by Hy Conrad
“It was my exaggerations that got us into this mess. I don’t blame you, sweetie. I was just venting. Forgiven?”
“Forgiven. But next time it’s my turn to vent.”
They fell back into silence, not an awkward silence this time, but not a happy one. And then the silver engine itself vented, letting out a whoosh and a plume of steam from each side of the boiler, just above the cowcatcher. Amy laughed out loud.
Fanny had to think about it for a second; then she laughed. “I guess everybody needs to vent.”
The engine’s venting petered out into nothing, to be replaced by the steam whistle. It was a piercing, elongated howl, like the call of a thousand-pound tea kettle coming to a boil. Everyone on the platform put down their drinks and smiled in anticipation. Amy and Fanny, too.
CHAPTER 13
“It’s what we call a prewar convertible two-bedroom.” Hanna Jorengsen stood in the middle of the cramped apartment, spread her arms wide in a display of spaciousness and somehow managed not to hit any walls. Then she pointed to the alcove. “Just put up a screen and it’s like a separate room. The kitchen is prewar, so the appliances are all original. There’s a police station right down the street, so the block is incredibly safe, if you don’t mind a few sirens. And in the summer you can open the living-room window and use the fire escape as a terrace. Very Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Ooh!” Her hands flew to her heart as she remembered the absolutely best part. “Do you like Indian food?” Her client assured her that he loved Indian food. “Good. The Delhi Belly just below you has had some ventilation issues, at least in the past—full disclosure. But their food is fabulous. You’ll grow addicted to the smell.”
Marcus had seen three apartments this morning with this agent, and he had two more agents lined up for tomorrow, one in Hoboken, one in Queens. It wasn’t the best use of his few hours off. But he had promised Amy he’d look, and this promise he intended to keep. “When is the apartment available?”
Hanna seemed a little surprised by his interest. “Um, right away.”
“Right away?” Marcus look around again. There was clothing strewn over every chair, half-eaten garbage draped over every flat surface, and dog-eared college textbooks piled in every corner.
“They’ll be gone as soon as you sign the lease. Once they get rid of their junk and you get your stuff in here, it will look so much . . .” Hanna took a big breath and threw up her hands. “Okay, okay, it’s a dump. Even I know that. Maybe if your budget was twice as big. The place I showed you on Mercer . . .”
“I like this place,” said Marcus.
Hanna seemed confused. “Are you sure? No one likes Indian food that much.”
“No, this is a possibility.” Marcus took out his phone and began to snap. “Let me send these to my girlfriend. She’ll be back next week, and we’ll set up an appointment. Sometime in the evening?”
“When the Delhi Belly is open for business? I’m not sure I’d recommend that.”
Marcus set up a tentative time for the following Tuesday and promised he’d be in touch to confirm. As Hanna closed up, using three keys to secure the two dead bolts and the handle lock, Marcus bundled up against the February chill. Then he escorted the real estate agent past the “soon to be repaired” elevator and down one flight to street level, where she headed south to another showing in Chinatown and he headed west.
It was a relatively short walk by New York standards, across the Village, then across Bleecker Street to the storefront on Hudson. The opening time of the travel agency, printed on the door, was 10:00 a.m., but he’d been a little lax with the schedule. Amy had toyed with the idea of hiring a temporary assistant. But the Patagonian trip had materialized so quickly, and they’d be away less than two weeks. And, to be honest, walk-in traffic was not such a big part of their business.
Except for the lookie-loos, Marcus had to remind himself.
He was just crossing Hudson when he saw them, two twentysomethings, both blond with highlights, hermetically attached to their phones, one of them texting, the other taking a pouty selfie in front of the Amy’s Travel sign. They paid no attention to him as he approached—always disheartening ego-wise—until they realized he was arriving with keys to the store.
“Is this where TrippyGirl works?” asked the shorter, slightly more intelligent-looking one.
