The Christmas Train (7 page)

“How have you been?” Eleanor asked coolly.

“I’ve been working. Mostly here in the States the last year,” Tom managed to say.

“I know. I read the piece on Duncan Phyfe furniture you did for Architectural Journal . It’s the first article on antique furniture that made me laugh. It was good.”

Vastly encouraged by that, Tom said, “Well, between you and me, I didn’t know Duncan Phyfe from Duncan Hines when I pitched that story, but I crammed like hell, got the gig, and blew the money on something. You know me.”

“Yes, I know you.” She didn’t even crack a smile, although Max chuckled. Tom’s gut tightened, and his throat dried up as those big emerald eyes bored into him with nothing whatsoever inviting in them. Tom felt cement shoes forming around his ankles. The sensation of imminent doom was somehow of solace to him, as though the end would be quick and relatively painless.

He found his voice. “So you’re a screenwriter?”

Max said, “She’s one of Hollywood’s best-kept secrets. She specializes in script doctoring. You know, where a script has real problems and you need a miracle on a short fuse? Eleanor comes in and whips it into shape, like magic. She’s pulled my butt out of the fire on a bunch of occasions when the A-list writer I paid millions to fumbled the ball. My last five films she basically rewrote all the scripts. I finally talked her into doing her own original screenplay.”

“I’m not surprised—she was always a terrific writer.” Again, there was no response to this compliment. The cement was now inching up Tom’s calves.

“So what’s up, Max?” Eleanor said with a slight nod of her head in Tom’s direction. She obviously didn’t want a trip down memory lane; she wanted to bring this all—meaning him—to a hasty close.

“I had this brilliant idea.” Max explained his “brilliant idea” to Eleanor, while Tom stood there wondering whether he should throw himself through one of the windows and under the wheels of the Cap. It couldn’t be clearer that Eleanor wasn’t at all pleased with the percolations of the director’s genius.

Yet she said, “Let me think about it, Max.”

“Absolutely. Hey, I tell you what, later, we can have a drink. Somebody told me they drink on this train.”

“They do,” Tom said. Then he added jokingly, “In fact, the whole train is a bar.” He looked at Eleanor, but she was simply staring off. Tom’s arms were now immobile.

“Done, then. Drinks around, what, eight?” said Max.

“They serve dinner here too. I have reservations at seven?” Tom looked at Eleanor again, as though trying to will her to say she’d join him.

“I had a late lunch in D. C.,” she said. “I’m skipping dinner.”

Max said, “Yeah, dinner’s not good for me either, Tom. I’ve got a few calls to make.”

“Well, don’t starve yourself.” Ironically, it was at this point that the cement seemed to arrive at his mouth.

“Not to worry: Kristobal brought some of my favorite stuff on board. I’m more of a snacker, really.”

“Kristobal?”

“My assistant. He’s in the compartment right there.” Max pointed to the compartment where Tom had seen the headset kid.

As if the mention of his name by his boss had reached his ears through the closed door, Kristobal emerged from his room.

“Do you need anything, Mr. Powers?”

“No, I’m fine. This is Tom Langdon. Tom might be helping us on our project.”

Kristobal was as tall as Tom, and young and handsome and well built. He was very stylishly dressed, and probably made more in a week than Tom made in a year. He also seemed efficient and intelligent, and Tom instantly disliked him for all those reasons.

“Excellent, sir,” said Kristobal.

Tom reached out and they shook hands. “Good to know you,” Tom said, ignoring the imagined crunch of gravel between his teeth.

Max said, “Okay, that’s settled. Eleanor will think about it and we’ll have drinks at eight, and now I have got to go smoke before I start hyperventilating.” He looked around, puzzled.

Tom pointed, “That way, two cars down, through the dining room, into the lounge car, down the stairs, to the right and you’ll see the door marked ‘smoking lounge.’”

