Slowing, But Not To A Stop
It was a handful of days ago that I experienced the disappointment only fully understood by the losers of this world. In fact, if you are not a loser it would be best if you just went about your reading elsewhere. Go on now, all you winners, beat it. I'm serious now, get out of here and go win some damn thing. And don't think you can read on and still be a winner, loser.
I was, that handful of days ago, engaging by email with Bernadette about travel plans, and to my understanding there was a wholly acceptable rash decision made on the part of Bernadette in NY and I went about preparing for her arrival by train into the Culpeper station that evening.
Crazy with anticipation I paused periodically to consider the bounty of my good fortune. I had only suggested she come that night instead of four days in the future and here she was doing it. Was I that powerful? I even considered the lower-case blasphemy of was I godlike?
The answer came that evening as I stood next to the pay phone on the side of the train station, looking off down the track in the direction of the distant New York City. I was worried about being late and had sped much of the way, passing slow moving cars and at one point forgetting to slow down for a sharp curve I had nearly careened off the road.
I wasn't there leaning against the side of the station wall for long when I could see the lights of the arriving 19 train, on its way to New Orleans but stopping briefly in Culpeper to let Bernadette out so I could drive her back to Mt. Pleasant. I looked in through the windows of the slow moving train, trying to appear cool and not overly eager. A conductor was leaning out the side of the train and called out to me for no reason I can discern except that obviously he had seen straight through my trying to be cool act and knew I was waiting for Bernadette to get off the train. The conductor at this point knew more about me than I knew about me. He had become godlike. He was talking to me and becoming smaller. He said everything I needed to know without actually saying the obvious (you are a loser son, go home).
The 5O? I called out to the increasingly becoming miniature conductor. Is that coming from NY? The now microscopic conductor responded--frrffmrfllle eit ienchenste, leaving me dumbfounded with the mystery of his unintelligible message.
I went back to the Jeep and considered a few different possibilities. At some point I realized it would not hurt anything to rule out the chance that Bernadette was still in NYC. To consider that I had simply misunderstood and that all my previous meanderings about being godlike were what they could only truly be--utter bullshit. When she answered her phone, which is not cellular, and although cordless, has only a range still well within the confines of New York City, I said hello. She said hello. She had no way of knowing my mistake. To her this was just an uncharacteristic phone call (we don't talk on the phone). I went ahead and made the redundant clarification, by saying, are you in New York? Bernadette said what she could only say, that she was, and, at a loss to understand the meaning of my question responded with--where are you?
I told her I was where all losers end up, watching a train that slowed down, but never stopped, pull away from the station.
Bernadette cooed some in a fashion meant to underscore a collection of realities that in sum total amounted to this--yeah I'm a loser and not at all godlike but that's ok. She would see me in four days, same train station.
I drove back on a pitch black ribbon of asphalt through a night as black as itself and arrived at a Mt. Pleasant that was strangely and uncharacteristically lit, porch lights shining and yard lights, with bulbs replaced and just hours before set back on their proper timing, glowing mutely.
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