Over the past few months, Amy and Fanny had played with several different answers to this question. At first they’d denied it. “Trippy who?” they’d ask. When they’d got tired of this, they tried the simple truth, that Trippy didn’t exist. But those who had made the pilgrimage to Hudson Street didn’t want to hear the truth. It had become easier to say, “Yes, Trippy works here, but she is off on another adventure. Please keep reading the blog.” This had become more complicated when Fanny started posting the occasional photo of her daughter and the visitors would recognize her. Fanny had tried telling them that this wasn’t Trippy, but Trippy’s older, stay-at-home sister. That hadn’t always worked. Amy’s current strategy was to hide in the bathroom whenever she saw someone who looked like a Trippy fan come through the door.
“Trippy’s in Patagonia,” said Marcus, glad that he could for once tell the truth.
“We know,” said the taller one. “But we thought she might be back. What happened after the explosion? We have to know.”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Again the truth.
Marcus invited them inside and turned on the Alvarez charm. The girls expressed keen interest in a Trans-Siberian Railway expedition run by a British company and taking off from Moscow in July. Special, 15 percent off. But Marcus knew, at the end of the day, they would never sign up for a train with a shared bathroom and no place to plug in their hair dryers. He sent them away happy, with a few more selfies around Amy’s desk and three Club Med brochures.
The landline rang just as Marcus was making himself comfortable at Fanny’s desk. “Amy’s Travel.” He added, “How may I direct your call?” just for fun.
“Marcus? It’s Sabrina, Amy’s editor from Banyan. How are you?” Marcus was fine. “I just read TrippyGirl’s blog from Patagonia. Is there any way I can get in touch with her?” Marcus knew all about Sabrina. They’d spoken once before but not in person.
“You can leave a message on her cell or send an e-mail,” Marcus suggested. “But I don’t think her train has phone or Internet access.”
“I suppose not. Have you talked to her since that explosion? Is she okay?”
“She e-mailed me. Don’t worry. Is there anything you want me to tell her?”
“Well, this is hard to say. I don’t know how to ask.” Sabrina proved her point by hemming and hawing and leaving several seconds of dead air. “Ummm. Do you think the explosion was real? Your honest opinion.”
“Yes, it was real. How could they fake that? Why would they want to?”
“Good. Sorry.” Sabrina’s laugh sounded tight-mouthed and nervous. “Banyan was very excited when Amy and Fanny mentioned this trip. More TrippyGirl! More adventure! And the fact that some big-name travel people were going, that was great. We thought.”
“But . . .” Marcus strung out the word.
“It’s just that Fanny, dear funny Fanny, admits to stretching the truth. Not that we have anything against that. Hemingway did it. Do you think something dangerous is really going on?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“No reason. We’re just preparing some pre-promotional material for TrippyGirl’s World. If there is another crime connected to their trip, a real crime, then great. We can promote the hell out of it, kind of a teaser to pique interest. But if there’s no crime . . . I mean, if it’s just Mrs. Abel filming some small-town accident and making the rest up . . . You understand?”
“Then you’d like for her to stop.”
“We would love for her to stop. Actually, we’d kind of have to insist on her stopping. Not that we don’t support TrippyGirl. We support her one hundred percent.”
Marcus go
t it. “But there’s a line between a fun, tongue-in-cheek exaggeration and an outright lie.”
“Yes. Not that I’m sure exactly where that line is, but we have to stay on the right side of it. Wherever. And let me say again that we support TrippyGirl one hundred percent.”
That is discouraging to hear, thought Marcus. When people insist more than once that they support you one hundred percent, that’s the time to worry.
* * *
The lounge car, like the dining car, could comfortably seat forty or more. Plush chairs and horsehair-stuffed sofas lined the walls of the elongated space, which was artfully broken up by sets of mahogany pillars and arches interspersed with side tables and table lamps. The slightly peach-colored hue of the lamp shades was an old designer trick, one that helped even the most aged skin seem a little more vibrant.
