“Olive, it was a strange thing. But— Okay. So, I’m sitting in the Red Cap area at Penn Station—”
“The what area of Penn Station?” And now Olive was afraid she would not be able to follow this story.
“Oh, the Red Cap area, where if you need special help they take you down to the train early.”
“Why do you need special help?” Olive asked.
Lucy seemed surprised. “I don’t. But if you tip these men, these Red Cap people, they’ll get you on the train before everyone else. And of course, some of the people really do need extra help, I mean they might be in a wheelchair or something. But some people just do what I do, which is to go down to the train that way because it’s so much less confusing than waiting in some long line at the last minute when they finally say the gate number.”
Olive said, “Go on. So you met this man.”
“Well, I noticed this man, who also came to the Red Cap area and sat down. And there was nothing about him that distinguished him in any way. Nothing. He might have been fifty-five years old, I really don’t know. But as I glanced at him, I thought—I just kind of thought this—I like you. Then he got up and threw something away and sat down again. He was a tiny bit slumped over, wearing glasses, not one thing unique about him at all. But I thought: I like you. That’s all. But it was interesting to me—after—that I had even thought that.
“So they tell us to get ready, and we all followed a Red Cap guy down this elevator, all squished in together, and I saw that this fellow and I were the only people wearing masks. Anyway, the point is: It turned out we were sitting next to each other in the quiet car. You know, they reserve seats now.”
“The what car?” Olive asked. She was confused by many parts of this story.
“Oh, the quiet car, where you’re not allowed to talk or to be on your cellphone. And his seat was by the window and my seat was by the aisle, and he said something about wishing his seat was the aisle, and I said, Oh, I’ll sit by the window, no problem, and he said he liked to sit by the aisle so that when he got up he didn’t have to bother anyone, and I told him I knew just what he meant, that’s why I always preferred to sit on the aisle, in case I had to get up, but I told him it was no problem, I’d sit by the window. So I did.”
Olive watched her. Lucy’s face looked intense as though deep into her memory of this.
Lucy continued, “And after I got settled, I said to him, Well, I’m going to move past you in about an hour because I’ll have to go to the café car, and he said, Oh, that’s okay. Then he said, ‘I’ll split my lunch with you, if you’d like. But I won’t split my halva,’ and we sort of laughed. I have no idea what halva is, by the way. And when the conductor came by, I had to stick my phone in front of this man’s face so that the conductor could read the ticket off my phone, and I said, Sorry to stick that in front of your face, and he said, Oh, that’s okay.”
Olive was about to say: I thought you weren’t supposed to be talking in this quiet car, but she did not say it.
“Then he took out his lunch from a paper bag. And, Olive, he had all kinds of sliced meats prewrapped in cellophane from some deli probably, and a plastic container of mixed fruit, and then another plastic container of just grapes, and then a plastic container that had HALVA written on it with a magic marker. But he didn’t eat his lunch, he just sat there with it. So I said, Go ahead and eat, because I won’t be getting out past you for an hour, and he said, Oh, okay, and so he started to eat. He’d obviously—I think—been waiting for me, so he ate and ate and ate, and then he put the wrappers and the containers back in his paper bag and the train moved along. And after a while I went to the café car and got hummus and some water, and when I got back, I could just tell he was thinking: That’s all she’s going to eat? But of course we couldn’t talk because we were in the quiet car.
“But it felt like we were talking, it’s hard to explain. I mean, when I looked out the window and saw how swollen the rivers and inlets were with all the rain, I felt that he was noticing this too, and it was sort of like we commented on these swollen waters together. That kind of thing.
“And then, Olive— It was so strange. I thought: I love him! Because I did. You know, I used to know a writer who wrote something about looking around every room she was in and thinking: If I was caught in a bunker with these people, which one would I want to have sex with? And I thought of that. I didn’t want to have sex with him, but I thought: If we were in a place of real danger, you are the person I would want to hold on to. And I could sort of feel his arms around me, very comfortably.”
