I Almost Forgot About You (37 page)

“You mind if I finish it?”

“No,” I say, shocked that she's serious.

“What about the salad?”

“Knock yourself out,” I say, and push my plate closer to her.

When the waitress brings three checks, they act like they're afraid to look at theirs. I take them.

“This is my treat,” I say.

“Are you shitting me?” Calico says, as if she's hit the lottery.

“Well, that's awful kind of you, Georgia. It must be nice to be a professional like yourself. Thank you so much.”

“You're quite welcome, ladies. But look, I want to get a little reading in and maybe watch a movie, since we don't know how long we're going to be on this train.”

I will have a chance to watch two movies before this fucking train moves, but while we wait, this is what happens on the Orient Express:

People start smoking in the bathrooms. Cigarettes and marijuana.

Children run up and down the aisles.

A young couple at the table in front of me decide to turn it into an art class and invite the children who won't sit down to sit down and paint on three-by-five index cards they whip out of their backpacks, and they even line up the watercolor trays for the kids, and for the next few hours even some adults decide they also want to be Picasso.

I decide to have a drink.

And this is who I meet while drinking champagne at the other end of the observation car:

Harriet and Raymond, both seventy-three: Celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary. They met on a train. They're from Sacramento.

Juice: He's trying to get off meth and figured a train ride would help aid in his recovery. He seems a little wired to me.

Marvin and Maynard: Twins, forty-two, from Saratoga Springs, New York, both recently divorced, who've decided to ride out their pain on a train around the entire United States. They don't think they're going to make it past Seattle.

June: Eighteen, a runaway from Vallejo, California. Going as far as the train goes. She has no money. I give her sixty dollars. It's all the cash I have.

People on trains will talk to anyone willing to listen. I'm fascinated by just how different our lives are. And this is what I overhear while waiting for the Starlight to move:

“I'm getting off this fucking train if you say it one more time. I swear to God.”

“I love you.”

“Four times? Really?”

“They're getting a divorce? He did?”

“I'm quitting my job because I hate it.”

“You lived in thirteen foster homes?”

“You're not having it?”

“You just cannot trust men.”

“You were born to be a slut.”

“Meet me in the restroom.”

I don't read a word for hours.

I don't need to.

I close my eyes after so many miles of rocking. When we stop in a station to take on new passengers, an oncoming train passes, and it feels like we're moving, too. But backward.

When the train finally does move, I close my eyes and dream about Stanley. I reenact our weekend and hit Pause at the place I want to stop it.

Each time I try to use my cell phone, it simply says
NO SERVICE
, so I give up.

It appears that almost everybody's asleep, but I find myself looking out the window at the deep darkness and the strong rain and at my reflection in the glass, and I'm trying to remember why I wanted to take this fucking train ride in the first place. Oh, yeah. To figure out how I was going to do the things I've either already done or am in the process of now doing.

We arrive in Seattle five hours late. I say good-bye to my friends. The hotel has given away my room. The train to Vancouver leaves in three hours, so I decide to just wait in the station until it's time to board. Four uneventful hours later, I'm finally in Vancouver. The good news is it only takes me fifteen minutes to go through customs. I look like shit, but I don't care.

I'm starting to realize how beautiful train stations are. Airports could learn something from them. Seriously. I paid for the option of spending the day sightseeing and shopping and maybe spending the night here in a five-star hotel and leaving in the morning. I could be in Toronto in four days instead of six. But I don't want to spend the day as a tourist or the night in a beautiful hotel alone. I want to see Stanley. I decide to call him. I want to hear his voice instead of just remembering it. I hope he doesn't think the train went off the track or that I had a change of heart and am blowing him off. I sit down on what looks just like a church pew and dial. It rings three times and goes to voice mail. I probably should've just stayed home and painted something, because so far the ride on this train has been disappointing, and now I have to get on another one for four or five more days before I'll even get to Toronto. I just hope I can stand being on another train that long. I feel tears welling in my eyes, and just as they're about to roll, I realize I don't have any tissue.

“Is anyone sitting here?”

I look up. And there he is.

“No,” I say, trying to pull myself together.

“Are you okay?”

“I'm fine,” I say, and tighten my ponytail and wipe my eyes.

“What's your name?”

“Georgia. Georgia Young.”

“Well, it's nice to meet you, Georgia Young. I'm Stanley DiStasio.”

“It's nice to meet you, too, Mr. DiStasio.”

“Please, call me Stan.”

“Stan.”

“You look like you could use a hug.”

“I could,” I say.

And then he reaches over and pulls me inside his arms and holds me like a baby.

“I was worried because I haven't heard a peep out of you since yesterday, so I hopped on a plane and flew here. What's wrong?”

“I'm so glad to see you, and it was just horrible, and I don't care if I never get on another fucking train ever again in life!”

“You don't have to.”

“You were right about the service. Mountains and wilderness don't need to worry about reception. And what a bunch of weirdos and people who don't know where they're going. And everybody's just so damn lonely!”

“Well, no one better than you to understand that we're all only trying to find a place to land.”

I look at him and just blurt out, “I really like you.”

