3/19/12

Last Train
By Jeff(anity)


It was a long and slow car ride, the radio had just been stolen out of her little Toyota and she was still a little too proud to go and replace it. “I won’t let them win, those little mother fuckers,” she kept telling me. All there was were the pattering sounds of the rain as it hit the windshield and the thump of the wipers clearing the way. It must have been luck of some sort because we didn’t manage to catch a single green light all the way, but we didn’t make use of our time like each of us had hoped. My mind was wrestling with my tongue trying to come up with something clever to say.
Would it be appropriate to bring up the past at this point? Who would it hurt more if I traced my fingers across the long vein of our history and severed it, letting the memories pour out between us? Who would be the one the stop the bleeding?
I kept thinking. What was she thinking? Was she just as trapped as I? I shouldn’t have asked her for a ride. I should have just taken the bus. I was startled and wrenched from my own thoughts when I heard a quick sneeze from the drivers seat. “Pardon me,” she said quickly scratching her nose and then looking back intently on the road, another red light.
“Thanks,” I said, finally.
“Huh?”
“For the ride.”
“Oh yeah, no problem,” she said. I noticed that she didn’t even look at me when she spoke, eyes intently on the road. I was still watching her and noticed her mouth start to open and lips move like she were going to say something, then it quietly closed.
“What?” I asked.
“I didn’t say anything,” she replied.
“Oh.” Back to quiet.
Traffic began to pick up, another miracle or stroke of luck I suppose. Some asshole started quiet the nasty car accident, detours were put up all over the place.
My mind couldn’t stay still. I thought past, present, and future all at the same time.
What was her favorite memory? I remember reading once in her journal some time ago, when we were still in high school about a dream she had of me. How I held her strong and kissed her. In the dream, she wrote, that it was the most vivid dream she had ever had. She doesn’t know I made a habit of reading her journal, every once in a while, just to know what was going on beneath her million dollar smile, and priceless lips. She went further in detail about that dream. She described the scene in such detail, what did she say it was again:

“in the corridor in the upstairs of my home. I don’t remember why he was there, and I don’t much care for that matter. What does matter is that I can’t stop repeating the image of him standing in front of me, his broad chest heaving heavily like he’d just run some sort of race and I just standing there outside the door to my room looking into his eyes in a dark shade of amber brown in awe. I closed my eyes to blink and in the split second my eyes were shut he moved in and kissed me. Until then I hadn’t noticed that where my lips were slightly uneven, the bottom one a little more fuller than the top his were as near perfect as could be. He kissed me and held me strong by my hip cementing me there.”

