Now I'll Tell You Everything (Alice) (17 page)

So we told the guys they could have our desserts, and we ordered cheesecake for the three of us and gave it all to them. Afterward we sat in the lounge car and talked—their real names were Drew, Andy, George, and Kyle, though “Moe” for Moses was authentic. As the train went through the Cumberland Gap, I thought of Dave, and when it was too dark to see out, we found two tables on the lower level and played gin rummy and drank beer until eleven.

“Gosh, they’re nice!” Liz said after we got back to our sleeper. “Moe is so
funny
!”

“We lucked out,” said Pamela. “We get them the whole way to San Francisco.”

Our agreement was that Pamela was to sleep solo the first night from Washington to Chicago, where we changed trains. Then Liz would get a room to herself from Chicago to Denver, and I got to have it from Denver to San Francisco.

Elizabeth decided to take her shower at night in case there was a waiting line in the morning, so she picked up her shampoo and robe and towel and headed downstairs while the attendant
finished making up our beds. Almost immediately, however, she was back upstairs and collapsed on the lower bunk of our compartment, her face as pink as her T-shirt.

“Now what?” asked Pamela.

“All I did was open the door, and there stood a middle-aged man completely naked!” she gasped.

“What was he? A flasher?” said Pamela.

“No! He was drying off. He was as startled as I was. I am
so
embarrassed!”

The attendant returned with more sheets and smiled as he said, “What you have to remember, ladies, when
you’re
in the shower, is to push that lock all the way. We get at least one surprise per trip.” He grinned as he put a chocolate on each pillow before he wished us good night.

Elizabeth covered her face. “One of you come down with me and guard the door while I’m in there!” she said.

Now she was sounding like the old Elizabeth again.

“That’s like your opening the wrong door at the Gap the summer you moved to Silver Spring,” Pamela said to me. “And there stood Patrick Long, in all his glory.”

“Not quite,” I said. “He had his Jockeys on.”

“Please!” Elizabeth begged. “Somebody go back down with me and see if that man’s out of the shower. What’ll I say if I meet him in the dining car tomorrow?”

“How about, ‘Nice legs’?” Pamela suggested.

“Or, ‘Sorry, I didn’t recognize you with your clothes on,’  ” I said.

“You guys are no help,” Elizabeth said, but she finally went back down alone. Pamela said good night and went in her room, and I climbed up on the top bunk of ours and settled down. When Elizabeth came back up, she had a clean, soapy smell, and her dark hair glistened as she toweled it dry. I had my light off, but I could see her reflection in the mirror on our wall as she thoughtfully combed out the tangles. It came to me then that she finally looked happy. She wasn’t bone skinny like she used to be.

“I wish all guys were like those five we met at dinner,” she said. “Do you realize that not one of them swore the whole evening? Nobody got sloshed, no one was crude.”

I propped up my head on my hand. “I think that when guys get more mature, they don’t try to show off so much. Girls are the same way. After you start working toward a career, you let other things define you.”

“I guess that’s it,” said Liz.

We heard the train whistle in the dark, and then it started up again after its stop in Pittsburgh. I lifted my shade once in the night to see a full moon over the silhouette of trees, and then I let the train rock me back to sleep.

*  *  *

The guys looked pretty sleepy the next morning, especially Moe, who, being the tallest at six foot three, hadn’t slept all night.

“
Look
at them!” Andy grumbled to George at breakfast, casting a scornful glance our way. “Hair combed, bright-eyed . . . Don’t they make you sick?”

“That’s ’cause we’re
rich
!” Pamela teased. “We
saved
up our money for a sleeper.”

“Lucky you,” said Kyle.

At that exact moment a middle-aged man came up the aisle and stopped at our table, and Elizabeth’s face instantly turned bright red. As the guys gawked, the man looked at Elizabeth and, with a twinkle in his eye, said, “Well, now that you know me intimately, I guess I should wish you a pleasant trip.” And he went on his way.

“Whaaaat?” asked Drew, leaning forward and staring at Elizabeth, who was laughing now but hiding her face in her hands.

“Oh, she just picks up stray guys,” I said.

“Like puppies, you know. Can’t resist them,” Pamela said. Then she added, “They were in the shower together last night.”

“Well!” said Moe. “This is going to be
some
trip!”

