The Undertaker

“Not that!” She smacked my arm and pulled me into a makeup shop. “Your face. Your hair. It would be great if you grew a beard, but there's no time. Besides, they get scratchy in all the wrong places while they're growing in.” I looked at her, but it did no good. “What if you go blond? The hair and the eyebrows?” She started rummaging through the tubes and bottles on the shelf. “Nothing phony or bleachy, just a nice soft natural look.”

“I suppose you know how to use that stuff?”

“Six months in beautician's school, that's like graduate school for us bimbos and ditzes.” She looked at me with a twinkle in her eyes. “I have the blonde wig, but I think I'm going to get a light brown color and maybe something coppery-red. I've done them all.”

“I'll miss the black, is that your natural color?” I asked, not thinking.

“That's for you to find that out, Talbott.” She stuck out her tongue and turned away.

Out in the mall we found a 12-plex theater. There was no balcony, but she was right. It was a great place to hide. The movie was a singles dating comedy staring a bunch of twenty-somethings I had never heard of, but it was her pick and I didn't care. The theater had those big recliner stadium seats and it was mostly empty.

“Can I pretend we're a couple again?” she asked as she snuggled close. It didn't matter, because five minutes later I fell sound asleep.

It was probably an hour later when I woke up with my head buried in her shoulder. “God, I'm sorry, Sandy, that must have killed your arm.”

“Don't be,” she whispered. “I haven't had a guy fall asleep on me for a long, long time, not one I cared about anyway.” I looked at her, but she shook her head. “Don't! It was only a nap, nothing you need to feel guilty about.”

“I don't feel guilty.”

“Oh, yes you do.” She leaned closer and kissed me gently on the cheek. “You feel guilty about a lot of things you have no reason to feel guilty about. That's one of the many subjects you and I need to talk about. Now shut up and watch the end of the movie.”

After the movie, I had her drive back to the train station. That gave me a chance to look over the Amtrak schedule and routes. “Some of the trains have private compartments,” I said. “It would be great if we could get one all the way to Boston.”

“Like Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe in “Some Like It Hot?” But that's in black-and-white, so I doubt you ever saw it.”

“I did so. But the Amtrak compartments are a lot bigger now, like a small room. Maybe we could get one of those.”

“Yeah? You and me, alone in a small room. I can't wait.”

“Would you stop that! This is hard enough for me as it is.”

“Yeah, I'll bet it is.”

I looked over at her and glared.

“All right, I'll behave. I promise.”

“Seems to me, you said that before,” I reminded her. “But if we get stuck sitting in an open coach, we'll have to bail out in the morning, maybe a couple of times, and try something else. So we really want a compartment.” I looked at the schedule and ran my finger down the chart. “Wow. It'll run us almost $1,200.” I dug in my pockets and counted out what was left of the Sheriff's Coffee Fund and Louie Panozzo's envelope. “We have enough, but it will take us down to maybe $500 in cash. That's okay, if I can get some help in Boston.”

“I've got another idea.” Sandy said as she dug into a pocket in the shoulder bag and pulled out an American Express Gold Card with the name “La Magnifique” embossed on the front. “I forgot all about this. Old Man Fantozzi gave it to me so I could handle CODs and drop offs at Fed Ex, stuff like that. It's in the store's name, not mine, and it has a $5,000 line of credit. Nobody knows about it except Fantozzi.”

“You're sure?

“He won't even see a bill until the end of the month. I know the charge card confirmation number and codes by heart, so I can call the credit card company and find out if anybody put a hold on the number before I use it. I can even get the charge pre-approved.”

“You sure about that?”

“No, but if I hear anything funky, I'll hang up and we can use the cash. So what's to lose?” There was a pay phone in the foyer of the restaurant. While I paid, she called American Express. It only took a couple of minutes, but when she came back, she was smiling and waving her Gold Card. “Like I thought, nobody knows about this card.”

We left and drove back downtown. I found a city parking garage four blocks away near two big department stores. I picked the middle level and backed it into a dark spot next to a big SUV. It was perfect. No one would even know the Chevy was there. It was after 11:00 PM by the time we walked back to Union Station. I hung around a rack of Amtrak maps, while Sandy went to the ticket counters. She returned five minutes later holding two ticket folders in her hand.

“Any problems?”

“Nope. The train is only half full. I got one of the bedroom compartments, like it showed in your brochure, all the way to Boston. But I still can't believe it costs eleven-hundred and eighty-six dollars.”

“Le Magnifique can dock your pay.”

“My pay? That's a joke. They'll have to fight with my landlord, the IRS, and Dombrowski's Funeral Home on Montrose if they want what's left.”

“Dombrowski's Funeral Home?”

“Eddie even stiffed me for the funeral. I told them they could dig the little shit back up and flush him down the toilet for all I cared. Instead, they sent in the lawyers.”

The train didn't leave for two hours, but there was no sense trying to leave the station. The waiting room was exposed, but everything downtown was closed by then and we'd be even more visible out on the street. I looked around and picked a heavy wooden bench in the rear corner. I sat with my eyes on the door and she lay on the bench with her head in my lap, staring up at me, saying nothing. That in itself was remarkable, but I knew I couldn't take it for very long.

After about fifteen minutes of awkward silence, I finally got up enough nerve to say what I had wanted to say for two days. “I need to tell you something.”

“I've heard that one before, Talbott. If you tell me you're gay, I swear, I'll kill you right here and now.” I laid one of my fingers across her lips. That was the only way I ever found so far to shut her up, then or now. Then I put my hand over her eyes so she couldn't look at me.

“What are you doing?” she mumbled.

“Please be quiet. I can't talk to you while you're looking at me like that, or when you keep interrupting me. In fact, I can't talk to you at all, and that's part of my problem.”

“That is ridiculous.” She ran her tongue up my finger and kissed it.

“Stop that!”

“Oops, I forgot.” She giggled. “Sor-ry.”

“And be quiet. It's not ridiculous. I'm always afraid of saying the wrong thing to you, and all you ever do is crack jokes and say or do something suggestive. I'm having a real problem with that, Sandy.”

She didn't say anything at first. “And you don't have a clue, do you?”

“A clue? Don't say it's because I'm in love with you. We barely know each other. And don't say it's because I'm an awkward computer geek who can't handle a real woman like you... God knows that's probably true, but I've known plenty of women. You're hardly the first. I talk to women. I was married to a woman. But you, I can't talk to.”

Her answer came very matter-of-factly. “It's because you're terrified of me,”

“More jokes, see what I mean?”

“It's not a joke, Peter. You may know plenty of women, and you may talk to plenty of women, and I know you were married to a truly wonderful woman who I know you loved very, very deeply. But how many women have you been with since Terri died?”

I looked at her for a moment, realizing this conversation was spinning dangerously out of control.