Now Olive was simply put off. A friend who talked about who she would have sex with if they were all stuck in a bunker? And Lucy was so— Olive didn’t know what, but she was disappointed in the woman.
“This never happens to me, by the way,” Lucy said, uncrossing her legs and crossing them again the other way. “But it did, and I thought again, with even more clarity: Why, I love this man!
“And then he got off at Baltimore. He just had the bag his lunch had been in and also something in a frame that was partly wrapped in bubble wrap, and he brought that down in a bag with two handles, and sat down again waiting for the train to stop, and I said, ‘Well, it was nice sitting with you’—we could talk quietly at that point because the train was stopping—and he said, ‘Yeah, it was so nice.’ And then he said, ‘I’m no photographer, but you want to see a picture I took?’ And I said, Oh yes. So he brought out his phone and showed me this picture. He said it was daybreak and the sky in the picture was purple as the sun broke through and it was in the country and there was a bird sitting near the front of it, and I said, ‘Oh, that’s just beautiful!’ Then I asked where had he taken it, and he said, ‘A field near where I live. And look at that bird. That bird just kept sitting there!’ And I said again it was just an absolutely gorgeous photo, and he looked at me and said, ‘Yeah, I sent it to my mother.’ ”
Lucy shook her head slowly. “I mean, Olive.”
“Do you think he was married?” Olive asked this after a moment.
“No,” Lucy said. “He had no wedding ring, and he seemed the kind of man who would have worn one if he was. His phone went off a couple of times and he hurried to silence it, I did notice that. No idea who was calling him. Maybe his mother. So anyway, he stood up and we wished each other well, you know, and as he walked past the window of the train, I saw that his jeans looked like he could have come from Maine, and he had a large low-slung stomach that I hadn’t noticed before.”
After a moment she looked again at Olive and said, “But I loved him. And he loved me.”
—
Olive didn’t know what that remark meant about the jeans that could have come from Maine. She finally said, “Did he remind you of Bob Burgess?”
Lucy said simply, “No, he wasn’t like Bob at all. He just was whoever he was.”
“And you fell in love with him.”
“No!” Lucy said this vehemently. “No, you’re missing the point!”
Olive said nothing.
And then Lucy said, “How often has that happened to you? That you sit by a stranger—without even really talking—for a few hours, and you realize that you love him?”
Olive thought about this, and she said, “Never.”
“That’s my point.” Lucy said this quietly, with a certain kind of defeat.
“Is that the whole story?” Olive asked.
“Yeah,” Lucy answered. She didn’t look at Olive, and Olive could sense her disappointment. But Olive was disappointed as well. And she didn’t know how she would tell this story to her friend Isabelle Goodrow later this afternoon when Olive went to visit her.
After a long moment Lucy looked over at Olive and said, “Let me try another one. It’s not very long.”
“Go right ahead,” Olive said.
“Okay, so the last time I was in New York, I hailed a cab near where our little place is, it’s on a big two-way street, and this cab across the street stopped, but the sun was in my eyes and I couldn’t tell if his white light was on—which indicates he’s free—and other taxis drove by me on my side of the street but they were all full. But the guy across the street waited for me, it was not a short wait, I needed the light to finally change, and it did. So when I got into his cab I said, ‘Thank you for waiting.’ ”
“Go on,” Olive said.
“And he was young, no more than thirty years old, I think. He was wearing a mask, not all of them do anymore, and he had a woolen hat pulled low on his forehead and he seemed kind of tired, I mean he was hunched over slightly, and he was small, and as we pulled into the traffic he said to me—sort of quietly, but really sincerely, ‘How has your day been so far?’
“And I almost said, Oh fine, but it hadn’t really been fine, and something about the way he asked me I thought he deserved an honest answer, so I said, ‘Oh you know, not that great,’ and then I said to him, ‘How has your day been?’ And he said, ‘I’m just really hungry.’
