Chapter 5

5

Eva

He is kind of cute, the sad lost boy at the end of a night out, confusing Ecstasy for Dramamine. He looks at me for way too long. Again and again and again. He doesn't look away when I catch him looking. There's something safe about his being high, like none of this is real if it isn't real for him.

I can tell he's into me. He's not exactly trying to hide it. He's a stranger on a train. This is a victimless crime. Except for our American businessman.

I look at Jonathan. "Do you want to go for a walk with me?"

"Yes, please." He agrees so quickly, I laugh.

"Okay."

The dining car is closed. The sleeping cars are sleeping. There's a space at the end of our car for the racks of luggage. I guide him there.

I perch on a luggage rack. "Why Paris?" I ask.

"Eiffel Tower. Museums. Gardens. McDonald's. All that." He stands over me. He holds on to a handle to steady himself when the train lists. "What about you?"

"I want to go to Les Puces," I say. "You know, the market? Have you ever been?" The flea market in Paris is one of the largest and the most famous in the world. I've been there dozens of times. I have no plans to go there tomorrow. It's easier to keep your lies straight if you lie about everything.

"No, I haven't," he says.

"You should go. You can buy anything there. Legend has it that if you walk around for long enough, you're bound to find everything you need." I wiggle my eyebrows at him.

"What are you looking for?" he asks, hitching his pants slightly and moving closer.

"I don't know. That's the best way to go in—not knowing what you want, or what you need." I lift my chin. I shut my eyes in demonstration. "You have to make your mind a blank. To be open to anything, you know? And the market will guide you."

He moves even closer. I can feel his heat. "Sounds a little spooky."

"I love spooky things. I get my palm read all the time." I hold my hand up to him, spread my fingers. "They always get it wrong, but I keep going. Sometimes it's nice to be misunderstood."

Trouble passes briefly over his face, then floats away on a drug cloud. He moves a little closer still. "You're very pretty," he says. It has nothing to do with what we're talking about. He has no game whatsoever. Maybe I'm feeling generous because I find it kind of sweet.

"I'm not pretty," I correct him. I'm ordinary, on the outside.

"You're my kind of pretty," he says. I wonder what that means.

I stand up, then swing lightly along the luggage racks until I reach a darker corner. "I'm forgettable," I tell him. "Tomorrow afternoon, you'll think back on this very moment and you won't be able to remember my face. You'll substitute it with some girl you knew in college, your Starbucks barista…"

"No. I won't." He grips the handle. "I won't forget you." The train pitches and throws him forward. He hisses, as if in pain. "This train is going to kill me."

"You should sit down."

"I might not be able to get up again," he jokes. "Where are you from?"

I almost tell him the truth. It feels totally safe. We're strangers on a train. We'll probably never meet again. In fact, it might even be appropriate to tell him that I am about to commit murder. There is precedent. Hitchcock did it first.

"All over," I say, which is a real liar's answer. "What about you?"

"I grew up in upstate New York," he says. Then he weaves a story so delightfully dull, so enchantingly mundane. The stakes are so low. The driving forces so weak. "I went to college in Vermont, but then I transferred to Delaware." The places are so boring that they sound made up: Vermont, Delaware. The kind of places you don't want to know anything about. "I did a summer abroad in France and I fell in love with it." He says this so dispassionately, the way people do. I stubbed my toe and then I fell in love with it. His voice is so deep; I want him to bore me to death.

There's something comforting about other people's lives. It's like knowing other people sleep without nightmares. It makes me feel like the world is a better place. A place I've never been to, it's true, but possibly one that exists.

I imagine our future together. What else are strange men for but imaginary futures? We would live in Delaware. In a house on stilts or whatever they have there. Pods. We would raise 2.5 children. The littlest would be half a person, but we would never tell them. Jonathan would give up his childish dreams of computers to work in a factory. He would have to. In this day and age, 2.5 children need factory money to survive.

I would resent the hell out of him. I would blame him for everything that went wrong in my life. The time that guy stole my parking space. That we never went on vacation. That his breath smelled funny in the morning. That we couldn't afford a headboard. I would unleash my resentment every night by fucking his brains out. I would tie him up. I would spank him. I would make him wear an apron and lipstick.

Our life together would be perfect.

"Why are you smiling?" he says.

"Your life is just so interesting," I say. "I want to hear more about Delaware."

He smiles back. "You're teasing me." He takes a step toward me, steadying himself on the bars above our heads.

I gaze up at him. "Have you ever had sex on a train?"

He hisses lightly, then gazes down on me like I've purposefully wounded him. "Now you're really teasing me."

"I'm not teasing," I swear. I'm not. I'm just direct. I have a busy schedule. I don't have time to fuck around, not when it comes to fucking.

And I like him. I like him, but we have only hours together—most of which will be spent asleep. It's nice to think we could just talk all night, but that's unrealistic. I can lie for only so long before I will run out of things to say and start telling the truth. Besides, I'll never see him again. I can't. So we might as well just skip to the inevitable. The pleasurable .

I scan the vicinity. The dining car is closed. The sleeping cars are sleeping.

I swing in his direction until I'm standing right in front of him. Our bodies line up. The hot parts radiate heat.

There's something magic about strangers. You know nothing about them, but bodies mostly work the same way. Minds are mostly cast from the same molds. There's a sense of discovery and familiarity, all at the same time.

I reach up. I brush the lump swelling on his temple. I trace the heart-shaped bruise weeping on his cheek. "We can have sex right here. Right now."

He swallows. "Can I keep my jacket on?"

Weird, but I don't have time to unravel his peculiarities. I do have time to fuck him. It might even help me sleep.

"You don't even have to take off your pants," I promise.