The
Empire Builder
was late leaving Chicago but the train was by no means crowded. The conductors had divided the passengers among the four coaches and Sharon had her choice of several whole seats. She popped her shoes off and tucked her feet underneath her legs and watched the train staff and station crew on the platform. The men and women who worked for Union Station were clad in reflectorized vests and hard hats and weighty tool belts that made them waddle when they walked. The people in Amtrak's employ all wore ties and jackets; even the women, Sharon noted. The Amtrak people glided across the platform.
But the advertised departure time was 3.15 and by 3.45 Sharon was getting impatient, fidgety. She put down her book (Graham Greene's
Orient Express
), stepped out into the aisle, and stretched. The car was warm. She walked down the aisle slowly, nodding to a few of her fellow travelers. There was the typical Amtrak range of young mothers traveling alone with their babies, old men, students from Europe and Asia, a smattering of others. She opened the door at the end of her coach and stepped into the sleeping car.
The smell was different: it was a mix of smells mostly—coffee from a pot in an alcove, a gritty smell of diesel, and then there were the tinctures of hand soap and perfume. Her coach, she realized, smelled of industrial strength rug cleaner and, more faintly, sweat. She heard some laughter from the far end of the car and walked toward it, a little curious. Two women laughing... Perhaps she'd just say hello. The compartments she passed were all empty and she lingered at the door of one, number 6—it wasn't big, just two plush seats facing one another, a bevy of electronic controls over each one, but it had a fine window that ran the length of the room. It was an extra $200 for this. Maybe someday, she thought.
There was a closet next to one of the seats, by the window, and the door was open revealing a narrow full length mirror. From out in the corridor, Sharon studied her profile—slender, she thought, and her breasts were small but not so small as to qualify her for what her friends called the itty-bitty-titty-committee. She kept her dark hair short, almost boyishly so, though it was getting a little long now, she thought.
And suddenly, in the mirror, a man was at her side. He was her height and was dressed in a blue suit and a white shirt; his tie was black or very dark blue. Startled, she whirled to face him but was awkward and almost fell. "Take it easy," he said, laughing. And then, "We do ask that you keep your shoes on when you're out of your compartment." Sharon followed his gaze down to her bare feet on the carpet of the corridor. And she was suddenly aware of how pale her feet were and then of how pale her whole body was underneath her jeans and cotton top. Even her nipples—she'd noted in her own mirror that morning—were a washed-out looking pink. Her mother's father had been Italian but the rest of the family tree was Scotch and German, "an even whiter shade of pale," her own father had always said. The man at her side was black—his skin was the color of tea, he had a big mustache, he was about forty which made him ten years older, more or less, than Sharon. "I'm sorry," she blurted, and felt so hot that the carpet seemed cool beneath her toes.
"Don't worry about it," he said, shrugging. He wore an Amtrak name-tag; his name was William O'Leary. He was smiling at her. "What compartment you in?"
"I'm in the coach," she stammered, "the one just right there." She pointed over her shoulder.
He shook his head, exaggerating the motion. "Well, this car's just for the Pullman passengers," he said, "so I'm gonna have to ask you to go on back." Still smiling. "Just watch those tootsies when you step between the cars," he said.
She realized that the train was finally moving.
2.
She'd eaten a late lunch so she took the last call for dinner in the dining car. It was eight-thirty when she sat down and ordered the chicken barbecue and a little bottle of red wine. The waitress, a young blonde woman with high cheekbones, brought Sharon a salad and the wine and then busied herself by the kitchen window in the middle of the car. Sharon's chicken appeared shortly, just as the train was coming to a stop at the Minneapolis station.
She was on her way home to the old house at the edge of Minot, in the desolate middle of North Dakota. Her mother was getting out of the hospital and was going to be healing up at home. It had been a cancer scare, but everything had turned out OK, a false alarm. Still, it had occasioned late-night phone calls, protestations of love, instructions on where important papers were, where money was hidden. The whole episode had lasted a week during which Sharon had often felt like a character in one of Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion monologues. She was the only child; her father was ten years dead. She'd left Minot at eighteen for college in Chicago and twelve years later—after graduation, an impulsive and bad and mercifully brief marriage to a young professor, a good job at the Illinois Arts Council, a decent apartment near Lincoln Park, eleven lovers, and a tattoo—she was still there.
She'd go home to Minot to see her mother three or four times a year, and she always went on the train, this train, the _Empire Builder_. It pulled out of Chicago every day and arrived at the King Street station in Seattle forty hours later. On board, Sharon would stare at the schedule and imagine arriving in Seattle; she'd never seen the Pacific Ocean and promised herself that someday she'd take the _Builder_ all the way. She liked the train a lot—the relaxed pace, the camaraderie of dining car and bar car, the chance to think. She'd leave the office on Randolph Street halfway through the afternoon and arrive home at the beginning of the next day.
Eating in the dining car usually meant sharing your table with strangers but there weren't many customers at last call and she had the booth to herself. The train began moving again and Sharon picked at her chicken and read her Graham Greene as the Minneapolis neighborhoods drifted by. A man appeared at the top of the stairs in the middle of the car, looked around, and took a seat in the booth catty-corner from Sharon's; she nodded to him and he smiled at her. The cook.
"That barbecue OK?" he called and she answered that it was and he said he was glad to hear it. The waitress brought him a coffee and Sharon went back to her book and in a moment was lost in it.
A familiar voice jolted her and she looked up and saw William O'Leary had joined the cook at his table. They were talking about whether or not any time could be made up after the late start, agreeing it was possible but not likely. In mid-sentence he locked eyes with Sharon and then shushed the cook to call across the aisle to her. "Hey, how's my sweet feet doin'?" The cook glanced at her and giggled and Sharon understood that fun was being had at her expense. How was she doin'? She was doin' just fine and she reached inside herself for language to let William O'Leary (and his plaid pants'd companion) know that.
"My feet are just as funky as they ever were," she called back smiling, clear and cheerful and loud enough to turn a couple of heads at a nearby table. The waitress, down in the middle of the car, guffawed.