“Thanks, Tom, you’re a gem. I know this is going to work out; it’s an omen. My palmist said something good was going to happen. ‘A chance meeting,’ she said. And look what happened. Yep, a good day.” He stuck the cigarette in his mouth and hustled off in his Bruno Maglis.

Kristobal called after him: “Your lighter is in your right-hand jacket pocket, sir.”

Max gave a little wave; Kristobal retreated to his office hovel. And then it was just Eleanor and Tom.

For a few moments they stood there, each refusing to make eye contact.

“I cannot believe this is actually happening,” Eleanor finally said. “Of all the people to see on this train.” She closed her eyes and slowly shook her head.

“Well, it kind of took me by surprise too.” He added, “You look great, Ellie.” As far as he knew, Tom was the only one who ever called her that. She’d never objected, and he loved the way it sounded.

Eleanor’s eyes opened and focused on him. “I’m not going to beat around the bush: Max is a wonderfully gifted filmmaker, but sometimes he comes up with these off-the-wall ideas that just won’t work. I really believe this is one of them.”

“Hey, I just walked smack into his enthusiasm. I don’t want you to do something you don’t want to, and frankly, I haven’t even really thought about it either.”

“So I can tell Max you’re not interested?”

“If that’s what you want, Ellie, that’s fine.”

She studied him closely now, and he felt himself shrink from the scrutiny.

“That’s exactly what I want.” She went back inside her room and slid the door closed.

Standing there, he was now a fully kilned statue of stone, ready for primer and paint. Not even the hum-hush, siss-boom-bahs and cunning whipsaws of the mighty Cap could budge the man in his rigid, unyielding despair. He wondered if it was too late to get a refund on his train ticket based on the recent occurrence of his living death. chapter nine

Tom staggered back to his compartment and collapsed on the foldout bed. Eleanor was on this train? It couldn’t be possible. He’d never envisioned sharing his journey of self-discovery with the one person on earth whose absence in his life may well have led him to take the damn trip in the first place! And yet whose fault was her absence? He’d never asked her to stay, had he?

As he sat up and stared out the window into the blackness, he suddenly wasn’t on a train heading to Chicago; he was in Tel Aviv. They’d chosen that coastal city because of its proximity to Ben-Gurion Airport; one was never really more than two hours’ flight time from the sort of stories Eleanor and Tom were there to cover. The Middle East was nothing if not unpredictable in its predictableness. You knew something would happen; you just didn’t know exactly where or what form it would take.

Mark Twain had visited the Holy Land and wrote extensively about it in The Innocents Abroad . The book was published in 1869, a year before Zion was resettled by the Jews and almost ninety years before Israel was established as a sovereign state. Twain had found Palestine to be very tiny, writing that he “could not conceive of a small country having so large a history.” Tom understood exactly what he meant. The place that loomed so enormous to folks all over the world could be traversed from end to end in hours by car. The walled city of Jerusalem seemed but a handsome miniature the first time Tom saw it. Yet the intensity there, and the people who called it home, lived up to its reputation as one of the most magnetic places on earth.

They’d traveled the country in search of stories, although Eleanor had also sought out more personal experiences, once even being baptized in the Jordan River. Twain, too, had swum in the Jordan River after a long, dusty ride from Damascus, though more for hygienic than spiritual purposes. Tom and Eleanor had bought Jordanian water in clear bottles molded to look like Jesus and sent them back home, together with holy air in a can, collected in churches of antiquity in Israel. Tom had always understood that both items were immensely popular with American tourists, who’d rush home with the air and water and bestow it on their own places of worship. He supposed they did so in the hopes of raising them a few pegs in the eyes of God—hedging their bets, so to speak.

During the years they had lived in Israel, the pair had also ventured to Bethlehem one Christmas with a tour group because Eleanor had wanted to see the place where the son of God had been delivered into a sinful world. Though he was not a particularly religious person, it was still a humbling event for Tom to be in close proximity to where an event of that magnitude reportedly took place.