On our five-hour layover in Chicago, the guys headed off for a museum. They invited us to come with them, but we were having lunch with Aunt Sally and Uncle Milt, so we just said we’d see them back at the station when it was time to board the California Zephyr.

We had a little time before lunch, so we walked over to the Sears Tower and took the elevator to the observation deck, where we could see out over Chicago and Lake Michigan. It was impossible, of course, not to think of Patrick and my visit to him at the University of Chicago. I could see its Rockefeller Chapel as well as the beach below us where Patrick and I had
walked that first day.
He’s on the other side of the world now,
I told myself. That part of my life was over.

When we got back to the train station, Aunt Sally and Uncle Milt were waiting with outstretched arms. Aunt Sally almost squeezed me to death.

“Young ladies, that’s what you are!” she kept saying, grabbing each of us by the shoulders and looking us over.

“It’s been too long, Alice,” Uncle Milt said, giving me a big hug.

They took us to a Japanese restaurant that Carol had recommended, and we talked as fast as we could, describing Lester’s wedding, catching up on each other’s lives.

“I still remember our last visit here—how Carol took us to all those fantastic shops and we tried on hats,” Elizabeth said.

“And you were so upset, Sally, about the man who tried to get in my room on the train,” said Pamela.

“Oh, I remember
that
like it was yesterday!” Aunt Sally said. “You girls were so young,
any
thing could have happened.”

As we talked, I studied my aunt and uncle. They definitely looked older than when I’d seen them last. Aunt Sally’s hair was all white now, not just white in places, and Uncle Milt was a lot thinner.

I didn’t like seeing them growing older. They were the only relatives I really knew well. When they drove us back to the station, Aunt Sally gave me an extra hug. “I love you, dear,” she said. “And your mother loved you too.”

*  *  *

After we’d boarded the train to California that afternoon, we went through the coach cars looking for the guys, since coach passengers aren’t allowed in the sleeping cars, and found them looking somewhat refreshed, all but Moe and George, who had reclined in their seats as far back as they could go but who still, obviously, were not sleeping.

We asked for a “table for eight” in the dining car that night and were given two tables across from each other, Kyle sitting with us this time. The guys told us about their morning at the Museum of Science and Industry, but halfway through dinner, we saw Moe leaning against the window on their side of the aisle, eyes closed. And I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard Elizabeth say, “We’ve got an extra bed, Moe. Do you want to use it?”

Pamela and I stared. Elizabeth?
Elizabeth
said that? I realized it was her turn to sleep in the room with the extra bunk that night, and it was hers to do with as she pleased, but I never would have expected that.

Moe opened his eyes. “You mean it?”

“Hey,
I’m
sleepy too!” said George.

“Me too!” chimed in Drew and Andy.

“You don’t take her up on it, I will,” said Kyle.

“Is it allowed?” Moe asked.

Elizabeth shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said, lowering her voice, “but we could smuggle you in.”

That became the evening’s project, to somehow smuggle six-foot-three Moe into the spare bunk without the attendant knowing.

“We could always dress him up as a woman, Elizabeth, and then if the attendant saw him in your room, he wouldn’t be so shocked,” said Pamela. We were in the lounge car now, even though it was too dark to see out.

Moe rolled his eyes. “That was a Marilyn Monroe movie, wasn’t it?”

“I’ve got an extra pair of pajamas,” said Elizabeth.

“They just might reach his knees,” said Drew.

“Wig?” asked George. “Anybody got a wig?”

We knew that the train attendants had probably seen everything there was to see, but we didn’t want Moe to have to pay extra for the bed. So after the attendant had made up our beds for the night, we took all the stuff we’d stored on the extra bunk and crammed it under the lower bunks.

Elizabeth stayed in her room with the curtain closed, Pamela kept watch down the hall, and as soon as the attendant went to the lower level to make up a bed down there, I went to the observation car and got Moe, and he ducked into Elizabeth’s room. Then Pamela and I dived in after him, and we closed the glass door behind the thick blue curtain.

Pamela, Elizabeth, and I had to crawl onto the bottom bunk to leave room for Moe to move. We were giggling like grade school kids.

He had changed into sweatpants and a T-shirt and was in his stocking feet. He bent down so he could see us. “Hey, I really appreciate this,” he said, and put one hand over his heart. “I solemnly swear to keep my hands to myself and stay in the top
bunk.” He looked at Elizabeth. “You can even keep the curtain open a little so your friends can check up on me, if you want.”

