The Train
Seth lay like a tetris piece in the narrow lower bunk, his head near the door to the hallway and his feet resting on the window sill, his arms and legs bent in strange attitudes, fighting each other for space. The train's standard-issue blanket was too small and too lightweight and it smelled like chemicals. He'd balled it up around the thing he clutched, which was a handgun.
Raul and Margot would both freak out if they knew he had it, even if they knew the truth--that he only had it for their protection. "You never know about those ex-communist cities, so take this," his dad had said, handing it to him. They'd still freak. Especially Margot. She was so into anti-gun activism. Back in the states, she even co-ran this program for little kids. Silly Margot, he thought. Little kids are always going to like guns.
He could hear her whisper to Raul on the bunk above. "Quietly," she said, "We don't want to--" and then, despite the rumble of the train, he heard the telltale sharp intake of breath from her and the characteristic grunt from Raul.
Seth lay as motionless as he could. Quietly indeed, he thought. You don't want to--how noble, how kind, but you did. I'm awake. Outside the window, the shapeless shadows of Romania's trees zigzagged against the sky, grey with clouds and moon.
It did not help that Raul's couchette shelf creaked with every movement of its occupants. Like seemingly everything else Raul touched, it was mostly broken. None of his clothing was the right size and for a wallet, he used a ziploc bag that at one point, years ago, had housed a turkey sandwich. But women like Margot still wanted him inside of them. They still wanted to kiss his face that he washed, rarely, with dish soap.
A week ago, in Zagreb, Seth had learned. Raul had told him. Raul was fucking Margot when he himself had wanted to fuck Margot for years. Fuck was indelicate: what Raul was doing was fucking. Seth wanted to love Margot. Seth did love Margot. He wanted to love Margot with permission and return and kissing and sleepovers and silly faces at 2am instead of miserable instances of guilty masturbation that made him feel like a creepy friend. Raul had been all shrugs and apologies, but it continued. It continued in train couchettes the three of them shared during this, their five week trip around Eastern Europe.
Seth felt lucky somehow that he had slammed his toe in a car door in Bratislava and broken it. The painkillers they'd given him did not do much for the toe, but when he took them, they provided a respite from the whirring sore spot in his brain caused by the recent unfortunate coupling. It was like the summer he was eleven: he was prescribed codeine for a persistent, violent, idiopathic cough. The codeine did not do much to quiet the cough, but it did help him fall asleep, and it did help him get through his parents' divorce.
The toe now throbbed in rhythm with Raul's thrusts above.
It was extremely difficult for Seth not to imagine Margot's face as this happened. Was she an open-eyed fucker. Did she do anything weird with her mouth. He imagined her eyebrows merging in concentration to form a little vertical wrinkle. Margot was the type of girl who would concentrate intensely during sex.
He usually tried his hardest to avoid daydreaming about Margot, because it is a terrible fact that the details and situations in daydreams do not ever come to occur. Similar things may come to occur, but the rule of daydreaming is that once you've thought of something happening in a certain way, it never will. This caused Seth much pain because his imagination was fertile and unstoppable. It grew like kudzu over the very idea of Margot. He constantly formed scenes in his head. Small ones. Banal ones. He sends her an email: I have to tell you something. I have to come over to talk. She calls him. She says "what's going on?" he says "I have to come over." She says, "come." He gets to her house. She pulls him to her room. She's wearing a yellow tshirt and black sweatpants, the kind that cinch at the ankle. Her hair, long and black, is wet and she's combing it out. "What is it?" she said. She sits on her bed. He sits beside her. He says, "I have to do something," and he does it. He just kisses her, just like that. And afterwards, she tells him she's been wanting him to do that for years. And there they are.
Or: they are walking on a street, not talking, and he just reaches for her hand. And she allows it. And that's all it takes.
It is better, he tells himself, to imagine bad scenes. If imagining good scenes negates them from ever happening, then the same applies to bad scenes. So he imagines that he and Margot are driving. Somewhere in far-out Brooklyn. Warehousey. She's driving. He's the passenger. He looks at her profile against the window that is foggy with rain (all his best scenes happen in the rain--it makes things more dire), at the slight bump in her nose, the way the end of her nose turns down just a tiny bit. That profile, that nose. She sees him looking at her and she says, "Seth. I'm going to ask you something and you're going to answer it even if it's ridiculous." And he says "yes." And she says "Are you in love with me?" and he doesn't even take a minute for the question to sink in. He replies immediately, yes. She is quiet. She moves her hands nervously on the steering wheel. Finally she says "I'm not in love with you. I had to tell you. I hope that it's okay."
Another bad scene: he, Margot, and Raul are in a couchette on a train to Bucharest. Margot and Raul are having sex directly above him. His toe hurts. Except this is real and it is already happening.
Seth did not understand why this had to happen on the bunk above him--Margot's bunk was on the other wall of the couchette. Then again, had they chosen to fuck there, Seth could have seen it too. At least this way he was spared that.
Raul's breathing was becoming more hurried. He sounded like a dog panting. Margot, for her part, was completely silent. Seth hoped that it was an effort. She hoped that she was doing it for him. That would mean she had to think about him. He liked the idea of her thinking about him while Raul was manically shoving his cock up her. It somehow made things a little more palatable.
"Call me Daddy," said Raul. Margot said nothing. "Call me Big Brother," said Raul. This was weird. Seth shivered. He held the gun, pointed it up to Raul's bunk. "Boom," he whispered. He wondered if Margot was on the verge of tears. He wondered if she had died. No--he could hear her breathing too. Softly. Shallowly.
The trees outside were more far apart now. The sky was getting lighter, too. In the distance, mountains sat like a stage backdrop. Seth's toe was killing him. He pointed the gun at it, as though to end its misery. "Boom," he whispered again. An animal sound came out of Margot. It startled Seth so much that his trigger finger jumped and the gun fired. Margot screamed. The bullet missed the toe but shattered the window. The glass fell out, a few shards at a time, a small insult to rural Romania.
"What the fuck, man!" yelled Raul. It was hard to hear him because the track noise was much louder without the benefit of a window. Margot yelled something too, but Seth couldn't hear her at all. He leaned over and threw the balled-up blanket out the space where the windowpane used to be, a supplication. He hoped it would unfurl and trail behind the train like a cape.