In his trip to Bethlehem Mark Twain had reported that all sects of Christians, except Protestants, had chapels under the roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. However, he also observed that one group dared not trespass on the other’s territory, proving beyond doubt, he noted, that even the grave of the Savior couldn’t inspire peaceful worship among different beliefs. Some things clearly hadn’t changed since Mark Twain was a pilgrim in the Holy Land all those years ago.

The two American journalists had been one of the very few in Israel who celebrated the holiest of Christian holidays. Tom and Eleanor had put up a small Christmas tree in their apartment and cooked their holiday meal and opened presents. Then they looked out on the darkness of the Mediterranean and took in the sights and smells of the desert climate while celebrating an event most Americans associated with snow, a jolly fat man, and crackling fires. Then they fell asleep in each other’s arms. Those Christmases in Tel Aviv were some of the most wonderful of Tom’s life. Except for the last one.

Eleanor left the apartment to do some last-minute grocery shopping. About forty minutes later she came back and said that she wanted to go home, that she was tired of covering the perils of this strange world, that it was just time to go home. At first Tom thought she was joking. Then it became apparent she wasn’t. In fact, while he was standing there, she started packing. Then she called El Al to get a flight home. She tried to book Tom one too, but he said no, he wasn’t leaving. Everything had seemed wonderful barely an hour before. Now he was standing in the middle of their tiny apartment in his skivvies and his whole life had just collapsed.

He questioned her as to what had happened in the last forty minutes to cause her to make this major, life-altering decision for both of them, without bothering to consult him first. The only answer she gave was that it was time to go home. They talked, and then the talk snowballed into an argument, and then it cascaded downhill from there. By the time she had her bags packed they were screaming at each other, and Tom had become so confused and distraught that to this day he had no idea half of what he’d said.

She took a cab to the airport, and Tom followed her, where they continued their argument. Finally, it was time to go up the escalator to get on the shuttle bus. That was when Eleanor, her voice now calm, asked him once more to come with her. If he really loved her, he’d come with her. He remembered standing there, tears in his eyes, feeling only a deep stubbornness fueled by anger. He told her no, he wasn’t coming.

He watched her ride up the escalator. She turned back once. Her expression was so sad, so miserable, that he almost called out to her, to tell her to wait, that he was coming, but the words never came. It was like the night on the train from Cologne, when he was supposed to propose to the woman he loved but hadn’t. Instead, he turned and walked out, leaving her, as she was leaving him.

That was the last time he’d seen Eleanor. Until five minutes ago, on a swaying train headed to Chicago by way of Toledo and Pittsburgh. He still had no idea what had happened to make her leave. And he still had no rational explanation as to why he hadn’t gone with her.

With a jolt, Tom was transported back to West Virginia on steely Amtrak rails. He lay down on the couch, and the warm compartment, the hum-hush, siss-boom-bah of the wheels, his overwrought mind, and the darkness outside combined to push him into a troubled doze.

Whatever it was must have hit Tom’s sleeper car directly. The sound was very loud, like a cannonball clanging off the side. He almost fell off the couch. He checked his watch. Six-thirty, and they were slowing down fast. Then the mighty Capitol Limited came to a complete stop, and looking out his window, Tom saw that they were not anywhere close to civilization. He smelled something burning, and although he wasn’t an experienced railroad man, that didn’t seem like something you’d want your train to be doing.

In the darkness outside he saw lights here and there, as presumably train personnel checked where the broadside had come from and what damage it had done. He went out into the hallway and saw Father Kelly.

“Did you hear that?” the priest said. “It sounded like a shot.”

“I think we hit something,” Tom replied. “Maybe there was something on the track and we ran over it.”

“It sounded like it hit our car, and we’re in the middle of the train.”

Well, that was true, thought Tom. “I don’t know, I just hope we start moving again soon.”

Regina walked by with a worried look. She was carrying a huge cluster of newspapers all balled up.

Tom said, “Hey, Regina, what’s up? We’re not moving. Did Amtrak’s credit card bounce or something?”