“I like this room,” said Fanny, not for the first time. She settled in beside her daughter on the sofa, then turned an eye to the rest of the car. Todd Drucker was in an arch-secluded alcove, reading a book. Across from him, the neatly bearded reporter from the London Times leaned his tattooed elbow against the window ledge, taking in the changing, slowly moving scenery. Two of the Furies sat in their usual huddle, one of them crocheting and one writing in a book, probably a diary. “Are people avoiding us,” Fanny asked, “or is it just my imagination?”
“People are avoiding you because of your imagination.” That was what Amy wanted to say, except that she actually believed Fanny’s story, so it would have been clever but not fair.
“Don’t feel bad, Fanny dear.” It was Alicia Lindborn. “I couldn’t help overhearing. May I? Thanks.” The elegant blonde seated herself on the sofa across from them and leaned in. “Ordinary people, they have trouble dealing with visions. I’ve seen it over and over. People get nervous, and they don’t know what to say.”
Amy herself didn’t quite know what to say. “You think what my mother saw was a vision?”
The matriarch of travel leaned in farther, allowing the moonstone on her gold necklace to dangle into the aisle. “When you’ve been to as many places as I have, ashrams in India, sweat lodges in New Mexico, living in a plural marriage with a shaman in the Amazonian rain forest—that was the sixties, of course—you learn that there’s more to existence than just the physical world.”
“More than the physical world?” Amy asked
Alicia smiled. “Oh, there’s a whole other realm of existence. You can tap into it in a variety of ways.” She began to count them on her fingers. “Peyote, for example. Mushrooms, delirium from dehydration, LSD. I could go on.”
“Please go on,” said Fanny.
Both of the Abels were transfixed. This was the last thing they had expected to hear from a woman who did her best to resemble a pulled-together, if aging Realtor. Amy cleared her throat. “If I can speak for my mother, and I hope I can, she doesn’t use any of those.”
“But she does use yerba maté, which comes from the rain forest. My ex-husband, the shaman, and I used to chew on the leaves. I remember clear as day. One morning I was chewing leaves, sweating in a hammock, bored out of my mind, being eaten alive by mosquitos. It was at that moment I had the most crucial vision of my life. I dreamed of going home, marrying rich, and starting a travel empire. I knew at that moment, no matter the cost, I had to divorce my Peruvian prince and his other wife, who was a good friend by this point, and return to my old fiancé in Philadelphia. Again, it was the sixties.”
“Fascinating.” That word was quite a compliment, coming from Fanny, who very rarely found anyone else fascinating. “What do you think my vision meant?”
Alicia had to give it some thought. “Did this corpse look like you? Perhaps it signifies the death of your youth. Or your relationship with Amy? Do you ever fantasize about someone, and I don’t necessarily mean Amy, being pecked apart by vultures?”
“Can’t say I do,” said Fanny. “But let me think about it.”
“Wait.” Like her mother, Amy had been leaning in. Now she pulled back. “So you really didn’t see a corpse? Honestly, Mom? You put everyone through this because you had a maté-induced vision?”
Fanny raised her eyebrows. “It’s one possibility.”
“Please! You never had a vision in your life. You’re the most practical, levelheaded. . . . No offense, Alicia.” Amy grabbed her mother’s arm for emphasis. “I know you, Mom. You think that by saying it was a hallucination, you can get out of this. An easy out. But that doesn’t change what actually happened, does it?”
“I thought you liked avoiding confrontation. A vision is a lot less confrontational than a corpse.”
“You did not have a vision.”
“I could have.” Fanny sounded deeply hurt. And with nothing more to say, she turned to the window and stared out into the passing prairie.
“Mom, stop pouting.”
“Oh, dear.” Alicia sank back into her horsehair cushion. “I’m sorry if I started something between you.”
“It’s not your fault.” Fanny spoke into the window. “If my own flesh and blood doesn’t believe I’m special enough . . .” There was a pause and a little intake of air. “Like right now. Where you just see desert grasses and rocks, I see more. I see our host, Jorge O’Bannion, on a motorcycle, riding beside the train and waving at us. I’m not sure what that means.”
