Lone Star

  The conductor opened the door and grunted at the unwelcome arrival. “Billetes?”

  “One moment.” The guy reached into his back pocket, and his elbow poked Chloe in her breast! He stopped, didn’t even say excuse me, moved away slightly, and passed her the guitar. “Can you hold it for a sec? I have to find my pass.”

  It wasn’t as if he asked her for a favor, expecting perhaps a no. Had he ever heard the word no? He acted as if he hadn’t. First he pushed his guitar at her, already standing up, and then he asked her to hold it. Perhaps the unspoken threat was, either hold my guitar or be elbowed again in your ample bosom.

  He took something out of his wallet that did not look like a ticket or a Eurail pass. The conductor glanced at it, glanced at him a moment longer, nodded quickly, his hand almost going to his temple in a salute, and backed out of the cabin. The guy stuffed everything back into his wallet, and sat down.

  “I’ll take my guitar now,” he said.

  She turned to the window and checked her watch for the time. It was only five-thirty! The train wouldn’t get to Riga until after eight. Chloe couldn’t figure out why God was punishing her, tried to think of other things. Yet the boy’s presence next to her was enormous and could not be denied. He crowded out all her other thoughts. She couldn’t close her eyes. She couldn’t read her book. Trying not to breathe, she stared grimly out of the window, her mouth in a clamshell.

  For a few minutes, the compartment was almost silent. The professor was reading Hawking. The father was reading the paper and the boy was playing a handheld video game. The male half of the stout couple was napping, while the female half was attempting to involve guitar boy in conversation. Apologetically glancing at the woman while trying to catch Chloe’s eye, he said in English with a rueful smile, “I speak only the most basic Latvian. I wish I could explain that to her.” Oh, he fancied himself to be quite the smiler!

  What are you telling me for, Chloe thought. Tell her. She zeroed in on the passing farms outside, pretending to be deaf, to be a non-English-speaker and to have no peripheral vision.

  “Right?” Hannah butted in. “They keep talking to us in Latvian, too, but we don’t understand a word.”

  “Who’s they?” the boy said, pointing to his left. “These two?”

  “No, no. I mean in general.” She smiled. Hannah! In the Academy yearbook she was voted the least likely to smile. This was not a joke. This is what it actually said about her in the yearbook. Chloe wanted to share it with the ticketless traveler, but remembered just in time she didn’t want to speak to him. To avoid any possibility of further conversation, she forced herself to open her book.

  “What are you reading?” he promptly asked. “Let’s see.”

  “It’s nothing.” To be half-civil, she showed him. The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler.

  “Pretty funny book,” he said, as if he’d read it. “I like its depiction of father and unredeemed son.”

  He’d read it!

  “I haven’t finished it, so I wouldn’t know about the unredeemed part,” Chloe said pointedly. “Hope you didn’t just ruin the book for me.”

  He laughed. Listen to him, all mellifluous and throaty. “No, no. The parenting stuff in it is hilarious. Butler writes that if you want to control your children, keep telling them constantly they’re being very, very naughty. My father must have read it.” He shrugged. “Want to know what I’m reading?”

  How did one politely say, no, not in the least, not even slightly.

  “Yes, what are you reading?” chirped Hannah.

  The rotund woman to his left not only continued to beseech him in a low Myrtle Wilson voice, but was tapping on his sleeve to get his attention.

  “I’m sorry,” he finally said to her in English. “My Latvian is not good enough. I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  She said something in Latvian.

  “Es nerunāju loti labu latviešu,” he said. “Es atvainojos.”

  Hannah looked so impressed! Chloe couldn’t figure it out. Here is a straphanger, one tenth of the age of the dude she’s stepping out with behind the back of her current boyfriend, who is not just any boyfriend, but Blake! Blake, her devoted squeeze, and Hannah’s suddenly all aflush because some guy can speak a few words of a foreign language—the language of a country she doesn’t even like! Blake has a guidebook too, Chloe wanted to blurt out.

