Affected way of putting it. They arrived on the platform and stopped short, so that I just about ran over them. The woman said, “I’m Sophia—” and then something like “Maiden” that I couldn’t exactly hear. (The train was in place but rumbling, and passengers were clip-clopping by.) “In case we miss connections, though …,” she said, raising her voice.
In case they missed connections, he should put his name and phone number on the mailer. Any fool would know that much. But he seemed to have his mind elsewhere. He said, “Um … now, do you live in Baltimore? I mean, are you coming back to Baltimore, or is Philly your end destination?”
I almost laughed aloud at that. So! Already he’d forgotten he was grateful; begun to question his angel of mercy’s reliability. But she didn’t take offense. She said, “Oh, I’m a long-time Baltimorean. This is just an overnight visit to my mother. I do it every weekend: take the ten-ten Patriot Saturday morning and come back sometime Sunday.”
“Well, then!” he said. “Well. I certainly do appreciate this.”
“It’s no trouble at all,” she said, and she smiled and turned to board.
I had been hoping to sit next to her. I was planning to start a conversation — mention I’d overheard what the man had asked of her and then suggest the two of us check the contents of his packet. But the car was nearly full, and she settled down beside a lady in a fur hat. The closest I could manage was across the aisle to her left and one row back, next to a black kid wearing earphones. Only view I had was a schoolmarm’s netted yellow bun and a curve of cheek.
Well, anyhow, why was I making this out to be such a big deal? Just bored, I guess. I shucked my jacket off and sat forward to peer in my seat-back pocket. A wrinkly McDonald’s bag, a napkin stained with ketchup, a newspaper section folded to the crossword puzzle. The puzzle was only half done, but I didn’t have a pen on me. I looked over at the black kid. He probably didn’t have a pen, either, and anyhow he was deep in his music — long brown fingers tapping time on his knees.
Then just beyond him, out the window, I chanced to notice the passport man talking on the phone. Talking on the phone? Down here beside the tracks? Sure enough: one of those little cell phones you all the time see obnoxious businessmen showing off in public. I leaned closer to the window. Something here was weird, I thought. Maybe he smuggled drugs, or worked for the CIA. Maybe he was a terrorist. I wished I knew how to read lips. But already he was closing his phone, slipping it into his pocket, turning to go back upstairs. And our train was sliding out of the station.
I looked again at the woman. At the packet, to be specific.
It was resting on top of her book, which sat in her feather-print lap. (She would be the type who stayed properly buttoned into her coat, however long the trip.) Where the mailer was folded over, staples ran straight across in a nearly unbroken line. But staples were no problem. She could pry them up with, say, a nail file or a dime, and slip them out undetectably, and replace them when she was finished. Do it, I told her in my head. She was gazing past her seatmate, out the right-hand window. I couldn’t even see her cheek now; just her bun.
Back in the days when I was a juvenile delinquent, I used to break into houses and read people’s private mail. Also photo albums. I had a real thing about photo albums. The other kids who broke in along with me, they’d be hunting car keys and cigarettes and booze. They’d be tearing through closets and cabinets all around me, while I sat on the sofa poring over somebody’s wedding pictures. And even when I took stuff, it was always personal stuff. This little snow globe once from a nightstand in a girl’s bedroom. Another time, a brass egg that stood on scaly claw feet and opened to show a snapshot of an old-fashioned baby inside. I’m not proud of this. I’d sooner confess to jewel theft than to pocketing six letters tied up with satin ribbon, which is what I did when we jimmied the lock at the Empreys’ place one night. But there you are. What can I say.
So when this Sophia woman let the packet stay untouched — didn’t prod it, didn’t shake it, didn’t tease apart the merest corner of the flap — I felt something like, oh, almost envy. A huge wave of envy. I started wishing I could be like that. Man, I’d have been tearing into that packet with my bare teeth, if I’d had the chance.
The conductor came and went, and the row houses slipping by turned into factory buildings and then to matted woods and a sheet of gray water, but I was barely conscious of anything beyond Sophia’s packet. I saw how quietly her hands rested on the brown paper; she was not a fidgeter. Smooth, oval nails, pale pink, and plump white fingers like a woman’s in a religious painting. Her book was turned the wrong way for me to read the title, but I knew it was something worthwhile and educational. Oh, these people who prepare ahead! Who think to bring actual books, instead of dashing into a newsstand at the last minute for a Sports Illustrated or — worse yet — making do with a crossword puzzle that someone else has started!
It bothered me more than I liked to admit that the passport man had avoided me.
We were getting close to Wilmington, and the lady in the fur hat started collecting her things. After she left, I planned to change seats. I would wait for Sophia to shift over to the window, and then I’d sit down next to her. “Morning,” I would say. “Interesting packet you’ve got there.”
“I see you’re carrying some kind of packet.”
“Mind if I inquire what’s in that packet?”
Or whatever. Something would come to me. But when the train stopped and the lady stood up, Sophia just turned her knees to one side to let her out. She stayed seated where she was, on the aisle, so I didn’t see any natural-seeming way to make my move.
We left Wilmington behind. We traveled past miles of pipeline and smokestacks, some of them belching flames. I could tell now that it was rap music the kid beside me was listening to. He had the volume raised so high that I could hear it winding out of his earphones — that chanting and insisting sound like the voices you hear in your dreams.
“Philll-adelphia!” the conductor called.
Of course Sophia got ready too soon. We were barely in sight of the skyline — bluish buildings shining in the pale winter sunlight, Liberty Towers scalloping their way up and up and up — but she was already rising to wait in the aisle. The exit lay to the rear, and so she had to face me. I could see the pad of flesh that was developing under her chin. She leaned against her seat and teetered gently with the swaying of the car. Critics are unanimous! the back of her book said. The mailer was almost hidden between the book and her cushiony bosom.
I put on my jacket, but I didn’t stand up yet. I waited till the train had come to a stop and she had passed me. Then I swung out into the aisle lickety-split, cutting in front of a fat guy with a briefcase. I followed Sophia so closely, I could smell the dusty smell of her coat. It was velvet, or something like velvet. Velvet always smells dusty, even when it’s fresh from the cleaners.
There was the usual scuffle with that automatic door that likes to squash the passengers — Press the button, dummies! — and the usual milling and nudging in the vestibule, and then we stepped out into a rush of other people. It was obvious that Sophia knew where she was going. She didn’t so much as glance around her but walked fast, coming down hard on her heels. Her heels were the short, chunky kind, but they made her as tall as I was. I had noticed that while we were standing on the train. Now she was slightly taller, because we’d started up the stairs and she was a step above me.