“I like you, too,” he says. “A lot.”

“I'm glad,” I say.

“I also love you,” he says.

“I think I might possibly potentially but probably love you, too, Stan.”

“Could you please repeat that, but without all the words that began with
p
?”

“I love you, Stanley DiStasio.”

“That's much better,” he says. “But it's Stan.”

And we sit here on this bench a few more minutes without talking, which is when I get an overwhelming sense of where I am and what I'm doing and how implausible this really is and that it can't be happening because it feels too good.

“I can't afford to do this again,” I blurt again.

“Do what again?”

“Start and stop.”

“You don't have to.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Because I think we've been waiting a very long time for each other.”

“Don't.”

“This isn't a movie, Georgia.”

I sit there and sink. “So what would you say if I told you I fell in love with you thirty-five years ago but never told a soul, not even my own?”

“I'd believe you,” he says.

“What?”

“I knew when you refused to go to the pizza place with me, which is why I brought you the whole box.”

“Really?”

“I knew it when you sat up front and didn't turn back to look at me.”

“Shut. Up!” I lean against him and push.

“But I also knew I loved you when you let me join your study group.”

He chuckles.

“It was confirmed when you let me touch you and I knew then that one day I was going to touch you again.”

I hold out my hand. “Touch me again now.”

And he strokes my fingers. “I'm going to love you soft and hard,” he says.

“Okay.”

“I'm going to make you so happy you won't know what to do except be happy.”

“This sounds good to me. And I'll give everything back to you triple.”

“And I'm going to listen to every word that comes out of your mouth,” he says.

“I'm a talker.”

“You think I've forgotten?”

“You know what I want to know?” I ask.

“I'm listening.”

“How the universe works.”

“You mean the planet we're on right now?”

“Including the stars. All of it.”

“That's going to take some time.”

“About how many days?” I ask sarcastically.

“At least a million.”

When we hear them announce that my train is ready for boarding, I tear up my ticket and toss it in the trash.

He stands up and pulls my bags closer together.

I look up at him.

He looks down at me.

“So,” I say. “Here we are.”

“No,” he says. “Here we go.”

Wanda won the bet.

Nelson paid up.

They moved to Palm Desert.

Estelle and the girls are keeping their old home alive in the Oakland Hills. Gabrielle and Scarlett are both single again. Dove can say, “I eat-teen months,” when asked how old she is, even though she's twenty months.

Frankie and Hunter are happy and pregnant again. She says she loves being a mom, and Levi is thriving. He is much cuter than I ever imagined. She got a story published!

Mona Kwon passed.

Velvet moved in with her baby daddy and is purportedly engaged and purportedly attending cosmetology school. Miracles do happen.

Violet and Richard are for sure shacking up. She's probably going to get reinstated with the bar but has decided she might do well working with battered women. She has apparently grown a conscience.

Lily and Grover Jr. are engaged and pregnant with twin boys through a surrogate. Better late than never. The practice is thriving. Two new partners. May open an office in Berkeley.

Marina and Mercury, who claimed they didn't believe in marriage, are now married. They will graduate from the Academy of Art next year, at which time they believe without an ounce of doubt they're never having children and are moving to New York.

Stan and I just had our third child.

LOL!

Seriously.

We're in Cape Town, South Africa. We've been here for six weeks. I rented optometric equipment and have been giving free eye exams and glasses to those who can't afford them. Nothing ever felt better. Will come back annually.

We went on safari. Seeing those animals up close scared the hell out of me. I prefer watching them on the National Geographic Channel. However, I loved the accommodations.

Stan and I have decided that the world is worth seeing. So two or three times a year, we plan to travel to a different country. Or place. Somewhere one of us has never been. Next up is Dubai, then Bora-Bora, then Spain and Australia. We will go back to Africa once a year regardless. Victoria Falls and Ghana and Kenya and Zimbabwe are high on the list. I should just say the entire continent. At home I have yet to see Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon. And then there's the Kennedy Space Center!

Stan and I are bicoastal. I love his apartment. I cook up a storm in that little kitchen, but I also love New York City.

I redid my own kitchen. Blue stove. Tangerine fridge. Yellow dishwasher. It rocks. Naomi and Macy totally dig it.

Stan still builds. He has quite a crew. Bakersfield is on the short list.

Stan also keeps his word. He's renovated a fifteen-hundred-square-foot studio for me in West Oakland. The garage at my house can handle two cars again.

I seem to say Stan's name a lot.

I've sold twelve stools, seven chairs, five side tables, and a ton of pillows, all of which appear to have taken up permanent residence and found lovers in a very hip home-decor shop. Naomi and Macy knew people who knew people, and those people knew even more people. I have also recently started making ottomans. Covering them with wild and beautiful fabric and getting rather carried away.

I have deactivated my Facebook account until further notice. I do not miss it. However, Mona was right. My third husband was number three of ninety-eight messages. Stan wrote this:

Hello there, Georgia! Hope you're well. I think of you often. If you're ever in NYC, let me know. Would love to take you out for a slice! Love, Stan DiStasio.

And last but not least.

I do not regret quitting my day job.