The Christmas Train (13 page)

“Trains are nice over Christmas. People are in good moods. It’s really a great way for families to travel together,” said Agnes Joe.

“So how come you’re not spending Christmas with your family?”

“A girl has to be asked to the party, doesn’t she?”

“So you and your daughter don’t get along?”

“I get along fine with her. She seems to have a problem with me.”

“I’m sorry, Agnes Joe. I really am.”

“I’ve got lots of friends on the train though.”

“Like that lady in the lounge car said, friends are friends, but family is family.”

She smiled. “Pauline the knitter? What does she know about anything? And that was the ugliest sweater I’ve ever seen.” She paused and said, “I say that your family is where you find it. You just have to look. Like you.”

“What do you mean, like me?”

“That film lady, Eleanor. She’s the Eleanor from your past, isn’t she? The one love of your life?”

“We’re not even friends now.”

“But you could be. And a lot more.”

He shook his head. “No. Too late.”

“You’re wrong there.” Ignoring his puzzled look, she said, “I’ve seen enough in this world to know that two people who can make each other that miserable must love each other a lot.”

He thanked her for the musical interlude and went back to his compartment. However, he didn’t intend to waste his time on something that clearly would never happen. He’d lost Ellie once and it had devastated him; the aftershocks still pounded him all these years later. He was never going to chance being that hurt again. The past was dead, resurrection out of the question. He had reconciled himself to this fate when Father Kelly popped his head in.

“You haven’t seen a silver cross lying around, have you?”

“Why, did you lose one?”

“Well, I can’t seem to find it.”

“That’s strange. I’m missing a pen.”

The priest shrugged and walked off as Tom’s cell phone rang. He checked his watch and saw it was after midnight. He clicked the phone’s answer button.

“Hello?” he said.

It was Lelia calling from LA.

“I’ve been tracking you on the Internet. According to the schedule you’re in Pittsburgh. Right?”

Tom looked out the window. The train was slowing and he was trying to see a station sign. A few moments later, he saw it: Connellsville, PA. They were far from Pittsburgh. They must have stopped again while he’d been asleep.

“So you’re in Pittsburgh, right?” she asked again.

“Yep, you can see the stadium from here. Remember those great Steeler teams of the seventies?”

“I don’t follow baseball. I just know you’re supposed to be in Pittsburgh.”

“The Steelers are a football team. And do you realize it’s after midnight my time?”

“You can’t possibly be sleeping on the train—isn’t it far too noisy and bumpy?”

“Actually it’s a very nice ride, and I was sleeping,” he lied.

“You can set up right over there, Erik,” Lelia said to someone.

“Erik, who’s Erik?” asked Tom.

“He’s my FBTT.”

“FBTT? Sounds like a disease.”

“Full-body therapeutic technician. It’s all the rage out here now.”

“Oh, I’m sure it is. So what is old Erik going to do for you in the privacy of your own home?”

“My lower back, hamstrings, and he’s going to give me a pedicure too.”

“Lower back and hamstrings. Anything in between those points?”

“What?”

“Are you clothed during this process?”

“Don’t be silly. I have a towel on.”

“Oh, gee, that’s a relief. Look, why do you need this guy to come to your house to do all this? I thought you belonged to that fancy spa.”

“My back was hurting, and my toenails really needed some emergency work: I’m wearing open-toed high heels tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I guess that does qualify as a crisis. So why not try a hot-water bottle and nail clippers? That seems to work for the rest of America.”

“I’m not the rest of America.”

“How do you know this Erik?”

“He’s my kickboxing instructor. He’s an FBTT on the side.”

While there were many legitimate kickboxing enthusiasts, when Tom had gone to one of her kickboxing sessions in LA he had found it inhabited mostly by accountants, lawyers, actors, and chefs who paraded around in designer spandex, flailing at rubber bad guys with their feet and fists. Two or three modestly rowdy kindergartners could have vanquished the whole lot of them.

“The six-foot-four-inch blond-haired, blue-eyed Adonis guy from Sweden, that’s Erik? That guy is in your house right now while you’re in a tiny towel?”

“Jealousy: I like that, it’s healthy for a relationship. And Erik is Norwegian.”

“Fine, could you put Norway Erik on, please?”

“Why?”

“I’d like to make an appointment with him for when I’m out there. I think my back is going to need some work after this train ride. I’m assuming he does both women and men?”

“Yes, he does. But you have to promise you won’t be mean. I know how you can get sometimes. Promise?”

“Absolutely. Hey, my back is hurting and I like a little FBTT as much as the next person.” He heard her passing the phone over with some words of explanation.

“ Ja, this is Erik, may I help you?” came the voice of the Norwegian Adonis.

“Erik? Tom Langdon. Before I make an appointment I was just wondering if you have an infectious disease disclosure policy.”

“Excuse me? This thing I do not know.”

“Infectious disease disclosure policy. It’s all the rage everywhere, except possibly where you are. Let me explain it in really simple terms. Since you work with people’s bodies—like Lelia in the towel there—and you come in contact with human skin, you run the risk of being infected with some serious and contagious diseases, which you could then potentially pass on to other clients, like me. So I wanted to know what safety precautions you take and also what disclosure procedures you have. For example, I’m sure Lelia has informed you about her hepatitis Z condition and the serious risks associated with it. I was wondering how you disclose that to your other clients.”

“Hepatitis!”

“Not to worry. Although there are, of course, no cures, the new drug therapies work wonders, and the side effects are fairly limited: nausea, loss of hair, bloating, impotency, that sort of thing. In fact, death only occurs about half the time, if it’s caught early enough.”

