If I were to become a vagabond, where would I start, and where would I end? I felt the end was self-explanatory. In fact, I’m at the end right now, I’m just waiting for you to catch up.
I suppose it’s best to tell you about my dilemma. The way things work out sometimes can be unfairly cruel. I don’t mean the fact that I’m dying; that’s life, and in the end death comes for us all. Cruelty comes when something good happens, something great… but at the worst of times.
The good yet cruel part of my life started on a train ride heading north. Why I was on that train is still a mystery, even to me. But if I had to guess I’d say I simply wanted to take a ride. You can learn a lot from watching people. When they’re stuck in the grind of a nine to five, they step aboard the train gripping their grande coffees or complex lattes, ordered with the robotic phonetics of a teleprompter. “I’ll take a quad grande, non-fat, triple-pump, two stevia, cinnamon, dolce, soy, upside-down, half caramel macchiato, half peppermint latte heated to 160 degrees… with the caffeine on the side please.” Sometimes I think those baristas deserve a purple heart for not murdering the whole line their pretentious patrons.
The wheels screamed on the train as we took off from the Croton-Harmon station. Men and women in business attire boarded beforehand, off to their jobs, spending time to make their money. Time had become something more to me as I sat there and stared at them. It became a currency, far more valuable than the U.S dollar. Our universe revolves around time. It dictates our lives, shows us our weaknesses, our fears, and let’s us know that nothing is forever, because even nothing has an end to it. No one knows the meaning of life, but I believe it has to do with the currency of time, and more so, it has to do with how you spend it.
When I met James, it was as much of an innocuous encounter as any I’d ever had, at least at first. Of course, I noticed him the moment he stepped onto the train. He held boyish good looks, camouflaged behind the graying beard of a man. And he was tall, not too tall, but a lengthy six foot one. He did carried what looked like a laptop bag, beaten and torn. It’s old, brown leather faded into a rough suede as if it was changing itself into an antique.
He plopped down in the seat directly next to me with force, causing me to bounce. I noticed his eyes when he looked over at me: bright blue with metallic specs peppered in. They reminded me of a snow globe.
He didn’t say anything; his smile said enough.
His flannel sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, presenting what I’m sure his mind saw as the artwork of the century. Tattoos finished his sleeves where the shirt left off. I stared at his left arm, mesmerized at his colorful depiction of the galaxy.
I could feel him staring at me as I stared at his tattoos. He turned his arm over so I could see the rest. There was a gaping whole under his forearm, where that tattoo looked like it tore through his skin. The Earth was on fire, and words flew out through the galaxy stating: Nothing is Forever.
“That’s weird,” I said, speaking the truth as time now dictated I should.
“Is it?” he said. “I think more than anything, it’s true.”
“Of course it’s true. I’m saying it’s weird because I was just thinking the same thing, watching all these people file onto the train to live lives they’d rather not, and let their diminishing time wither away.”
His half-cocked smile turned full.
“Poetic,” he laughed. “But a little grim, no?”
“Grim? This coming from a man with the apocalypse drawn on his arm?”
“Touché,” he laughed again; it was a nice laugh. “Still, grim nonetheless. I think it’s asinine to assume that they’re all withering away.”
He saw my face when he used the word asinine, and knew I wasn’t pleased with it. “I mean, no offense, but still these people have lives you don’t know about. Like take that guy for example…”
He pointed over to a plump man feverishly reading the stock exchange. You could see a film of sweat glistening off his face; his glasses kept slipping down the bridge of his nose.
“Now, there’s a man who lives for what he does. I can imagine numbers being his life. He’ll wake up counting the seconds it takes to brush his teeth, take a shit, take a shower, and a shave; preferably in that order, not to waste another second before he gets to work and sweats over the rise and fall of stocks that you and I could never comprehend. But for him, it’s life. It’s what gets his blood flowing down low.”
I bursted out laughing, and the plump man in the glasses jolted, looking up at us, and flustered to see us laughing at him. We looked away quickly, hiding our giggles.
“You know, you’re awfully candid speaking to a woman you just met.”
“Well, like you were saying, time is of an essence, and putting on a mask to meet you would just be a waste of time.”
God damnit.
The flushed feeling rushed to my loins. Where was this guy ten-years ago? Of course, seemingly the man of my dreams comes forth at the stage in my life that’s the encore.
“My name’s James.”
“Hi James. Just James? Not Jim, Jimmy, or Jimbo?”
“Nope, just plain James, short for Jameson.”
“Of course it is.”
Jameson, I thought to myself, the name of a rugged irishman, in a movie where the naive american girl falls in love with him. That, or the gut-wrenching whiskey I never could stomach.
