“This is expired,” he says, and glares at me through the glittering lenses of his spectacles. “You should have renewed it this morning.”
“Oh,” I say, and my hands fly automatically to my cheeks, “I completely forgot.”
“Nothing to worry about,” says Cora good-naturedly. “It happens to all of us. You’ll take care of it tomorrow.”
“Then you’ll need a round-trip ticket today,” says the conductor.
“What do you mean, a round-trip ticket?” asks Cora suspiciously.
“For today,” he says again. He’s irritated; this is taking too long. Cora stares at him, speechless. I flush with the realization that I have no money on me.
“You’re funny,” Cora laughs. “I haven’t heard that one before.”
With furrowed brow and unpleasantly tight lips, he looks her up and down. He seems to want to will her away, to wish he was looking at something else — his girlfriend, perhaps, who always has her ticket with her, who at this hour of the morning is still in her frilly pink bed, dreaming of him and of the everything-first-class trips they’ll someday take at someone else’s expense.
“We’ve been riding this route for years,” cries Cora, insulted. “The railroad’s made a fortune off of us, but you can’t excuse one honest mistake?”
The conductor pulls out his ticket book and begins to scribble.
Cora turns red. “What’s your problem? We were riding this train before you were born!”
He ignores her and tears a ticket from his pad. As he offers it to me, Cora’s pudgy hand snatches it from his fingers.
“Jesus!” She leans towards Trix. “Look at this: The bastard’s charging her a fine.”
And then, as I sit there like a fool with my empty wallet open in my hand, Cora gives him a withering look and takes action in the same cool and detached way a queen of the olden days whose patience had reached its limit would turn away from an accused subject and wave an imperious hand at her bailiff and order, “Lock him up!” or, “Off with his head!” and then instantly forget all about it and move on to other matters.
She stands up brusquely and — the yellow buttons on her purple dress jiggling with every movement — she gets right in his face and snatches his eyeglasses from his nose.
“No,” she says.
As if his very soul has been stolen from him, the conductor blinks helplessly and chews on his lower lip.
“Give those back,” he says hoarsely, and grabs for them, but Cora holds them high above her head and out of his reach. “Give me my glasses!”
Cora laughs at him, her sweetest laugh, little stars twinkling in her eyes.
Mama, mama, the bear is loose, I think. A strange and delectable excitement courses through me. I feel like something irreversible has been set in motion, and none of us will ever be the same again.
“You’ll get your glasses back when you rip up that ticket,” says Cora. “Not till then.”
He stares at her, confused by the sudden shift in power. He holds tightly to the leather pouch around his waist with one hand and to his cap with the other, as if to reassure himself of his position.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he says sternly.
“Fine, then.” With a deep sigh, Cora hands the glasses to Trix, who is sitting in the corner by the window. As if they’ve talked it over at length and agreed how to play out the scene, Trix does exactly what Cora must want her to do: She opens the window and thrusts the eyeglasses outside into the misty air, her graceful posture emphasizing the soft curve of her waist and hip. With her lovely smile, she looks just like the women in the ads, leaning seductively against the hood of a Mercedes to lure businessmen into buying it.
“Don’t!” cries the conductor, panicked. “Give them back!”
“I’ve told you what we’re willing to trade for them,” Cora says calmly, as if she’s refusing to haggle with a merchant at the market.
Cornered, he looks around the compartment furiously and then fearfully at the window, where the expensive lenses precisely suited to the weakness of his eyes are in danger of being dropped and shattered.
“I’m going to report you at the next station,” he cries.
“Hear that, girls? He’s going to report us!”
With an ease as if she’s merely lifting it from a hat stand, Cora plucks the cap from his head and sets it jauntily atop her own dyed black hair. She turns her head and laughs at us over her shoulder. Without his cap, the conductor seems weak, fragile, his silken blond curls at the nape of his neck.
“You know you have beautiful blue eyes?” asks Cora.
He swallows with difficulty, as if he’s got a plum pit stuck in his throat, and grabs clumsily for his cap, but Cora is faster than he is and hands it off to Lien. “Don’t you think he has beautiful blue eyes?” One by one, we line up beside her and gaze at him with the same fanatical admiration we would give to a James Dean film, which makes him even more nervous. He obviously can’t stand the hysteria of women who would swarm past the security guards and bodyguards onto the stage to touch an Elvis Presley; he feels solidarity not with Elvis but with the rent-a-cops, the men in the caps and uniforms.
“Now give me your little pouch,” says Cora. He stares at her, astounded. No one has ever dared talk to him like this. Speechless, he shakes his head.
“Come on,” says Cora. “Otherwise, you know what’ll happen to your glasses.”
With supple movements of her wrist, Trix sways the spectacles back and forth in the mist.
Something has erupted in Cora, a power that is stronger than any possible opposition, like a river in monsoon season swelling beyond its banks and ripping trees out of the ground and washing them out to sea.
“Let’s go, sonny, give mamma your toy.”
Beaten, he unhooks the pouch from around his waist. Without even glancing at it, Cora passes it over to Lien, who stashes it in the corner behind her worn shopping bag, her knitting needles sticking up like the antennas on a portable radio.
“So,” says Cora, “have you changed your mind?”
They face each other expectantly, Cora a full head taller than he is. How did she get so tall, I think, and so strong?
At that moment, it seems that a peace treaty is in the offing, as if his next words will be: “You’re right, what am I so worried about? It doesn’t make any difference to me. Let’s just forget the whole thing.”
But suddenly he shoves Cora out of his way and lunges towards Trix, falling onto her with his full weight. His attention is riveted to his eyeglasses — his hands scrabble for them, and it’s a wonder that Trix doesn’t drop them out of pure shock.
Just for an instant, Cora seems to have been taken out of the game: She stands there, dazed, like a fat woman who’s lost her little dog. Oh my, he was just here a second ago!
But then she throws herself onto Trix’s attacker, grabs the collar of his conductor’s jacket, and yanks him off her. His eyes bug out and he growls, thirsty for blood. He’s like a dog, pulled off his worst enemy in the heat of the battle.
Trix brushes strands of hair off her face and smoothes her dress. She doesn’t seem the least bit disturbed. No, she’s like a young girl after making whoopee with her boyfriend, crawling out of the bushes with a flushed face and a sparkle in her eyes.
Outside the window, a UFO flies by: Lien has thrown the conductor’s cap from the compartment like a Frisbee.
His legs trapped, his arms flailing, the young man tries to free himself. Cora grabs his wrists and forces them behind his back.
“Get his legs,” she hisses. Trix and Lien each fasten onto a leg and force it down. My heart pounds in my throat. I have no experience of violence. At home, our disagreements are cool and dispassionate — our wars are always civil.