“Not bad,” he says, brushing a crumb off. “A little too sweet. So there he is, sitting, waiting, filled with this sadness, and that’s when it hits him: she might have been pregnant! That must have been it . . . she went to New York, Louise—why else, what for? And of course it was his, his child, and how could he not have known before? He vows on the spot to propose to Louise, to marry Louise, throw it all to the wind, take heed of the dream, the sadness, if only it’s not too late . . . you know . . .”
“I get it,” she says. “But why New York? It wasn’t illegal in Rhode Island then, was it?”
He makes a motion with his hand as if to swat away the question. Logistics, for all of his forethought, annoy him; she knows that well.
“I’ll figure it out,” he says to her. “That isn’t the point. So anyway, the train at last is coming, it’s coming at last, and filled with resolve, he waits by the tracks. He goes down to the tracks. Track 2. A mass of people. Confusing. The looks he gets, as if he is dirty—why, he can’t fathom. The train comes in, the one heading for Boston, and people pile off. Rush off. Parents and children, their coats and their bundles, their baggage, their breath . . . It’s cold down there and snow falls hard, he can see it from the platform. And then . . . there at the end of the platform, the girl at the edge of his vision must be her, Louise, a little bit ghostly, but only for a moment, a moment and then: she is gone. He simply can’t find her. He looks and he looks. The train is pulling out again . . .”
She swallows her latte. Glances at her watch.
“And then he reconsiders. He must have been mistaken. He must have been confused. It must have been the next train. She must have told him something. She must have missed her train—they didn’t have cell phones, not back then.”
“I know that,” she says.
“He simply has to wait. He sits on the bench now, a seat newly vacant. He’s tired, so tired. The room seems strange. And then he falls asleep again. I think he falls asleep again, waiting, and feels her, Louise, her arm around his shoulder, her presence, there as if to comfort him, as if to forgive him, and then . . .”
“Then?”
“The trains come and go, come and go. The light dies. At last it is the last scheduled train of the day that’s arriving. Announced on the speaker. Track 2.”
Around them are people holding their coffees, their yogurts, their muffins, waiting to sit. She does not interrupt him.
“He gets off the bench now and goes down the stairs, descends, so cold, so tired, track 2, and snow is still falling, falling . . . There she is! Yes, there she is! But dressed wrong, somehow, there amid the passengers coming off the train, and the lines of her body, and then her face, her eyes . . . Not her. He heaves an awful, crushing sigh and breath fills the air. And he looks in the windows, looks in a door, but the train is on the move again, onward to Boston. Onward to Boston.”
She hears how his voice is filled with emotion.
“Back in the station, he looks and he looks, by the newsstand, distraught, and out by the cab stand . . . and then . . .”
“Then?”
“The ladies’ room! The ladies’ room! He thinks that must be it. She must have gone in there. He ought to have known. He goes and he opens the ladies’ room door, and a woman yells, Hey! Hey, mister! What do you think you’re doing in here? And here come the cops.”
“Police?” says the girlfriend. “There in the station?”
“Well, station personnel,” he says. “Really. Whatever. The point is, they take him by the arm, they’ve come to take him away, but just for a second he catches a glimpse of a ravaged old man in the ladies’ room mirror. Come, you have to leave now, the cop or the guard or whoever he is says, shooing him out. You know you can’t be here.
“Louise! he cries. Louise! Louise! And he is out on the street.”
People are listening in on them, the girlfriend thinks.
His voice is raised: “The poor soul, he’s harmless, the second guard—he’s worked there longer—says to the first. Whenever it storms like this, he’s here. The poor old guy. He shakes his head, the guard does. Somebody told me he once was a lawyer. Crazy now. That girl died thirty years ago, the guard says. Before the new station—back when the train stopped south of here. They say the girl jumped—to the tracks. Track 2.”
“She jumped?” said the girlfriend.
He looked at her expectantly.
“That’s it, the story?”
“What do you think? The point is he’s guilty. He killed her. Okay, he didn’t push her, at least, I don’t think so; it’s still his fault. He is crazy from guilt, regret that was dormant for much of his life.”
“You killed her,” she said.
“Oh, please.”
“You wrote it,” she said. “You got rid of the girl.”
“Come on, don’t be like that. You really don’t get it.”
“What should I get? Do you want me to like him? Is that it? Forgive him? Feel sorry for him? And anyway, this story,” she said (she simply couldn’t help herself—she knew she shouldn’t say it, she ought to let it go, she always did, but the woman last night at the reading, the way she was carrying on and on, the way he’d lapped it up . . . ),“it doesn’t make sense. I mean, the timing is wrong.”