“So, do you have a name? Or should I just refer to you as the girl on the train?”
“I do have a name actually, but at the sake of being candid, this isn’t going to work.”
“What isn’t?”
“This…,” I said with a smile. “Us.”
“Us? There’s no us yet, we literally just met.”
“Yeah but I’m not stupid and I can tell you’re not either. We’ve already hit all the social markers of attraction in the first five minutes of meeting each other, and we’re doing it easily. So I’d just want to be honest with you before it goes too far. You’re behind the eight ball already; it’s not gonna work out for us.”
He must’ve thought I was joking from the grin on his face.
“You’re right,” he said, “you’re not stupid. And maybe everything you said is true, but still, all I would like to know is a beautiful woman’s name.”
I loved how he called me a woman instead of a girl.
“Look James, I’m dying.”
The train continued on ahead and plummeted into a tunnel. Everything went in flashes of dark as the lights flickered on and off. I could still see his multicolored eyes piercing through mine, like little beads of brilliant light, twinkling in the pitch black.
“Dying? Like how we all are, or dying like you’re sick?” The compassion in his raspy voice drove me mad.
“I might have a year left, maybe more… probably less.”
“Hmm, so, what’s your name?”
“That’s it? ‘Hmm’?”
Now I was mildly offended. I expected more of a reaction than Hmm. Not to be self-indulgent or looking for sympathy, I felt I was over such things, but I had told this man I was dying, normal social cues would call for a gasp, an awe, an anything more than a Hmm.
“Look, I’m not gonna pretend to know you, to council you if that’s what you’re looking for. Like I said, we’ve only just met. But something tells me that’s not what you want at all. You told me this because you don’t want the pain along with the death. And I guess when you see me, you see pain coming?”
I could only stare at him. His mannerisms and general attitude were far too alien when compared to anyone else I had ever known. I nodded my head in agreement.
“So, please, I just want to know your name.”
God dammnit.
“Olivia.” I smiled.
Before I could react, he calmly reached for my hand, grabbed it, shook it, and then planted a gentle peck on the back of my palm.
“Hello, Liv. It’s nice to meet you. I like your jacket.”
Amazing, isn’t it? I’ve lived a whole life loveless—as far as a genuine lover goes—and there I was completely enthralled with a man I aimlessly met on a train, but with the cruel and untimely fingers of death tapping on my shoulder.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to leave you with the impression that I was some sort of virgin in my thirties. I’ve had my fair share of boyfriends and flings, all of whom vastly lived up to their credo of less than potential. It was in that man next to me that I saw a life unfold like never before. The thought of a husband and a child were thoughts I avoided with the intention of furthering my career. A family is something to come later, I’d tell myself, and now sigh at the concept of later.
I’m better off, I supposed. To be dying alone is far less tragic than to leave a family behind.
Regardless of that, It was 8:30 in the morning, and I was drunk off lust. The train exploded out of the tunnel and sunlight engulfed the world again. After his subtle but intentional peck on my hand, something came over me that never had before, I tilted my face towards his, and with far less subtlety than his kiss, I lunged forward and smothered his lips with mine.
He was caught off guard. At first, it felt like he recoiled, but once he let it happen we went at it like savages. Spit flew, tongues danced, saliva mingled, and groans were had by all the passengers who saw. We were the paragon of teenage sexuality, making out on the couch of a house party.
When we were done, we pulled away from each other with the smiles of drunkards. The conductor announced the next stop, an in the middle of nowhere town that I can’t recall. I wiped my mouth and stood up to walk away.
“You’re getting off here?” he asked, wildly confused.
“Yep, this is my stop.”
He looked out the window and saw the wooded terrain. Toppled telephone poles and grandiose rocks stood outside in an ill regard. He shrugged his shoulders and sighed, then handed me his card with his name and number. It read: James Harlboro, Photographer, followed by his number.
“In case we’re to meet in the next life, it’s better you have my number.”
I took the card, smiled and placed it in the inner pocket of my jacket.
“Until then,” I said, and gave him one last kiss, a sweet one with no tongues and flying spit. I turned and walked away. I remember thinking—down that long walk of a train aisle—that James was a man my dad would’ve liked. I pictured them sitting with each other on the couch talking sports and politics, laughing, arguing, as mom and I prepared dinner in the kitchen, and I listened to her as she whispered her praise of him. I thought about the kind of children James and I would’ve had: a crossbreed between him and I. A beautiful child, who hopefully carried his eyes and was bestowed with my head of hair.
I thought about an impossible future, and then forced myself to forget it entirely.
I exited the train at that stop in the middle of nowhere. I figured the middle of nowhere was as good of a place to start as any.