  It was hot. Chloe’s damp shirt was pressed against the shoulder of his leather jacket. After a few minutes he mercifully took the jacket off, but not before flinging his arms and elbows and hands in all directions. Women, Chloe wanted to yell in alarm, guard your boobs! Under the leather, he wore a plain black fitted tee with the white star of Texas above the pocket. Was he from Texas? Words could not express how much she didn’t care.

  “Oh! Are you from Texas?” Hannah asked.

  “Nah, it’s the one state I’ve never been to.” Yes, the jacket was off, but the rest of him, long, lean, arms akimbo, was still way too warm and way too pressed against Chloe. The neck of his guitar kept banging against her knees, and his huge green duffel took up the floor space where her feet needed to be. Crossing her legs, she turned her body window-ward, but no sooner had she done this than he thrust his book at her.

  “Look what I’m reading,” he said.

  It was the U.S. Army Survival Handbook. Whatever.

  “Oh?” said Hannah. “Why are you reading that?” Even the Lettish Myrtle was curiously mouthing the words of the title to herself, perhaps trying to translate.

  “Always good to know stuff, don’t you think?” he replied to Hannah, but was turned to Chloe. He opened the book to show her. “Did you know, for example, that you should always travel through the jungle wearing a long-sleeved shirt to avoid cuts and scratches?” Approvingly he touched her checkered forearm with his octave-length fingers. “Ah, but you’re damp. That’s no good. Your clothing must stay dry. Says so right here.”

  She pulled her arm away and heaved herself at the window. He was practically talking to the back of her shoulder. “And you shouldn’t grasp at brush or vines when searching for the trail because they might have irritating spines or sharp thorns.”

  “Good to know,” Chloe said. Irritating was right.

  “The black briar is dangerous, wouldn’t you agree? When you’re trying to find your way?”

  “Guess so.”

  “And don’t pick any mushrooms in the woods,” he continued. “Many will be poisonous.”

  “Yeah, we’ll be sure not to pick any mushrooms while we’re in Riga,” said Chloe.

  He laughed, his teeth gleaming. “Yes, you better not. Though by the Daugava near the Old City, they simply pro-LI-fe-rate after a rain, which is almost every day.”

  “Funny, hasn’t rained once since we’ve been here,” Chloe said.

  He appraised both girls. “How long?”

  “This is our fourth day,” Hannah readily replied.

  Was that really true?

  “Tomorrow is our last day,” Chloe said—because that was the important part.

  His eyes were on Chloe, amiable like a brown bear’s. “So what were you two doing in Liepaja? Not many American girls head to Liepaja on their own.”

  For some reason Chloe felt puffed up for a second to think that she was the kind of brave girl who would head to Liepaja on her own.

  “How would you even know to go there?” he asked. “It’s only in the last ten years that the city’s been open to tourists. How did you hear about it? Did you like it?”

  “We didn’t see much of it,” Hannah confessed. “But what were you doing there?”

  Chloe pretended to read.

  “Oh, I was …” he trailed off, his hand swirling in the air. “I met my father there. In Liepaja, they keep records on the Poles, Russians, Bulgarians who went missing during the war. Very poor records, as it turns out.”

  “Your dad is looking for them? Why?”

  “That,” the boy said, “is a very
good question. Damned if I know.”

  “Is that why you’re in Latvia?”

  “One of the reasons. I’m on my way to Italy, actually. Need to make a little money in Riga first. Are you girls visiting family?”

  “How in the world do you make money in Riga?” Hannah asked.

  “Lots of ways.” He raised his eyebrows and made a scabrous chuckle. “I give tours, for one.”

  “Of Riga?”

  “Sure. Of Riga, of Jurmala. Why are you so surprised?” He glanced over at Chloe. “Are you surprised, too?” he asked her, all charm and smiles and destruction.

  “I wasn’t listening. What?”

  “Well, it is a very absorbing book you’re reading,” he said. “I’m Johnny, by the way,” he said. “Pleased to meet you. And you are …”

  “Chloe.” They were sitting too close for Chloe to turn her head and look him in the eye. His face was barely a foot away from her face. She half-nodded in his general direction, keeping her eyes on his denim-clad knees and the pointed black leather toe of what looked to be a very snazzy cowboy boot. Lucchese perhaps? Wow. Leather jacket, beret, an ancient guitar with new strings. What the hell.