“We trust you,” said Elizabeth. “I’ll just ring for the attendant if you molest me.” She pointed to the round yellow button on the wall by her bed.

“You’ve got a call button up there too,” I told him.

“You mean if Elizabeth molests
me
,
I
can call for the attendant?” Moe asked.

“For tonight, you’re at the mercy of Elizabeth,” Pamela told him.

“Lucky me,” said Moe.

*  *  *

I was the first one awake in the morning. I snapped on my light long enough to see that it was 6:57, but I wasn’t quite ready to get up yet, so I turned off the light again and nestled down under the blanket. I could hear a door sliding open now and then from out in the hall and the attendant’s cheery, “Good morning!” Suddenly I bolted straight up. I remembered that we had requested a wake-up call at seven.

Why on earth had we requested wake-up calls? Liz, I think, had said she didn’t want to be the last one straggling down to the restrooms with all the other passengers staring at her, and Pamela had said, “Whatever.” A wake-up call didn’t mean you had to get up.

The attendant was going to be knocking on our doors, though. Would he come in the rooms or what?

I leaned down and peeked out one side of our curtain to see if
Elizabeth was up. Then I gasped, because the curtain across from us was askew, and a man’s huge foot was plastered against the glass.

“Pamela!” I cried.

There was a murmur from below. “Huh?”

“Moe!” I said. “His foot!”

“Huh?”
Pamela said, more loudly. I heard her sheets rustle.

“Oh, cripes!” she said, reaching out and fumbling with the lock. She had just slid the door open a couple inches when the attendant appeared outside, his back to us and his hand up, ready to knock on Elizabeth’s door. He paused, looking at the man’s foot. Then he knocked.

We didn’t know what to do, so we didn’t do anything. Just froze.

There was a pause, and the attendant knocked again. Then the door slid open and Elizabeth’s face appeared. Only she too was staring up at Moe’s leg dangling down from the upper bunk, his foot against the glass.

“Seven o’clock!” the attendant said, smiling.

“It’s not what you think!” Elizabeth choked. “He was just so tired, and he promised he wouldn’t do anything, and . . .”

“Oh, Elizabeth, shut up, shut up!” Pamela muttered from below.

The foot suddenly disappeared from the window.

“Miss,” said the attendant quietly, leaning into Elizabeth’s room so as not to be heard all up and down the hall, “you paid for this room, and you can do whatever you like in it, as long as you don’t disturb the other guests.”

Pamela and I fell back on our beds in silent laughter.

“Coffee and juice down the hall,” the attendant said. Then he knocked on our door. “Seven o’clock!” he said cheerily. I couldn’t see his face, but I could hear the smile in his voice, and then his chuckle as he moved on down the hall.

*  *  *

It was a trip we’d never forget. We were in Denver just after breakfast and spent almost the whole day in the observation car with the guys as the California Zephyr slowly climbed toward Winter Park, through Fraser Canyon, Granby, and Glenwood Springs, where the Roaring Fork River met the Colorado. We cheered when a raft-load of guys all stood up and mooned us and cheered again when a load of female rafters bared their breasts at the train. “See that a lot on weekends,” our attendant told us later.

Having left peach orchards in Maryland we were now seeing patches of snow up in the mountains, and snow-covered peaks in the distance. Most of the wildlife appeared in the early morning or at dusk.

“What’s that dog doing way out here?” I mused, watching a lone creature slink across a barren hill some distance from the train.

“That’s not a dog, that’s a coyote,” Kyle said, giving my ribs a poke.

“A coyote! I just saw a coyote!” I exclaimed, fascinated.

And a few minutes later Elizabeth cried, “Deer! A whole pack!”

“Those aren’t deer, they’re antelope, and it’s not a pack, it’s a herd,” Moe said. “Don’t you city girls know
any
thing?”

Sometimes we sat on the guys’ laps to make room for other passengers in the observation car or took a break and went to our compartments to nap. George, it turned out, had his guitar with him, and when we came back once to the lounge, he was softly playing, some of the passengers singing along. There was a movie in the lounge that night, but again we played cards on the floor below, and then it was my turn to have our second bedroom. This time I let George have the top bunk. The attendant didn’t blink an eye when he discovered our new roommate, and I didn’t feel the need to explain.