The Map That Leads to You

by J. P. Monninger

  “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.”

  “What did I wear?”

  “Oh, where to begin? Jeans, of course. T-shirt with place names on them … no, no, I’m getting a tool vibe. John Deere T-shirts, maybe, or like Ace Hardware. Something utilitarian or proletariat. And you wore your hair long, like you do now, only probably you deliberately pulled a front lock down across your forehead because, well, because you were just so darn caught up in your deep poet-y thoughts. Right? So you were the common-man guy, farmer boy, with a deep soul. Did you come in a kit? Or were you already assembled?”

  “No assembly required.”

  “And grade-wise you rode the B train. Maybe B-. Good work, but not serious, missed a few assignments, could have done better, but you were reading and the teachers were okay with that. Girlfriend? Hmmm. That’s a tough one. Probably a girl who raised sheep. Or goats—goats are better. She smelled of perfume and farm manure, but she, too, miraculously, loved to read and adored poetry. Kind of a Sharon Olds type.”

  “You nailed it. You’re scalding my soul with your insight.”

  “She was probably named after a plant … or a season. Summer. Or maybe Hazel or Olive. Or maybe June Bug.”

  We didn’t talk for a while. I wondered if I had gone too far. Then our eyes met again. The train rocked, and he lifted his cup and drained it to the bottom. It was possible we were heading toward a kiss. A serious kiss. I liked him way too much, I realized. Then a guy came out and lit a cigarette, which was entirely against the law, but he did it, anyway. He said something to us in English, but I couldn’t hear him over the train noises. He looked like a bicyclist, all wire legs and a baseball hat with an abbreviated brim. I couldn’t quite figure him out.

  Then two more of his buddies came out wearing about the same thing, so it was some sort of team or tour group, I supposed, and Jack looked at me. Our eyes went down each other’s tunnel a long way. He smiled, and it was a good smile, but also wan. It meant that this moment on the platform had finished, that we had caught it while it existed, then it disappeared. Something like that.

  “Ready?” he asked, nodding his chin toward our car.

  I nodded. And that was it.

  6

  Amy came back without Victor when we were a half hour outside of Amsterdam. Jack had gone down to the dining car.

  “Where’s Count Chocula?” I asked.

  “OMG,” she said and slid in beside me.

  “Has Poland been conquered?”

  “Let’s just say the nations of Europe have once again given of their bounty.”

  “You’re such a tart.”

  “Embrace the inner slut, Heather.”

  She did a little wiggle dance and sang something ridiculous. Her singing woke Constance. Constance sat up quickly and looked around, evidently unsure of her surroundings. A line from her U-shaped travel pillow ran down her cheek. When she saw she was on a train, and that Amy was wiggling next to her, she groaned and put her head down on her knees.

  “Not another,” she said, groggy.

  “Count Chocula has some game,” Amy said. “He’s really quite adorable.”

  “You’re hooking up with Dr
acula?” Constance asked, slowly rubbing her face clear of sleep. “Does anyone have any water?”

  “Here,” Amy said, reaching into her backpack at her feet and liberating a bottle of water. “Is anyone else starving?”

  “Cheese and apples,” I said, because I was more or less the quartermaster on this trip. I always had food. Sometimes, as I told Jack, I was a little too organized, a genetic hand-me-down from the Mom-a-saurus.

  “Can you get to them easily?”

  I dug around in my backpack. Amy pulled out a pear-shaped cutting board we had bought after a week. It fit in a backpack and made a decent impromptu table. We all took out Swiss Army knives while I laid out apples, a block of French cheddar, two stalks of celery, and peanut butter. I had to dig a little deeper to find a baguette I had broken in half to fit in my backpack. I put it beside the apples.

  “How long did I sleep?” Constance asked. She smeared peanut butter on a slice of apple and chomped it down.

  “Three, four hours, maybe,” I said.

  “What did I miss? Who is Count Chocula exactly?”