  “Hi, Chloe,” he said. “Would you like to book a tour of Riga with me? I’m very good.”

  How good could he be? Didn’t he just tell her he couldn’t get out of a briar patch? “No, thank you.”

  “Hi, Johnny, I’m Hannah,” Hannah said, reaching across and extending her graceful hand to him. “Chloe, let’s not be hasty. We actually were thinking of hiring a guide for tomorrow, remember?”

  No steely daggers out of Chloe’s eyes would dissuade her friend from talking. “Johnny can give us a tour,” Hannah continued. “Are you expensive?”

  “Like a piece of steak. But I’m very good. A filet mignon.” Every word spoken through two rows of exposed teeth.

  “Hannah is a vegetarian, so there you go,” said Chloe.

  “No, I’m not! And he’s not being literal, Chloe,” Hannah said in a patronizing tone. “I think a tour would be great, Johnny. Tomorrow is our last day. We haven’t seen very much.”

  “Where are you headed after this?”

  “Poland. Then Barcelona. We’re traveling for three weeks.” Hannah said it as if to impress him. “What about you?”

  “I’m not traveling to Barcelona.”

  Hannah giggled! “No, silly,” she said, all coquettish. “How long have you been on the road?”

  “On and off about two years, I guess.”

  Hannah whistled. Even Chloe blinked in wonderment. She couldn’t help a small question. “In Latvia for two years?” she asked.

  He looked so happy she’d asked him anything. He turned his whole body to her before he answered. “No. In Latvia almost one, though.”

  “What have you been doing in Latvia for a whole year?” asked Hannah.

  “This and that,” he said, volunteering nothing further. “Where are you girls from?”

  Was it Broceni and then Dobele or Dobele and then Broceni? How long was this going to continue? As the train lurched on, Hannah told Johnny everything there was to tell about them, and then some more stuff. She told Johnny where they were from, where they were staying, when they came, and even why.

  Chloe concentrated on the fields and the rivers, wondering why Hannah was suddenly so garrulous. For God’s sake. Normally you couldn’t get her to share important news with her closest friends. Like her affair with the Noah of Bangor. Now she was blabbing as if Johnny was her therapist.

  With the professor next to her fretting in disapproval, Hannah asked Johnny questions about trains, and comfort, and Riga. Every time he would answer Hannah, he would glance at Chloe and smile. His thigh kept pressing against her thigh in a way that was galling.

  They were only at Broceni. Damn it. Dobele and Jelgava still to come. Why wasn’t anyone getting off? To think that she might have to sit squeezed like this against him until Riga. She glanced at her watch. Why was her stupid heart beating so fast?

  He stopped talking and, with his army manual open on his lap, dozed off. Hannah kept gesturing to Chloe, who finally turned her head from the window. “What?” she said, pretty loud.

  Johnny’s head drooped forward.

  “Shh,” said Hannah. “Well?” She pointed in the general vicinity of him.

  “The worst,” Chloe mouthed. The train pitched sideways, and his head bobbed sideways, toward her. His clean shiny hair was touching her shoulder. She cleared her throat and shifted in her seat, to rouse him, to force him to change his position. Oh, he changed it, all right. By slumping even further to the right. The boy was practically drooling on her arm! “Why are you talking to him so much?”

  “Why aren’t you? I’m making chit-chat.”

  “Weird how I didn’t hear you volunteering any chit-chat about Blake and Mason.”

  “He didn’t ask.” Hannah grinned as he had grinned, like a Cheshire cat. It was hopeless.

  He woke up a while later, stretched his ridiculously long body, like a sapling twig, one of his arms nearly hitting Chloe on the head, sat up, leaned forward, pulled out a silver flask from his duffel, swigged it and offered it to her!

  “Um, no, thank you.”

  Hannah of course grabbed it. She coughed a little, surprised by its high alcohol content.

