Even though he rattled on about everything but that, I knew David's dark secret as soon as I entered the almost-deserted observation car on the Capitol Limited Amtrak train somewhere in Pennsylvania sometime before 11:00 p.m. I had suspected what his secret was earlier and hoped for it.
I knew because of the way he looked at me when I entered the car from the sleeper end and stood there, surveying what was what in the car before I sat at the other end of the carriage from David and Leila. His eyes had lit up and then slitted when he saw me, the need obvious—to me, at least. I had seen the look earlier too when we both were in the departure lounge at Washington D.C.'s Union Station, waiting to board the train. We had exchanged looks then, checking each other out.
There were so few in the car because David was well buzzed, if not quite drunk, and David had a very loud, and obscene, voice when he was buzzed. Leila, the young woman who said she was from Jordan, was working in Washington, D.C., and was traveling out to the West Coast to explore this new country of hers, only hung on for as long as she did, I think, because she was interested in sleeping with David. David was a good-looking blond—a bit on the thin side, but well-muscled through the chest and biceps and with a boyish, handsome face. He was wearing a T-shirt advertising the Hotel Coronado in San Diego and baggy, silky athletic shorts. He didn't look like the type who would be staying at that resort. He had looked good in the silky shorts, though—like a basketball player. He was a bit spacey perhaps for the Hotel Coronado, but sexy.
He was laying it on thick about the woes of his young life. He looked about twenty-four and later in his ramblings said he was twenty-six. If he hadn't gotten off on talking about his fiancée and how devoted they were to each other, I know he could have laid Leila that night—if one of them had a sleeper cubicle. They were young and flexible looking, though, so maybe they could have managed it on the coach seats as well. That would have been fun to watch. I don't think Leila understood why a fiancée was brought up, but I did.
I had a roomette compartment, which sounded luxurious, but it was pretty cramped too. But it had the maximum privacy to be had on a train and its own sink and toilet compartment—and the lower bunk folded down to a three-quarters bed. The guys at the gym were always ragging on me about needing a roomette all to myself and for taking as many cross-country Amtrak train trips as I did, but I'd just smile and hum, knowing what I did and they didn't. I never had failed to score on the train.
I don't know what either David or Leila had, coach seats or sleepers, a compartment no bigger than a fold down bed, but Leila would, I'm sure, have thought of someplace to maneuver him for a bit of privacy if his action had lived up to his bravado when he was trying to impress her in his loud voice. Maybe he was trying to impress her and to stave me off and maybe talking about having a fiancée but having been separated from her for a long time and being afraid he wasn't good enough for her had worked for him before in getting a casual female acquaintance into bed. But if it had, he was overworking it now. I could tell that Leila had decided much earlier in the conversation that she wanted him to lay her.
But I knew what it really was about, and I doubted there even was a fiancée.
Within moments of entering the car and sitting down at the other end, I knew everything there was to know about David. He kept asking Leila about her life—how she'd gotten to the States from Jordan, and why. But then he wasn't giving her time to open up before he launched into another "woe is me" story about himself.
What he was first moaning about when I came in was that the café barman in the snack bar on the lower level of the observation car had cut his drinks off and he didn't feel nearly mellow enough yet. When I asked the barman later what the limit was, he'd said that four was the limit. David moved on to having fucked up his life in high school, stolen a car, taken a joyride, and was caught trying to outrun a cop. There had been a DUI charge on top of that. It was obvious that too much liquor had continued to be a problem for David. He went on to mention other mixing of driving and drinking and getting caught. He also regretted he hadn't given enough respect to learning something about life and its opportunities before he was shipped off to the service, his parents wanting him off their hands as soon as possible. He said he came from Chicago, but he wasn't ultimately headed there. He'd be transferring trains in Chicago. Leila said she would be transferring too, but he didn't ask her if they'd be transferring to the same train.
