Making a clear mental note of the kind of man that she wanted, she opened her suitcase and removed a thick dressing gown. Zipping it up, she turned to the door of the compartment, pulled back the bolt and rang for the night porter to make up the bed.
As she waited, Sandi fantasized that perhaps in the town of San Mateo, filled with writers and artists, she could find one man who would fill all her needs, or at the very least most of them.
Jerked back to reality by the incessant knocking at the door, Sandi turned and pulled it open to admit the middle-aged porter in the crispy white jacket. As the man went about his duties of pulling open the bed, which during the daytime served as the long seat along one side of the compartment, and turning down the blankets and starched, white sheets, Sandi went on with her private thoughts.
When he had finished, he muttered something in Spanish, which, of course, Sandi did not understand, and hurried out of the room to take care of other travelers who were also getting ready for bed.
Snapping on the reading light next to her bed, Sandi shrugged her way out of the thick robe. She always slept naked, and wearily, but with a relaxed attitude, climbed between the sheets. She opened a book she was trying to finish, and idly let her hand trail over the side of the bed to stroke Eric's massive head. He was still curled up in the middle of the floor, and he yawned and stretched when she touched him.
Not really seeing the words on the printed page, Sandi created a picture of the man she would meet in San Mateo, or possibly even sooner, on the train perhaps. She made a mental note to take a walk through the first-class cars just to see with whom she was traveling. In particular, she wanted to get a look at that wild bunch next door who had triggered her off this evening.
With these things firmly in her mind, Sandi reached up, switched off the little light, gave Eric a final good-night pat on the head, and rolled over on her side, pulling up the covers around her shoulders.
Outside, on the other side of the drawn curtain to Sandi's compartment, the train moved by a dimly lit village. Only one person saw the passage of the train, and he looked with distaste at the flashing coaches and then pulled up his tattered blanket and shifted his back against the bricks of the station building and closed his eyes. Trains were for the rich; feet for the poor.
CHAPTER FOUR
Flipping open the green-lined, yellow leaves of his legal pad, Jim Hayes stared down at the blank page in front of him and tried to clear the alcoholic haze from his mind. The blunt tip of his soft-leaded, brown copy pencil was poised over the straight lines of the pad, but his hand refused to move.
His head rolled from side to side as the train jostled itself around a corner and then clacked its way down the long ribbon of steel track. Crap, he thought, why fight it? His head was a muddled mass of screaming nerve ends, all hammering against each other. He had spent most of last night in the club car drinking, trying to convince himself that the wild escapade he had embarked upon was the right one. He had staggered back to his compartment confirmed in his belief and had flopped into the narrow bed happily believing that he was about to become one of America's up and coming novelists.
At this moment, however, that conviction did not seem too realistic. Slamming closed the lined tablet with a look of disgust, Jim Hayes rose from his seat, and walked into the small bathroom, fished around in his pocket until he found the paper envelope containing his aspirin, and after opening the small paper rectangle, popped one in his mouth and washed it down with a glass of water. "Probably get turista, or some other unique Mexican disease," he said to the reflection which stared back at him from the mirror on the wall.
Shrugging his shoulders, Hayes pushed his way out of the bathroom, closing the door so that he could open the door of his compartment and step into the companionway. He had to think, and the confining space of his compartment was not what he needed to set his head on straight.
Looking out through the wide window of the companionway, Jim Hayes reflected on the circumstances that had led up to his trip to San Mateo. He clicked them off in his mind: college degree in literature, a marriage that didn't work, a job on the only daily paper in the state capitol of his home state, and a damn good story written, one that had promised to further his journalistic career. Bastards! he shouted in his mind.
He had been a good reporter, doing his job well and working steadily toward a spot on a bigger paper, but he wanted to prove to himself that he really had it. Then it happened. A once in a lifetime opportunity. He had followed one obscure lead, something that all the other reporters had passed over in covering a State Land Commission meeting. After weeks of digging, Jim had learned that one of the commission members was taking graft under the table for favorable votes on land decisions. He had written his story, fully documented, and presented it to his editor. He had expected that the shit would hit the fan and it did, right around his head. He was called to the publisher's office, thanked for doing a good job, and then told that since many of the men named in his story were large advertisers in the paper, that the story would not be printed.
Jim Hayes had taken his lumps, but resolved that as soon as he could make the, break he would leave the paper and strike out on his own, and write the novel that he had always wanted to write. After a great deal of thought and soul searching, he had decided to travel to San Mateo in Mexico, a writers' and artists' colony. Here the living was cheap and the atmosphere conducive to creative ventures.
Thinking about his past, Jim Hayes realized that he hadn't really experienced life enough to write effectively about it. That was the answer he sought in San Mateo: the experiences of life. He wanted to do and see everything. The sky was the limit. His purpose now reaffirmed, Jim pushed away from the window against which he had been leaning.
"Ouch! 'Hey, man, watch where the hell you're going!" The voice was young.
Jim whirled around, stumbling to the side to get his weight off the foot he had inadvertently stepped upon. "Sorry," he mumbled as he regained his balance. "Wasn't thinking about what I was doing."
"You can say that again! You looked really spaced," the girl in front of him said as she lifted her booted foot and rubbed her toe.
Christ! What a good-looking broad, Jim thought as he let his eyes roam freely over Suzanne Olsen's full and youthful figure. His gaze was hungry and he made no bones about undressing her with his eyes. "Does it hurt very much?" he asked lamely when he saw that she was looking at his frank stare.
"My foot's felt better," Suzanne replied with just a trace of sarcasm in her voice. Being uninhibited, she looked over his strong frame with the same honesty with which he had looked at her body hidden under its layer of clothing.
Searching for something to keep the conversation going and stay in contact with the girl in front of him, Jim asked hopefully, "Could I buy you a drink in the club car? Maybe that would help your foot."
"I don't drink," she said honestly, "It's a bummer."
His mind raced and then he blurted, "Then come on into my compartment and sit down for awhile. That'll take the weight off your foot."
Suzanne looked at him frankly, her clear eyes trying to size up the invitation. He was a good-looking guy, a little old maybe, but then he should be interesting to talk to if he's been around a lot. Putting together the possibilities in her head, she decided that she had nothing to lose. "Okay."