  “Stoli.” He smiled. “Good, right? Excuse me, I’ll be right back.” He asked Chloe to keep an eye on his stuff, got up and vanished. He was gone a fairly long time. When he returned he was awake, flushed and full of energy. He fitted in snugly between the lasciviously smiling zaftig woman and an ill-disposed Chloe, turned to her, and said, “So what are you doing after?”

  “After what?” She tried not to snap, but failed.

  “Do you mean later?” Hannah said. “What are we doing later?”

  “No, I mean after all this. Did you just graduate high school? Are you headed to college?”

  Lucky for Chloe, Hannah took that one. “Chloe and I are going to the University of Maine, up in Bangor,” she said. “Do you know where that is?”

  But Johnny, who had been looking at Chloe when Hannah replied, didn’t answer, blinking with awareness at the shadow passing across Chloe’s face.

  Hannah kept on and on at him about things. “Where are you headed in Italy?”

  “Tiny place. Tarcento. Do you know it?”

  Of course Hannah didn’t know it. Why even ask?

  “I’m going to visit my mother,” Johnny said. “She’s staying in Tarcento, and I’m on my way to say goodbye to her before I fly to Columbus, Georgia. Fort Benning. First OCS. Then the 75th Ranger Regiment.”

  Ah. Maybe that’s why the conductor had half-saluted. But how would he know that from the travel pass?

  “You’re going into the army?”

  “Not just the army. I’m going to be a Ranger!”

  Hannah was drowning in a pool of amazement. “You’re enlisting? That’s awesome. Where are you going to be deployed? Afghanistan, wow! Aren’t you scared? Are the Rangers like an elite force? Special operations, you say. Your family must be proud of you, no? When do you leave for overseas?” She giggled again. “I know you’re overseas now, I meant Afghanistan. November? That seems so soon. So Ranger training is not that long? Do you get a weekend pass when you’re at Fort Benning?”

  Chloe listened to this, drowning in her own pool of amazement.

  He smelled of cigarettes, possibly something carbonated, there was a man smell, but also a stale smell, not necessarily unpleasant, but unfamiliar and not altogether pleasant. But … not altogether unpleasant, either.

  Could Hannah sustain this level of excitement at every new fact about himself the boy shared? Johnny, while fielding Hannah’s questions, kept smiling at Chloe. “Where are you from, Chloe?”

  “Maine—like my friend said. We live next door to each other. Like she said.”

  Why did that amuse him, please him?

  “Where are you really from?” His fingers ci
rcled around her face, uncomfortably close to it, one heave of the train and his pointing digit would graze her cheek.

  “You mean, where is my mother from?”

  “Or father.”

  “North Dakota,” Chloe said, stubbornly refusing to participate with him. “And Maine. Is that what you wanted to know?”

  He pointed to his own elfin face: high forehead, square jaw, prominent cheekbones. “Do you see? My mother is Indonesian.” He thought they were kindred spirits! How precious of him. Well, Chloe would put paid to that immediately.

  “Yeah, I’m not from Indonesia.”

  “Where in North Dakota?”

  “Pembina.”

  “Really. There’s an army base close by.”

  “I know,” said Chloe. “My dad was stationed there. That’s how he met my mom.”

  “Aha,” Johnny said. “So your dad was a military man?”

  “He was in the National Guard for a few years. He’s the chief of police now.” He was less impressed by this than she’d hoped he would be. Smiling, though. Thoroughly entertained.

  “Chloe’s mother is originally from China,” Hannah said.

  “Nooo,” Chloe drew out. “My mother is originally from Pembina, North Dakota. And her mother. And her mother’s mother. And her mother’s mother’s mother. And …”

  “I get it,” Johnny said. “Your mother’s from Pembina.”

  She didn’t want to be telling him any of it. “Back when North Dakota was a territory,” she told him anyway, “and not a state, over a hundred and sixty years ago, the missionaries from Canada went to China and brought back eight girls and two boys. The children were nine or ten at the time. They lived in the missionary compound, near Dauphin, north of Lake Manitoba, but when they were old enough, some of the children went south for warmth. They stopped at Pembina, two miles south of the border, declaring it warm enough.”