Tom heard the phone drop and then feet running away on Lelia’s highly polished hardwood floors. Then he listened as Lelia frantically called out, “Erik, Erik, where are you going? Erik, come back!”

After a door had slammed, Tom heard the phone being picked up. He could almost envision smoke pouring forth from the woman who had made Cuppy the Magic Beaver and Sassy the Super Squirrel the favorites of millions.

“What exactly did you say to him? And I mean exactly !”

“We were just talking about my appointment and what I was expecting and then he was gone.”

“I distinctly heard him say hepatitis!”

“Hepatitis? Lelia, I said gingivitis . I asked him if he had gingivitis, because my old masseuse did, and I have to tell you, it was really not enjoyable, you know, breathing that really bad breath for an hour. I guess Erik’s English isn’t that good.”

“I don’t believe you, not for an instant, Tom Langdon. Do you realize what you’ve done? My back is killing me, and what about my toenails?”

“Perhaps Tylenol and an emery board?”

“This is not funny,” she yelled.

“Look, I’m beat and the cell reception is bad here. I’ll call you when we get into Pittsburgh.”

“What? I thought you were in Pittsburgh.”

Tom slapped his forehead at this gaffe. Under enormous pressure, he struck on what seemed a brilliant plan. “Uh, Lelia?” He tapped the phone with his finger. “Lelia, you’re breaking up. I can’t hear you.”

“Tom, don’t you dare try to pull that—”

He spoke slowly and in a very loud voice, as though to a hearing-impaired idiot:

“IF... YOU... CAN... HEAR... ME... I’LL... CALL... YOU... WHEN... WE... GET... INTO... CHICAGO.”

He clicked the off button and sat back. The phone rang again, but he didn’t answer it. It went to voice mail and then it rang again. He finally just turned it off. Well, that had gone reasonably okay.

In his time, Mark Twain was probably the most often-quoted person in America, and one of his famous sayings came from a miscommunication that had led the world to believe the great man had passed away. When asked to comment on his alleged demise, Twain had mischievously opined that the news of his death had been greatly exaggerated. Tom had a feeling that if he were unfortunate enough to be within Lelia’s grasp right that minute, there’d be no one capable of overembellishing the circumstances of his violent death.

As the Cap began to move, he settled back, turned off the light, and took up sentinel at the window. The train slowed once more, however, and as he squinted into the darkness, he could make out the tombstones of a small cemetery the train was now idling beside.

Unnerved by the proximity of so many lost souls, Tom rose and went strolling once more. He had never done so much walking as he had since stepping foot on this train. chapter sixteen

Tom poured a cup of coffee from the snack station near the stairs and headed for the lounge car. Most compartments were dark at this late hour, and he saw no one in the corridors. It could be him alone on this ten-car train chugging on. The dining room was also quiet and dark, the service crew long since having gone to their quarters in the dormitory car, he assumed. In the lounge area the lights had also been turned down, and it was empty as far as he could tell. The train started up again and he balanced himself against one of the seat backs. He recoiled when his hand touched skin, and he almost spilled his coffee.

Eleanor looked up at him. She seemed as startled as he. She was also holding a cup of coffee.

“God,” she said, “I didn’t even hear you come in.”

He eyed the coffee. “Still have insomnia too?” They’d both suffered from it, perhaps because of too many time zones and too much travel, and too many horror stories covered that came back to torture them in their sleep.

She rubbed her temples. “Funny, I thought I was over it. It seems to have come back very recently.”

“Okay, I get the hint. I can find another place to drink my coffee and mull my truly limitless future.”

“No, I can leave,” she said.

“Look,” said Tom, “we’re both adults. I think we can coexist on something as big as a train, at least for a little while.”

“That’s actually very mature of you.”

“I have my moments.”

They were both silent as the Cap picked up speed again, beating the tracks at nearly eighty miles an hour. Darkness had never flown by with such purpose, Tom thought.

“I’ve been wondering why you’re really on this train,” Eleanor said. “You were always into getting there the fastest way possible.”

“I told you, I’m doing a story about a train trip, which is a little difficult to accomplish unless you actually ride one.”

“Is that all?”

“Why shouldn’t it be?”

“Because I know you too well, I suppose. You don’t have to tell me. It’s not like you owe me an explanation.”

He thought about the double meaning of that statement—as in: she didn’t owe him an explanation either—but decided to let it pass. Instead he told her about his father’s wish and what he was doing about it, not that his dad would know.

“I think maybe your father will know,” she said quietly.

“Okay now, being the suspicious, paranoid, conspiracy-theorist investigative-reporter type, I have to tell you, your being on this train seems like one heck of a coincidence.”

“We were supposed to be taking the Capitol Limited yesterday.” She looked at her watch. “Well, since it’s already tomorrow, I mean the day before yesterday. But then apparently Max’s plans changed, he got into D. C. a day later, and we had to take the train you were on.”

Tom shrugged. “So maybe it’s a coincidence.”

“Trust me, if I’d known you’d be on this train, I wouldn’t have been.”

“So it was really that bad, huh?”

“Look, we didn’t work out, it happens to millions of people. Some folks just aren’t the marrying kind.”

“I was married once.”

Eleanor was clearly stunned by this. “What?”

“Well, it was over so fast—the marriage, I mean—that I barely remember it.”

Eleanor rose, her fury barely contained. “Well, I’m glad you loved a woman enough to actually ask her, however long it lasted.”

“Ellie, it wasn’t like that, it was the worst decision of my life—”

She turned and walked out.

He watched her leave as the Cap came to a stop.

He rose and leaned against the window. He said quietly, to himself, Actually it was the second worst decision of my life . Then he said out loud, “What the hell is going on? I could’ve walked to Chicago faster.”