She has no idea that I’ve had dreams too. Dreams of her of just her, then dreams of she and I. But do my own dreams count as memories? I remember one dream in particular. That night when I went to sleep it had been raining, because the sound of the rain intruded into my dream. I dreamt that she was there, knocking on my door in the middle of the rain. She was soaked, her yellow tank top clinging to her body desperately, her sneakers and socks both water logged and tracking where ever she went. In my dream I had a fireplace, when in reality I don’t. I dreamt that I had given her some spare clothes, and I didn’t watch her as she changed, instead I lit a blazing fire. In my dream she was the one with the courage to kiss me. Her perfectly sparkling mahogany eyes were hidden beneath her eye lids just before our lips touched. I to this day wish there were more to this dream, but as I slept the storm got worse and a shrieking crack of thunder hurdled me from my bliss to my cruel and lonely reality.
I looked over at her and caught her looking at me, but she didn’t turn away like most people would, she kept staring and only looked away once the light finally turned green.
“You know how long you plan on being gone this time,” she finally asked, settling on a question that wasn’t too intrusive.
“Not a clue, long as it takes I suppose.”
“Oh.” Back to silence.
Was her favorite memory the New Years Eve party from the year before? She had the flu and everyone else had gone to my parent’s house for the celebration, but I managed to sneak out at around 11:50 to walk down the street, champagne bottle in hand and join her. Her fever had already broken she told me, and assured me that she was no longer contagious as I had covered my mouth and nose with the top of my shirt as a joke that she vaguely laughed at. We hadn’t bothered to wait until the new year to open the champagne. We were three glasses in by the time we got the then countdown. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one and we poured another glass for ourselves. We set a toast to ourselves, wrapping our forearms around each other’s like we had seen in a movie once, and took a drink. By the time we had finished the bottle we were a giggling drunk mess. We got to, I don’t clearly remember who started it, a tickling competition, and I quickly over powered her, pinning my body on top of her tickling her sides as she squealed in delight underneath me. “Say uncle,” I commanded, and she held out. Again I tried my command, “Say uncle.”
She shrieked in delight at my touch, and finally she began “Unc-“
My lips cut her off, and we had finally kissed. She succumbed easily to my lips and began to lean her body upwards kissing me back. We paused only to move into her bedroom, kicked about between her sheets. Because I hadn’t the tolerance for alcohol that one would equate to a man, I woke up the next morning with very little recollection of what had occurred the night before. I woke up in her bed alongside her, naked except for a sock on my left foot, a peek under the covers revealed that she was too. I slid from outside the covers, retrieved my clothes and was gone by the time she woke, no note.
I wonder to this day if she remember s what happened, I’m just too afraid to have my suspicions realized.
I wanted to tell her then, I wanted to tell her so much then. I wanted to tell her that I was sorry for leaving her there, naked and probably confused. These are words I’ve been choking on for the last eighteen months. I wanted to ask her about her first boyfriend, the second and third one too, and why none of them were ever me (except I knew that answer already).
“We’re here,” she finally said.
“Oh.”
She pulled into the lonely train station and parked in the deserted parking lot, letting the car idle.
I looked at my watch, “if you don’t mind, the train doesn’t leave for another fifteen or twenty minutes, I could sure use some company,” I asked, but if she looked into my eyes and not at the windshield wipers that danced back in forth on the winsheild she could see that with my eyes I was pleading she say yes; that she would oblige my request.
She didn’t say anything, but turned the car off and opened her door. I scrambled to reach in the back seat and get my duffel back, hoist it over my seat and hurriedly follow her into the station. She was reaching a cluster of benches by the platform I’d be departing from when caught up to her. We sat facing each other, but both of our faces were turned away.
“Do you have you’re ticket?”
“Yup, right here,” I said smiling, patting my breast pocket.
“Good.”
The silence was back between us. “This weather sure doesn’t make you believe it’s spring time,” I said feebly looking out at a distant watching the grey clouds and the rain as it fell.
“Yeah.”
Again silence.
The next time though, she was the one that broke it, “I wish you wouldn’t go sometimes.”
“Only sometimes,” I joked.
She looked at me sternly.
“Sorry. It was just a joke.”
“You always joke.”
“I like to see you smile, that’s why?”
“Sure could have fooled me,” she muttered under her breath.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she replied quickly turning her face from me once again.
Over head my train had been announced, boarding now the voice said over the intercom. I got up and got my duffel bag and got up, and before I could say anything she got up too and took my hand, so we walked. Hand in hand towards the steaming train.
Maybe her favorite memory was that fateful night when we thought to attempt to make something of our situation. I took her out a rightful date. I tried to look as casual, yet presentable as possible when I showed up at her door, with tan chinos and button down shirt that had the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. I rang the door bell twice, and in a moment she was standing in front of me in a royal blue dress, with lace around the color, and at the bottom of the dress, which was mid thigh. I could barely mutter a small compliment because I was in such awe. The date went well, considering this was not the first time we’d gone to a restaurant together, we already knew what each other had liked and liked to talk about. It go a little weird in the movie theater, we both had reached for the arm rest at the same time and her hand rested on top of mine for a moment, I expected her to move it but she let it lie there. We had gone to see something witty and romantic, and just at the part where the main protagonist is losing everything, his friends, his good fortune, and eventually the woman he loves I couldn’t stand another second and I pulled her face to mine and we kissed under the cover of darkness. We never made it to the end of the movie, we left before we got to see the young champion get everything restored to him. My car was outside her house, the night at its end. I was expecting her to invite me inside for “coffee” which neither of us drank, but merely as a formality to get me inside her door, but she didn’t she merely kissed my cheek lightly and got out of the car, half skipping up the walk way into her house. I was expecting a call for a second date, waited a week but nothing. But I did get another call, I had to leave again, back to my dad before we could figure out a thing.
“Last call for all boarding,” shouted a small female conductor over the engine of the train.
“Well I guess this is it then,” I said letting her hand go and picking up my duffel bag.
“I guess it is,” she replied, finally looking me in the eyes.
I made my way on to the train, lingering at the door way a bit, I turned back around and seen that she was still standing there, just a few feet from the train, “Hey,” I shouted at her, getting her attention, “there is something I’ve been meaning to ask.”
“What is it?” she shout back as the train released its break and started its crawl.
“What’s your favorite memory, you know. Of us?”
I seen her mouth move in reply, but the train let off it’s blaring whistle warning people that they train was now in motion, and as it picked up speed I shout “what?”
And I seen her mouth open wider, she was probably screaming, but that goddamn whistle drowned her out again.

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