  “The Polish guy who was sitting behind us,” Amy said. “Victor was his name. His last named sounded like a sneeze. He invited us to a party in Amsterdam, by the way. I took down the address.”

  “Where is he, anyway?” I asked, arching up and looking over the back of the seat. “Did you sex him to death?”

  “It was a fair fight,” Amy said.

  “I have to see this guy,” Constance said. “I didn’t notice him when we sat down.”

  I ate a bite or two of bread. Then I sliced cheese and ate that with more bread. Amy divided another apple into three sections. I ate that, too. For a minute or so, we ate without talking, and I felt happy. I looked at Constance, her face serious and concentrated, her blond hair beautiful in the dull light of the train compartment. She was the prettiest of us all and the least interested in guys. She was bookish, but not in the Hemmy sort of way. She liked research, imagined the saints as an extended family she could visit when everyday life became too dull, and she was the one we turned to when we needed the name of a figure in a picture or statue. She ate daintily, cutting things precisely and fitting them together in neat packages, while Amy, dark and slightly more abundant, slathered peanut butter wherever it landed and ate with a gusto that reflected her general approach to life. I had known them since first-year orientation at Amherst, had visited their homes, had seen them cry over boyfriends, get drunk, get As, get carded at bars, watched them dance until their legs dropped off, saw Amy play lacrosse like a demon woman, watched Constance cross campus on her sky-blue Schwinn, her books neatly organized in a front basket, her slightly myopic gaze finding the beauty in the campus oaks and the arches of the buildings. Seeing them in the soft, stuttering train light, watching them eat and smile and keep good company with each other, I felt enormous affection for them.

  “I love you guys,” I said because I felt it keenly in that moment. “And I want to thank you for doing this trip together, for everything. I don’t want us to ever lose track of one another. Do you all promise?”

  “What brought this on?” Amy asked, her mouth full.

  Constance nodded at me and reached over and took my hand. Amy made a little shrug, then put her hand on top of ours. The Musketeers. We had been doing the Musketeer hand stack since a drunken night in our first year outside the Lord Jeffery Inn when we realized we were pals, true pals.

  “One for all and all for one,” we said, which was our secret code. “Un pour tous, et tous pour un.” As we finished, the train began slowing for Amsterdam.

  7

  “Do you know where you’re staying?” Jack asked.

  We stood in the aisle, waiting for the train to empty. Amy and Constance were halfway down the car already, but a man two people in front of Jack had trouble getting a bag off the baggage rack. My neck already glowed just standing next to Jack.

  “We have reservations in a hostel,” I said. “It’s called Cocomama. I liked the name.”

  “Do you make all the travel arrangements?”

  “Not all. I just like things orderly.”

  “Said the girl with the Smythson appointment book.”

  I shrugged. He wasn’t wrong.

  “We might go to a party that Amy found out about from this guy Victor. It’s supposed to be right in central Amsterdam someplace, overlooking a canal.”

  “My friend Raef, he’s Australian, but he knows people here. He knows people everywhere. I count myself as pretty well traveled, but Raef, he’s like Marco Polo or something. You’ll like him. He’s a sheepherder most of the year in the outback, and he saves up all his money, then travels. If you tell me where the party is, maybe we’ll show up. I’d like to see you again.”

  “He sounds colorful. I don’t know where the party is off the top of my head, the address, but Amy has it written down. I can ask her when we get off the train.”

  We didn’t say anything for a moment. Finally, the man in front of Jack managed to swing the bag down off the baggage rack. People behind us clapped. Amy and Constance had already disappeared onto the train platform.

  “Look,” Jack said, his voice deep and pleasant and soft enough so only I could hear it. “Here’s what I think we should do. If we get off the train and it has a lot of fog coming out from underneath, you know, like an old movie, then we should have our first kiss right there. We’ve both been wanting to kiss, so we shouldn’t miss it.”

  I had to smile. I kept my eyes away from him and slowly crept forward as people began to move. My neck was beyond red.