Amy turned to face the window. “It means he’s on a motorcycle, riding beside the train and waving at us.” Under any circumstances, it would have been an unusual sight, the patriarchal, fifty-something gentleman straddling a maroon motorcycle with the word Indian emblazoned in silver on the gas tank, bumping over a dirt side road, keeping pace with the train. To add to the surreal sight, one of the Furies was in the machine’s sidecar, bouncing and holding on for dear life.
“You see it, too?” Fanny asked. “Or are you just pretending so that you don’t feel left out?”
“We all see it, Mother.”
“True,” Alicia confirmed. She crossed to their window and waved at O’Bannion. Amy and Fanny joined her in waving. “Jorge keeps an old motorcycle at the Glendaval ranch. He brought it on board to take to his second ranch. He said he wanted to try this on one of the slow, level patches.”
“Are you sure?” asked Fanny. “All three of us could be having the same vision—although you’ll have to admit I saw it first.”
By this point, the other guests had gathered by the left window. Most had their phones or cameras out, snapping and waving. Even the dyspeptic Todd Drucker was whooping and snapping, leaning up to the glass and trying to line up a selfie with O’Bannion and the Fury in the background.
The chase between the two machines went on for several more minutes, until the side road began to get rougher and the tracks began to twist and climb into the Andean foothills. Then the engineer played three blasts on his steam whistle, applied the brakes, and brought the procession to a halt.
At that point the train was halfway around a curve, placing the caboose within view of the lounge car. Amy opened a lounge-car window and leaned out. She could see O’Bannion riding back to the last car, where two crew members were waiting to help him, his passenger, and the Indian back on board. When the two riders walked through the car a few minutes later, everyone stood to applaud.
It would turn out to be the second most memorable event of the day.
CHAPTER 14
After the motorcycle chase, the terrain changed, as the forever distant mountains finally grew closer. Their semiarid plateau had evolved into foothills, and the foothills opened onto the occasional chasm, with a tall bridge of ancient wood spanning the gulf. One moment Amy would look out to see a herd of goats grazing on a stubbly meadow mere yards away. The next moment she would be stunned to see the meadow disappear. Nothing would be visible below, as if the whole world had been pulled out from under them.
For the rest of the day, the Patagonian Express limped along, the tracks groaning under the unaccustomed weight. Amy didn’t even want to think
about the groaning bridges.
For nearly an hour, as the luxury train skirted the edge of the Andes, it was forced to go backward, to zigzag its way down a hill that would have otherwise been too steep. Amy had experienced a zigzag only once before, in Peru, on the ride from Cuzco to Machu Picchu, but that had been a newer train and newer tracks, on a part of a well-traveled route that was within hailing distance of an emergency crew if something went wrong.
The process was for the engine to pull the entire length of the train down onto a side track. Then a worker would get out, switch the rails at the rear, and the engine would start again, in reverse, pushing the train gently down a different set of tracks to the next switchback, using its brakes more than its engine. Amy counted four of these zigzags. And as intrigued as everyone seemed by the outdated technology, they breathed a collective sigh of relief when the engine finally picked up steam near the bottom of the valley.
Despite O’Bannion’s boast about the great lengths the government had gone to in repairing the tracks, the result was a hodgepodge—new sections, old sections, old bridges, and dark, dripping tunnels. There were perilous ledges where the windows brushed against a mountain on one side and opened onto oblivion on the other. Nightfall didn’t make it any more comforting. The darkness came down like a curtain, with no moon, while up ahead there was only the single beam of a steam engine that had been rebuilt in Argentina to carry guests around the confines of a billionaire’s estate.
Amy and Fanny had a light meal that evening. From what they could see around them, the others shared a similar loss of appetite. But isn’t this what travel was supposed to be about? Amy asked herself. She had always complained about how easy and prepackaged travel had become. ATMs were everywhere. The Internet was everywhere. Elevators took you down the cliffs to a once-hidden grotto, where you could buy grotto T-shirts with your MasterCard. Wasn’t it wonderful that she could still experience the thrill of adventure, a sense of the dangerous unknown—and also have a bathtub and a fireplace in her compartment? All she had to do was survive.