Chapter Thirty-Three Rory

If you had told me when I walked into the bar car that I was about to get overserved with Nate, to gorge on oysters and caviar and cheese plates together, and eventually to leave arm in arm, to invite him near midnight back to my cabin for a nightcap—I’d have said, “Zero chance.”

And yet here we are, teetering out, giggling hysterically. As we weave our way through the packed carriage, with meager space between bodies, fabrics and textures accost me. My ankle grazes the sharp black sequins of a woman’s flowy pants; feathers tickle the back of my neck. Near the door, I accidentally knock into the Russian hipster guy, sending what looks like a Jack and Coke sloshing over the edge of his goblet. He shoots me a peeved look, and I return a sloppy smile.

“Sorry! Put another one on my tab. I’m—I’m… the Roma Suite!” I finally say triumphantly. I stop a waitress who is balancing a tray of drinks. “Can you please get that gentleman another Jack and Coke on me?”

“It’s not a Jack and Coke. Please, do not bother,” he says to the waitress.

“Come on!” Nate nudges my arm toward the door.

“I should have figured, not a Jack and Coke—not on the Orient Express! Not nearly bougie enough. I’m sure he was drinking…” I fumble for those fancy names on the menu.

“A beetroot hopper!” Nate says.

“Yes! Or a grapefruit delight.”

“A flower breeze.”

“No. No.…” I can hardly get the words out I’m laughing so hard. “I got it! He was drinking a spicy zombie.”

“Bull’s-eye.” Nate smiles, and his smile shoots through me.

Everyone else is a vague blur—eyes on me, scowls, but it’s all tempered by the nice buzz that has settled in my body. A calm, lovely feeling that has permeated me for the first time in days.

“Live a little!” I say cheerfully to all of them. Then I stop. “Oh wait, I forgot my bag.”

“I’ll get it.” Nate ducks back into the fray.

When he goes, the Russian guy is still brushing off Coke droplets from his bomber jacket.

“I really am sorry,” I call over to him. “I’ll pay for your dry-cleaning bill.”

He shrugs, peeps a smile with surprising blinding white teeth. “It’s okay. Lucky girl yesterday, eh?”

“Lucky?”

He points at me. “That big rock. We saw it all. We were hiking right above you. It was loose. It went down the hill. We tried to stop it. We ran after it.… It is very lucky.” His eyes roll upward. “You must be on God’s good side.”

I halt, suddenly shaky. “No one pushed it?”

He laughs. “Pushed the rock?”

“Yes?”

He laughs. “No one pushed it.” Then his laugh disappears, and I notice his pink-pixied girlfriend weaving through the crowd, scowling. She must have misinterpreted our conversation as me trying to flirt with her man. God, maybe she even thinks I spilled on him intentionally. I spot Nate, raise a hand to flag him. He shoots toward me, weaves his arms through mine, and steers me toward the door.

“What was that about?”

I open my mouth to tell him—the boulder was an accident after all. Not Ginevra Ex, or her minions, or the darker places my mind has even gone that it could have even been Caro who pushed it. Maybe I’m inventing all my suspicions, after all. Maybe all my fears are in my head.…

Unless the Russian guy was lying. Unless he is Ginevra’s minion, and he deliberately raised the subject endeavoring to mislead me. My eyes flit over at him—he’s staring at me, talking furtively with pink-pixie girl.

I’m spinning out. I must be spinning out.

“What?” Nate presses, his shoulders stiffening.

“I think I might be a little bit drunk,” I finally say, deciding I don’t want to talk about the boulder. For a blessed moment, I’d like to forget all of it.

Nate grins. “Me too. This reminds me of—”

I summon back cheer. “God, I was just thinking it, too!”

“The Erewhon night,” we say in unison.

Nate and I are decidedly not Erewhon people; we’re more the Kroger types. And we’re also not the type of people who had frequent drunken nights, but we once did get very good and drunk at an Olive Garden, of all places. (Bottomless breadsticks are my jam.) And I was so thirsty driving home that we made the Uber stop at the first place we came across, which was Erewhon, the fanciest, most ridiculously overpriced grocery store, catnip to most of LA, acolytes of Goop, who love nothing more than to spend twelve dollars on an alkaline water.

Nate’s laugh shoots out of him like a projectile. “I’ll never forget it. You’d had so much to drink that you were basically communing with the squirrel outside. I got you your water—the cheapest one they had, at least.”

I laugh. “Not alkaline, thank you very much. But that squirrel was so cute. And clearly hungry.”

“I remember. You actually made me go back for carrots.”

“Oh my God, I did. I really did.” I double over, but not before a flash of purple catches my eye. I straighten up, suddenly more alert. But the flash—the plum-colored fabric with feathers, swishing in the hall—has gone. Into a cabin. I shake my head, disoriented.

“What?” Nate stops.

I continue down the hall, eyes darting between the doors. Which one did she—?

Was that—?

No. Couldn’t be.

“What?” Nate asks again.

I shake my head. “Nothing. I thought I saw…”

“What?”

“Who?” I correct him carefully, my tongue mulling over the two words I’m about to eject, yet stopping myself from slipping them out into this night. Stopping myself from allowing those two words to drain this mood I’m in—this silly, happy, finally relaxed mood, with my problems distant, finally not dogs pouncing at me, demanding my attention and resolve.

“What? I mean, who?” Nate follows my gaze, but it’s too late. Whoever that was, she’s gone.

“Never mind. Come on, let’s go.” I pull him in the other direction, but can’t help one last glimpse over my shoulder. Still, there’s nothing—no motion in the hall. Just all the glossy wood and the din of conversation and cheer emanating from the bar car.

I shake my head, try to shake it all out. There’s no way anyhow. My mind must have been playing tricks on me.

But as Nate kisses my cheek, pulls me in the direction of the Roma Suite, a discomfited feeling settles in my stomach.

If I wasn’t so drunk, if I didn’t know it was impossible—I’d almost swear I just saw Ginevra Ex.