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Copyright 2013 Howard Pecker
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I hadn’t been on a train more than two or three times in my life, and I hadn’t remembered the dizzy feeling I got when I looked out the window at the railroad ties going by on the next track, or the pity I felt for the other people on the train. They looked so lonely and pathetic, traveling with their suitcases and attaches. Other than that it was boring.
I tried listening to the conversations of the people around me but I could only hear little bits and pieces and only if I turned my whole head around to point my good ear at them. I fell asleep for a little while, maybe twenty minutes or less, which wasn’t too surprising since I hadn’t slept in about three days. You’d think being sad and crying all the time would make you tired, but it just keeps you up. I think smoking would have helped but I just didn’t have the energy.
I kept thinking that if I could just talk to Dori for one minute that everything would be okay, but she wasn’t picking up. I sat outside her building for a day or two, but I finally got too cold and uncomfortable (it’s embarrassing going into the same coffee house across the street five times a day to use the bathroom and warm up) and managed to drag myself home. I wasn’t hungry. Three days and all I ate was one of those big Italian subs, little by little of course, and two cups of coffee and I wasn’t hungry. I thought I’d be thirsty too but I guess I drank some of the water in the tub.
I wasn’t sad leaving Boston behind. I was tired of it and everything there reminded me of Dori anyhow. Every dirty-puddle, every piece of litter, every smug couple that walked by me while I waited outside Dori’s building, and stared at me like I was some kind of pathetic, homeless, witless freak. I say couples, because people who were by themselves never looked at me; they just kept on walking, looking straight ahead. I guess that there’s no point in being smug unless there’s someone you care about watching you in the act.
The light was fading just about the time the train passed Bridgeport. That’s in Connecticut, if you’re not from around here. I guess all the poor people live near railroad tracks 'cause we passed a lot of poor people, in poor houses and trailers in trailer parks, and kids were playing near the tracks, and there weren’t any parents watching them. I had one thing in common with those poor kids; I didn’t have any money either. I guessed that once I was in Manhattan I’d have to get a place near a railroad track.
I fell asleep again and the guy by the window woke me up to get out when we reached Manhattan, which was good because I would have slept right through, and then had to hitch back from Jersey or wherever I would have ended up, all the way back to New York. I grabbed my pack from the overhead and knocked something out onto the seat. It was my jacket but I didn’t notice it, and it was so warm on the train that I forgot that I’d had a jacket with me. The lady in the next seat said “Excuse me young man, excuse me, is that your jacket?” I just went back and got it. It didn’t occur to me to thank her.
I was going to stay in New York City with Dina for a few days. I guess I called her at some point when I wasn’t crying and depressed and feeling like I needed to hear a familiar voice, a sympathetic voice, and she felt sorry for me, like she always does, and said I could come and stay with her. Dina said that she was getting married in about a month and that she was going to keep her apartment for a few months after the marriage, ‘just in case’, and that I could use it while she was making sure she would stay married. I asked her if she was in love with this guy, which I did because I was jealous of someone who was together enough to get married and I was instantly sorry I’d said it. But it didn’t bother Dina. She just said ‘no, not really’.
When I’d picked up the phone to make that call I’d forgotten that I hadn’t spoken to Dina in four years, but when she picked up the phone it was like she had just talked to me yesterday or that morning. She caught me up on four years like she’d scripted it, and she didn’t sound mean or talk down to me, which was nice. And it went something like this: She’d started out at an ‘Ad’ company as an artist, but she got fired and they told her she could still work there, but not as an artist, more like someone who got coffee and delivered memos and such, and maybe she could get better in the meantime and then be an artist, which was too bad because Dina could really draw. She drew the funniest comic strips when we were kids that looked like x-rated Archie’s. She drew a great naked Veronica. The teacher found one once, but she didn’t know that Dina could draw so well, so she didn’t suspect Dina, who was a terrible student in just about every other way, and so Dina didn’t get caught. They yelled at her a lot though, at work that is, and she got sick of that so she got a job as a secretary’s assistant at a brokerage firm in the financial district because her friend told her it was a great way to meet a ‘good catch’; and it worked, because that was where she met Simon. Simon made a lot of money, ‘but not too much’, she said, so he wasn’t stuck up. She was going to get her blood tests and marriage license this week and she said it was a good thing that I was coming because I could go with her and hold her hand while she got her blood drawn so that she wouldn’t pass out. I asked her if she wouldn’t rather go with Simon, but he was getting his blood taken by his doctor. She was getting hers drawn at a lab. I wanted to see that. I’d never been in a lab. And all of this took four years. Dina had patience. I’d always admired that.
I stood on the platform for a few minutes letting it sink in that I didn’t have the paper that I wrote her address on, and cursing myself and feeling sorry for myself and wondering how long I could loiter around Penn Station without getting caught, and there was Dina coming down the steps on the other end of the platform. She walked toward me quickly, but I just stood there. She looked different. She was dressed up. She limped. Not a lot, but I could tell because when we were kids Dina could really run, and I used to admire that. She ran like a boy, you know, with power. I managed to take a few steps toward her and when she got close, and I could see her face. She hugged me and talked fast in my ear about how good it was to see me. I made a feeble attempt to lift my arms and hug her back, but I only managed to hit her in the back with my pack as it swung around. Either she didn’t notice, or she didn’t care. As she leaned in to kiss me, I saw something that I had forgotten; she had a fine scar that ran from the comer of her mouth to just below her right ear lobe. I would have kissed her on the cheek there but I was staring at the scar, and I thought that it wouldn’t be right to kiss her, and to kiss her right on that scar. We walked down the platform and went up to the station and out to the street and Dina was talking the whole time, but it was noisy in the station and she was talking into my bad ear (I think she forgot about the ear), and I was too busy looking around at everything and I didn’t hear a thing she said. It was pouring out now so we took a taxi to her building and when we got to her address the driver turned directly to her and told her the fare. He turned right to her like I was a kid riding with my mother; like he knew that there was no way that I’d have cab fare. And he was right. Dina whipped out the money like she did it every day and even tipped the driver.
"Be nice to your sister now," the driver called after me as I got out. He was from some other country and it sounded like he said “be nize stu sur shesster,” and he said it so slowly that I accidentally closed the door on him while he was still talking. We were on the stairs of Dina’s building before I realized what he’d said. Dina handed me a key to open the front door while she put her cash bac
k into her purse, and the purse back into the bag, and she did it with such purpose that you could tell that she knew exactly how she wanted that purse and that handbag to be arranged. Who cares about that kind of thing? Normal people do, I guess. I don’t. I always admired that about Dina. She cared about the small things.
There was a prostitute on the corner in a short green dress, and a down jacket. She was very thin and her cheekbones stood out like rock ledges and rain dripped off of them; Dina stopped talking abruptly when she saw me looking and after a dramatic pause I thought I heard her asking me if I had any plans for the next day, which seemed like a kind of a stupid question because I didn’t have any plans for the rest of my life, much less the next day. .
"No, I don’t have any plans.”
"So you can come with me tomorrow, for the tests‘?"
“Yes, sure."
Tests? Was an interview required to house sit for two months?
The