  “We should, should we?” I asked. “And you think I want to kiss you? Is that your best try?”

  “Come on. It will be a story to tell our grandchildren. And if it doesn’t work, if we don’t meet at the party tonight, then what did we lose? Just a kiss.”

  “How big a kiss does it have to be?”

  “Oh, we have to make it memorable.”

  “You’re not without charm, as hard as that is for me to admit.”

  “I didn’t mean to kid you about Hemingway. Earlier, I mean,” he said, his voice dropping and becoming sincerer. “I think it’s important to read Hemingway in Europe. I do. I like that you read him, and I like that you find his sadness interesting. I was just trying to connect with you.”

  “What if the kiss is a letdown? Not every first kiss is great.”

  “Ours will be. I think you know it will be, too. So you’re agreeing to kiss me?”

  “For our grandchildren’s sake.”

  “I hope there’s steam, and if we’re lucky, it’s raining.”

  “I just ate peanut butter, so I’m warning you.”

  “Duly noted.”

  It’s amazing how long walking half a train car can take. I didn’t dare turn around to look at him. My backpack dug into my shoulders. I bent down a little and saw Amy and Constance waiting, both of them looking back to the car for me. I waved. They waved back. Jack walked behind me, and I felt choked up and strange. I wasn’t that kind of a girl, whatever that meant. Not impulsive. Not a girl to kiss a guy she had just met on a train to Amsterdam.

  But it happened. When I stepped off the train, I turned to him, and he swung down lightly, big, muscular, and he took me in his arms. I wasn’t prepared for his solidness, for the strength of his entire body as he pulled me close. It was ridiculous at first, both of us like turtles with our stupid backpacks bobbing behind us, but then it became something else. I had a vague sense of Amy and Constance watching, both of them slack jawed with amusement and wonder, and then his lips went deeper into mine, and I closed my eyes.

  It should have been a joke. It should have lasted only a moment. But it was a great kiss, probably the best of my life, and I don’t know why it was, or what he did, but when we broke apart, I didn’t want to let him go.

  When we finished, I turned to see the girls. They both had cell phones out to click pictures, and when they dropped them, I laughed at the amazement
on their faces.

  “What the hell?” Amy asked.

  “When did this happen?” Constance asked.

  Jack simply smiled. Amy recovered sufficiently to give him the address of the party. We exchanged phone numbers.

  “Maybe we’ll see you tonight,” Constance said, polite as always, smoothing things.

  “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” he said, quoting the last line of The Sun Also Rises and letting his eyes rest on mine for an instant before he left.

  8

  Kitten, make sure you fill out ANY forms Bank of America sends you. Pronto!

  On top of it, Daddy. Tell Mommy to pour you a big scotch and relax.

  Don’t require a scotch. Require my daughter to do what she has promised to do.

  It will get done. I always get things done.

  When?

  When the moon is in the 7th house. And Jupiter aligns with Mars.

  Stop fooling with me, Heather. I don’t appreciate it.

  Sorry, Dad. I will take care of it as soon as I can.

  Not really good enough, is it?

  Dad, I promise I will be on top of this. It’s a little difficult from over here, but I have my eye on the ball. Swear.

  Take pity on your father. Okay. Love you. No more lectures right now. Now I do need a drink.

  There’s always a moment when you enter a party when you think: In or out? Part of you wants to get the hell away from the noise and racket, the lights flashing, the people—strangers—yelling into each other’s ears to be heard. You know immediately that the bathrooms will be crowded or impossible to use, that the dance floors will be sticky with beer and booze, that some wannabe playboy will come dancing toward you with his groin sticking out, his teeth tucked over his lower lip, his eyes giving you the you’re-ten-minutes-away-from-having-my-baby look. For an instant, you see the party for what it is—a mating ritual, a celebration of coitus—and you start to turn away because you are smarter than this, cooler than this, quieter than this.

  But the other part kicks in, too.