I am Humphrey Bogart. The dame's sweet, but she hasn't got a bit of sense to her about things.
"Double scotch please."
"Alcoholic beverages are five dollars each."
"I'm aware."
"I'll be right back then, with your scotch."
"Double."
Yes she says, halfway out of the compartment. Of course.
I love you, I say to the zig-zagging protracted door. Then I sit patiently, like a dog waiting for its treat or a child for communion, until the hostess returns. I take the short glass from her hand and remind her of my ardent passion.
"That part comes after the drink, sir. In about two or three hours," she says playfully, all curves.
So there's some spirit in the young thing after all. She leaves, and I sip at the rim of the glass by the window, looking out at all that black.
Buckets and buckets of the stuff.
~
BlackBlackBlack.
Blackblackblack.
blaaaaaaaaaaack.
There's a black someone at my black door, just blacking there.
No. I have no idea what color this outsider is, but there definitely are silhouettes of feet at the base of the door, which is teal, not black. Whoever is outside shifts their weight from one foot to the other, the shadows deepening and rising one after the other. I thought about the hostess, if I had seen her shoes during our brief joining. Even if I hadn't, I think I'd be disappointed if they weren't sky blue, with white trim and all in order for the job.
Still, it had only been 40 minutes, and those employed by the transport industry tend to be overly-punctual solely to heighten the wholesale failure of the actual train to ever take into account the existence of a clock, and to maintain the embarrassment we feel holding recently-emptied cups, inching the toes of our sneakers secretly onto the corrugated yellow strip.
That is to say:
She won't be early. She will be right on time.
Satisfied to have eliminated at least one member of the collective trainship, I no longer found any sign of anyone in the half-inch space between door and carpet.
I strode over empty space, and in expectation of needed pursuit, hopefully in the direction I assumed the diner car to be, refolded the door.
No more than five feet to my right stood a woman in front of the next cabin door, pressing her feet the exact same way. In the instant before she turned I could see boredom, curiosity, disconnect and a waiting switch that held behind it all sorts of activity. I remember thinking:
My God, she's such a child! Then:
My God, what a boring assessment of this person! Then:
My God, sorry for distracting You from whatever You were up to!
Then she turned, and the switch flipped.
"Hi!"
"Yo." I am the coolest motherfucker you will ever meet on this train.
"I've been going by every room all along this train, because all the magazines are in Italian and I have no books and no one to talk to because they've all gone back to their rooms I think. Though I can't imagine anyone sleeping on this thing, even in the rooms."
"But you didn't knock on my door."
"I haven't knocked on any of them, that's the problem. I come right up and stand here," She refitted her feet straight in front of the door, looking down and gesturing at them with magician assistant's hands, "but then I don't do anything. I also figure unless I really laid into it everyone inside would just think it was another noise from this God-forsaken rustic missile. Hey, did you know I was out here?"
"I saw your shoes."
We both looked at her shoes then, as if we had caught some errant schoolboy in the act of playing hooky. The shoes (dark red, with gold designs and no support, like dancing shoes) said nothing in defense.
"Through the crack," I explained.
"You must've been paying a lot of attention to the condition of your door."
"It's just folded board. And teal."
"I meant you must, you know, be able to tell when things are subtly different, even if everything looks the same. My name's Lauren, by the by."
"I tend to notice things, I guess." I paused, then stuck a hand out. "Andrew."
"Can I come in?"
"What?"
"Your room. Well I guess a better question is do you want to talk? I don't know why I assumed that. Do you? Want to talk?"
I waited again before answering, thought about all the self-loathing and cursing and drinking I would miss, then answered "sure."
"Delightful."
"One second," I'd caught sight of the hostess emerging from one of the other compartments. "Another scotch please, when you have a chance?"
Her eyes lit on Laurel only for a second before snapping back to me and back to work.
"Double, like last time?"
"Yeah."
"I'l be right back."
She looked hurt.
~
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