“But you’re taller than five six.”
“The women have to be five six. The men can be any height at all if they work behind the scenes. That’s what I did. Mostly I talked people into throwing softballs at a stack of bottles. I was a barker.”
“I don’t believe a thing you say.”
“And a lion bit me once. You probably won’t believe that, either. Right on the thigh. Right in the meaty part of the thigh. I was asleep and suddenly there she was, a female named Sugar. She was known to have a bad character, but I never had a problem with Sugar. She looked at me as she bit down as if to say she was sorry, but it was her nature, after all. I was just a midnight snack.”
“You are so full of it, but I could almost listen to you for a while.”
He shrugged and sipped his latte. We stood between the two cars, facing each other, our backs against the walls on each side. The track seemed to fly underneath us. You could smell things obscurely—hayfields, and cinders, rain maybe, an electric scent that came from a motor—but mostly it dissolved into simple movement.
“I’ve often wondered why Sugar let go. It haunts me, really.”
“Maybe you taste bad. Was this in Vermont?”
“It was in Istanbul. It’s a long story. I’m sorry. I get nervous, and then I talk too much. Or try too hard. That’s what I did with you earlier. A fatal flaw, I guess.”
“I wouldn’t call it a fatal flaw. Just a flaw.”
“I was hoping you would find me Byronic.”
“I think if you need to hope someone finds you Byronic, then you aren’t Byronic. Ipso facto.”
He looked at me and sipped his coffee. The coffee wasn’t very good.
“Ipso facto?” he asked. “Latin for ‘pretentious’?”
“By that very fact. The enemy of my enemy is ipso facto my friend.”
“You are such an A student, aren’t you?”
“And the problem with that is…?”
“Just that you’re an apple polisher. That’s why you have a Smythson calendar. What’s the worst grade you ever got? Outside of gym class, I mean.”
“You think I wouldn’t get an A in gym?”
“I think you were probably picked right away in dodgeball, then everyone on the other team tried to peg you in the head because you are such an A student. Ipso facto.”
“Did you always know everything about everyone instantly? Or is it just about me?”
“Oh, I know you. You’re the class-president type. The hang-the-crepe-paper-at-the-big-dance type. The girl on the ladder. The girl with tape.”
“And you’re the slacker cool boy lurking around in his own myth.”
“I like that phrase. ‘Lurking around in his own myth.’ See? You have potential.”
“Oh, thank goodness. I’d shrivel without your approval.”
He looked at me and smiled over his coffee.
“What’s your flaw,” he asked, “fatal or otherwise?”
“Why should I tell you?”
“Because we’re on a train going to Amsterdam, and we have to talk about something. And you’re wildly attracted to me, so it’s a way of flirting that you secretly desire but are reluctant to admit.”
“You don’t suffer from a lack of confidence, do you?”
“I assume because I am attracted to you, you are probably attracted to me. Plus, when our eyes meet, they lock. Do you know what I mean? You know what I mean, Heather of the North Woods.”
I shook my head. He was correct about everything. The fact that he knew he was right about everything made me nervous.
“Your flaw, remember?” he asked. “I’ll keep asking. That’s another flaw. I am sometimes overly persistent.”
“My flaw is hard to put into words.”
“Try me.”
I took a deep breath, wondering why we are sometimes willing to tell secrets to strangers on trains that we would never tell to anyone else. I went ahead, anyway.
“Whenever I look up at a plane, I always hope it falls out of the sky. Right then. I don’t know if I really want it to, or just have a perverse impulse, but it’s what I hope. I have a fantasy of running out into a meadow and finding a downed plane and saving people.”
“That’s not a flaw. That’s a psychosis. You need help. You need extensive psychological assistance.”
I took a sip of coffee. The train clattered loudly over some sort of trestle.
“And when a bride comes down the aisle,” I continued, “I always want her to trip. My mother won’t let me sit on the aisle if I’m at a wedding for fear I’ll stick my foot out.”
“Have you ever done it?”
I shook my head.
“Not yet, but I will. It can be any formal occasion, actually. Anything that has everyone all dressed up. I’m always rooting for a food fight, or someone to face-plant into a cake. I can’t help it. The world always seems right on the edge of becoming a bad frat party.”
“You’re an anarchist, that’s why. You’ll probably be a perfect citizen until you’re around forty, then you’ll join some sort of fringe army and stride about in a uniform with a machete hanging around your neck. Are you drawn to machetes?”
“More than you know.”
“South America, then.”
“Oh, not a sweeping generalization there, I guess. Everyone in South America has a machete?”
“Of course they do. Didn’t you know?”
“What weapon attracts you?”
“Hedge clippers.”
“Hedge clippers, huh? Why’s that?”
“I just think they’re underappreciated.”
“You linger right on the edge of annoying, you know? Sometimes you save yourself and you don’t even know it.”
“Some people call that dashing. Or swashbuckling. It depends.”
Jack sipped his coffee and looked over the rim of the cup. Part of me wanted to kiss him, and part of me wanted to chuck my coffee in his self-satisfied face. But nothing about Jack struck me as neutral, and that was a first.
“How old are you, anyway?” I asked. “You should have a job. You should be working.”
“How old do you think I am?”
“Ten.”
He looked at me.
“I’m twenty-seven,” he said. “How old are you?”
“A gentleman never asks a woman’s age.”
“You think I’m a gentleman?”
“I think you are very far from swashbuckling.”
“You’re not answering.”
“Twenty-two,” I said. “Soon to be twenty-three.”
“Were you kept back a grade?”
“No!”
“You probably were and your parents didn’t tell you. It happens, you know.”
“I was a good student. You said so yourself.”
“You were a good student because your parents kept you back a year and you had the benefit of a year’s maturity on your classmates. I’ve met your type before. It’s really terribly unfair. You had an advantage all through your school years.”
“And you sat at the back of the class, didn’t you? And pretended to sketch or be the misunderstood poet. It’s such a cliché that it makes my molars hurt.”