David's girlfriend, turned fiancée, had remained in Chicago, he revealed. He said she'd gone to community college, made something of herself, and hadn't given up on him. In fact, she wanted to move to where he was stationed with the Navy—in San Diego—and wanted them to marry. She could find a job there. David thought he was talking about that in terms of life looking up and settling down, but I don't think Leila was convinced. I certainly wasn't. This train was going to Chicago. He didn't once mention that he was going there to see her. He repeatedly said he was transferring there onto another train, the Texas Eagle, headed southwest, back to the naval base at San Diego.
He kept coming back to having fucked up his life and being twenty-six now. He wanted a redo, he said. He wasn't making the prospect of marrying his high school sweetheart, who had a good education and was willing to relocate to San Diego and get a job, sound like the do over I'm sure Leila and I saw it to be. So, neither one of us, I'm sure, was convinced by that. What I had figured out, though—and Leila apparently hadn't—was that he was putting what probably was a nonexistent fiancée up as a barrier to doing what Leila so obviously wanted him to do with her. That spoke volumes to me in and of itself.
He kept looking over at me, even though I was sitting in the shadows—pretty much invisible as a black man to any white boy who wanted me to be invisible. I didn't get the impression that David wanted me to be invisible. He seemed almost intent on me coming over and saving him from being alone with Leila.
I felt bad for Leila. She had a good body, but she was no beauty and likely thought it would be a plus for her to get David to fuck her—he was a lot better looking than she was, in my humble opinion. But I had decided she didn't have a chance with David and that as much as David was running at the mouth about his fucked-up life and problems, he wasn't talking about what was really bothering him.
To check that out—I was curious and he really was a good-looking guy—I stood up and stretched, showing him that, even at thirty-five, I was a muscular black stud. He took notice and seemed disappointed that I sat down again rather than coming into their conversation. We were the only three people in the club car. After that, he stole glances at me even more often, and I knew for sure.
He said he needed another drink, forgetting that he'd been cut off, and went down the stairs to have another go at the keeper of the booze at the snack bar—or maybe hoping there had been a change in bartenders. Leila drifted off into the coach end of the train, and I was blissfully alone for a few minutes—but not for long. David cursed all the way up the stairs and Leila, obviously hearing him from coach, came back in as well. Hopeful to the last.
They went through another round of David moaning his wasted life and Leila clicking her tongue on the roof of her mouth and sympathizing with him. When he ran out of steam, she rose and said, "It's late. I guess I'll go back to coach. They've turned off the lights. I'm in the second coach. Almost no one else is there. I have a row of seats all to myself. It's sort of nice that the train isn't crowded."
Can't get any plainer than that.
But David didn't bite. He did tell her, "It was nice talking to you. I wished you'd told me more about yourself and what brought you here from Jordan. There's no mystery about my fiancée. We grew up together. Always knew we'd be together some day. No mystery there."
There was a bit of mystery, though. David had never said what his fiancée's name was. And he had exclusively talked about her in the past tense. He had buddies in the Navy he talked about in the present tense. I don't know if Leila caught onto that, but I sure did. He'd talked up how close knit he and his Navy buddies were. Leila didn't catch the inference of that either.
After repeating that she was in the dark and nearly deserted coach section two carriages back, she left.
A couple of minutes after she'd gone, I got up and walked up the car and sat in a seat facing the view of blackness outside the speeding train two seats down from him. Not too close. I didn't want to spook him. I'd done this before. Often. I enjoyed doing this. David watched me approach and sit, but sideways, like maybe he wasn't watching me but, rather, was mesmerized by the view of a dark countryside through a window that reflected more of his and my faces and bodies than what was outside the train. We searched each other's faces in the reflection of the glass.
"Navy, eh?" I asked. I doubted he would have the courage to start this dance. "I overheard you." Who could have avoided overhearing him? "My name's Frank."
"Yeah, I caught that."
"I couldn't help but overhear what you were saying." And what you were avoiding saying, I continued in my thoughts.
"Yeah. San Diego. I'm attached to the Merlins of the Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron there. Great bunch of guys. We're really tight with each other."
"Yeah, guys in the service can really bond," I responded. "The Navy can bring guys really close—isolated at sea and at other duty stations like that. They can get really, really close. I know how that is. Been there, done that."
