I could ride like this for a while. But then without warning, it starts pissing down rain. Like it seems to do every damn day around here unless it snows.
I take the seat facing Pauly, as the seats are all face-to-face, like Amtrak has some kind of investment in people getting to know each other.
He’s looking out the window, and I know what he’s thinking. “I read it rains every day in Hawaii,” I say, pleasantly enough to sound plausibly optimistic, but not so much I sound like a dimwit.
He turns on me. “You see any goddamn palm trees out that window?”
I do not look out the window. I know what
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