“Ginger ale?” Steve-o asked her. She nodded, and when it came, she had to admit, it was delicious. She let the bubbles sting the roof of her mouth and it was much better than bourbon would have been.
She took her cup over to one of the seats at the other end of the car.
“Rough night?”
The voice came, unexpectedly, from the man who’d been reading a paper. He had walked away from the bar with his beer, and she saw that he was younger even than she’d thought, not far from her age. He had wild brown hair, thick and coarse like the bristles of a hairbrush, but it was still nice hair. You still wanted to run your hand through it, just to see if it was softer than it looked. He wasn’t attractive, really, but there was something about him that made you want to keep looking. He seemed at ease, despite his wiry energy; he looked like he could feel he belonged anywhere.
“Rough night?” he repeated, a smile inherent in his voice. “It’s still pretty early to have had a rough night.”
“Just tired,” she said.
“You live in Connecticut?”
“Greenwich.”
Too late, she remembered her assumed identity for the evening, but like everything else from that night it seemed like it might be, at this point, rumpled and worn out. She figured it was all right to be herself again. There was something about this guy’s face, though, like he was too eager to prove that they knew each other, that they were on the same team.
“Fun,” he said. “I’m headed to New Haven.”
“You’re on the wrong train. You’ll have to transfer at Stamford.”
“Ahh,” he said. “Where were you thirty minutes ago?”
She kept a blank smile on her face, confused.
“I figured that out already,” he said apologetically. “I got on the local by accident.”
“So you’re not from around here?”
“I live in the city, but I don’t spend a lot of time in Connecticut, usually.”
“What’s in New Haven?”
“Just visiting an old buddy who’s up there for law school.”
“Good for him.” She knew that names like that one, Yale Law, were impressive to the point of rarity, that she shouldn’t let it pass by unmentioned.
“He’s the smart one,” the man said, winking. He extended his hand. “I’m Gabe.”
She felt it, again, the familiarity of his face. She tried to remember if Zo? had given out their real names that night at the bar.
“Eliza,” she said finally, a bastardized version of her Italian middle name. His eyes seemed to flicker, but she told herself it was just a reaction to how long it had taken her to come up with her own name.
“And I take it you’re underage,” he said, flicking his eyes at the bartender. He slid his beer can down the seat until it rested near her hand.
“Our secret,” he said. She took a sip and instantly regretted it. She still just did not like beer.
Just before she picked up the can, he’d smiled again but this time uncertainly, as if worried he’d made one gesture too many. And maybe it was that flaw in his seemingly polished veneer, in his sense of his own right to be there beside her, that surfaced it for her. Where she’d seen him before.
She stood up, knocking her paper cup from its slot. It had been months ago. The time between that and this collapsed in her mind and she felt it almost like physical violence, the arrival of something more than fear and less than knowledge.
“Look,” he said, “I’m sorry. Don’t worry.”
“You were at my school,” she said. “At the football game in September with that—that man.” She felt the harsh edges of each word as it left her mouth. “What are you, following me? Because if you are, trust me, you don’t want to be doing that once we hit Greenwich.”
She was thinking of the sedans, of the measures she felt certain her father had taken. But then she felt it move through her chest like plucked guitar strings: no one knew where she was.
“I wasn’t following you,” Gabe said. His hands were up in the air between them, as if she were the one invading his space. He kept his voice low in that specific way that meant he was trying to urge her to do the same.
“Right,” Madison said. “Feeding me a beer in the bar car, just a coincidence.”
“Yes,” Gabe said. “Of course I recognized you when I saw you. But that afternoon at Greenwich Prep, the football game, that was a coincidence, too. I was just there because I was shadowing Dick Corzar—he’s at Goldman Sachs, he’s a—”
“I know who Dick Corzar is,” she hissed. She did not. She assumed it was the man who’d accosted her that day at the football game.
“Okay, well great. So I was writing something that involved him, and he went up to you without even explaining at first who you were. I didn’t know. And then tonight, I recognized you, but you gave me a fake name, so I assumed you did that for a reason. I didn’t want to upset you by bringing up that afternoon.”
She said nothing.
“I assume that weekend was an unpleasant one for you,” he pressed further.
She laughed a little, more just expelled air.
“I’m a writer,” he said. “I used to write for the Times. DealBook. I’m sure you know what that is.”
She stared at him, hard, until he began to fidget, to click his pen. She did not read DealBook, and in fact only knew what it was for sure because Jake sometimes used to make Amanda read it, but she wanted him to feel stupid for doubting her.
“I promise you,” he said. “I got up and came to the bar car because I wanted a beer. I had no reason to believe that Madison D— Come on. How could I possibly have known you’d be on this train?”
“You don’t want to be following me when we get off this train,” she repeated. “My father has security everywhere.”
“And I assume that’s why there’s been no press following you at home,” Gabe said, his voice still low and soothing, his hands still hovering in the air as if he might have to block her from leaving. “He must be working very hard to keep everyone away from you.”
She stared at him again.
“Well, the apartment in the city is, at this point I would imagine, unlivable,” he said. “I mean, the press have been camped out there for months. I don’t think most of them have figured out that your father’s been back in Connecticut since October.”
Her fingertips felt cold. This was her fault. She’d been childish, she’d pushed Lily away, she’d ignored so many things her mother had taught her. She was the one who’d brought it to this point, where this nerdy junior reporter—probably not even, probably he answered phones at the Times office—knew more than she did.
“If you think you’re going to interview me,” she began slowly, “about anything to do with my family, then you clearly have deeply misunderstood who we are.”
He smiled, which made her want to smash the heel of her hand into his nose.
“Wow,” he said, breathy—if ersatz—admiration in his voice. “Of course not. That’s not what I meant, far from it. But let me just say this.”
She started to sidestep her way past him, but he moved, with one step, to block her way.