She laughed, pointed her forefingers at him like guns. "Good! I want to see!"
"And I want us to go back," he said. "If you want to go honky-tonking in San Francisco, I'll take you. It's a promise."
She stuck out her lower lip and shook back her sandy-blond hair. "It wouldn't be the same. It wouldn't, and you know it. In San Francisco they probably drink...I don't know...macrobiotic beer."
That made him laugh. As with the idea of an investment banker named Wolf Frightener, the idea of macrobiotic beer was just too rich. But the anxiety was there, under the laughter; in fact, wasn't it fueling the laughter?
"We're gonna take a short break and be right back," the lead singer said, wiping his brow. "Y'all drink up, now, and remember-I'm Tony Villanueva, and we are The Derailers."
"That's our cue to put on our diamond shoes and depart," David said, and took her hand. He slid out of the booth, but she didn't come. She didn't let go of his hand, either, though, and he sat down again feeling a touch of panic. Thinking he now knew how a fish felt when it realized it couldn't throw the hook, that old hook was in good and tight and Mr. Trout was bound for the bank, where he would flop his final flop. She was looking at him with those same killer blue eyes and deep dimples: Willa on the edge of a smile, his wife-to-be, who read novels in the morning and poetry at night and thought the TV news was...what did she call it? Ephemera.
"Look at us," she said, and turned her head away from him.
He looked at the mirrored wall on their left. There he saw a nice young couple from the East Coast, stranded in Wyoming. In her print dress she looked better than he did, but he guessed that was always going to be the case. He looked from the mirror-Willa to the real thing with his eyebrows raised.
"No, look again," she said. The dimples were still there, but she was serious now-as serious as she could be in this party atmosphere, anyway. "And think about what I told you."
It was on his lips to say, You've told me many things, and I think about all of them, but that was a lover's reply, pretty and essentially meaningless. And because he knew what thing she meant, he looked again without saying anything. This time he really looked, and there was no one in the mirror. He was looking at the only empty booth in 26. He turned to Willa, flabbergasted...yet somehow not surprised.
"Didn't you even wonder how a presentable female could be sitting here all by herself when the place is juiced and jumping?" she asked.
He shook his head. He hadn't. There were quite a few things he hadn't wondered, at least until now. When he'd last had something to eat or drink, for instance. Or what time it was, or when it had last been daylight. He didn't even know exactly what had happened to them. Only that the Northern Flyer had left the tracks and now they were by some coincidence here listening to a country-western group called-
"I kicked a can," he said. "Coming here I kicked a can."
"Yes," she said, "and you saw us in the mirror the first time you looked, didn't you? Perception isn't everything, but perception and expectation together?" She winked, then leaned toward him. Her breast pressed against his upper arm as she kissed his cheek, and the sensation was lovely-surely the feel of living flesh. "Poor David. I'm sorry. But you were brave to come. I really didn't think you would, that's the truth."
"We need to go back and tell the others."
Her lips pressed together. "Why?"
"Because-"
Two men in cowboy hats led two laughing women in jeans, Western shirts, and ponytails toward their booth. As they neared it, an iden tical expression of puzzlement-not quite fear-touched their faces, and they headed back toward the bar instead. They feel us, David thought. Like cold air pushing them away-that's what we are now.
"Because it's the right thing to do."
Willa laughed. It was a weary sound. "You remind me of the old guy who used to sell the oatmeal on TV."
"Hon, they think they're waiting for a train to come and pick them up!"
"Well, maybe there is!" He was almost frightened by her sudden ferocity. "Maybe the one they're always singing about, the gospel train, the train to glory, the one that don't carry no gamblers or midnight ramblers..."
"I don't think Amtrak runs to heaven," David said. He was hoping to make her laugh, but she looked down at her hands almost sullenly, and he had a sudden intuition. "Is there something else you know? Something we should tell them? There is, isn't there?"
"I don't know why we should bother when we can just stay here," she said, and was that petulance in her voice? He thought it was. This was a Willa he had never even suspected. "You may be a little nearsighted, David, but at least you came. I love you for that." And she kissed him again.