Free Friends by Stephen Dixon Page A

You laugh, but if you want to sleep all you have to do is draw the curtain, put your legs up on the leg rest and conk out. In the morning the curtains are only useful against the sun if you sit on the left side of the train going south. Which side would that be? I should know. I’m the engineer. The left side would be, well—heading south—let’s see. My left hand. I’m going south.” He holds out his left hand, faces the direction the train’s coming from. “South,” he says. “I’m going south. It would have to be east, of course, the left side, wouldn’t it?”
    â€œI think so.”
    â€œI don’t know why it’s suddenly so confusing. But we’ll say east. I must have a block about it. It has to be east, that’s right. All that water from the Susquehanna and Chesapeake we pass pouring into the inlet. The tankers docked in Wilmington. And God help me, the sun rises there also. So the curtains are only useful on the east side in the morning, but I usually sit—”
    â€œThere’s the train.”
    â€œGreat,” and he picks up his valise. I hold my bag and briefcase. The train stops. Lots of people are around us now. We stand to the side of the door as the conductor and passengers come out.
    â€œWhich one’s the nonsmoking?” I ask the conductor.
    â€œRear car and one to your left.”
    I go to the door on my left. The man’s right behind me. I go in and he says “I smoke, but don’t have to—I’ve in fact been warned not to, so if you want to continue our conversation?”
    â€œI have to go much farther—something about the backs of trains.”
    â€œYou can’t go too much farther and you’re not that far back. Next one’s probably a smoking car and then the clubcar and after that the dining car they won’t let you into till about eight.”
    â€œI’ll try. Nice talking to you.” I walk through the car, turn around at the end of it and see him putting his valise on the luggage rack. He sees me and points to the seats under the rack. I shake my head, point to the next car and tap the door-opening device.
    I don’t want to sit in the smoking car so I go into the club car. There don’t seem to be too many smokers at the tables. I get a beer from the service bar, sit at an empty table, give the trainman my ticket and get back a seat check.
    â€œMr. Taub,” a young man says. I look up. I don’t recognize him. Dark sunglasses, bangs almost over his eyes.
    â€œEd Shekian. I was in Ida’s class last term.”
    â€œIda?” I’m sitting and he’s standing.
    â€œIda Rulowitz. She invited you to speak to us because you’re the expert in I don’t know what. Robert Frost, I think.”
    â€œWallace Stevens?”
    â€œThat’s right, Stevens, Pound and Eliot. You said you knew more about Stevens’ work than Pound or Eliot, but that you maybe knew enough of their work for our class. It was an introduction to contemporary lit. Well, I saw you running up the aisle past me before and I thought ‘Whew, Mr. Taub, there he goes, I got to get him,’ so I just dumped my stuff on a seat and ran after you. You remember Ida. How is she, you know?”
    â€œOh sure, Ida. She had an awful accident.”
    â€œA woman on a motorcycle with about ten hours experience on it and on a major highway and without a crash helmet no less. That is just stupid, as smart a teacher and nice a person as she is.”
    â€œYeah, god, awful. Someone told me about her only last week. I didn’t know. The school’s so big. She was supposedto be getting out of intensive care this week, this person said.”
    â€œI knew that. I thought you might’ve known more. I wanted to visit her but they said not yet. Her boyfriend did. Look, excuse me for presenting this to you like this, but remember you said you’d do a radio