Midnight Run

A Story by Guillermo

Robert is on his last train ride; or so he thinks.

The Ghost of Train 508

Requiem for a Sabotaged Life

By Guillermo Yañez

The day started off pretty uneventful. Up at five-am, in the shower by five-fifteen, shave and shine by five-thirty. It was like any other day except it wasn’t. Today was the first anniversary of Robert getting kicked out of his house.

When he got home they had argued about using the ATM card. He said, f**k-you; she said, why don’t you just leave and he said OK and proceeded into the bedroom armed with trash bags intending to pack his s**t and get the f**k out.

It progressed much slower than he wanted. There were shoes being thrown at his head as he packed.

Robert wound up at a Super-8 motel in Bernalillo; it was the only hotel he could find that allowed him to smoke in his room. Smoke he did, and drank.

That was a year ago.

Two weeks later he had found an apartment and to his utter dismay he discovered that he had eight left shoes. The rights, he concluded, were the ones being hurled at his head as he packed.

That was a year ago.

Relief from it all would come soon. As soon as he got home and finished it off with a bottle of Jack.

It was almost over.

The late train was waiting for him. After a long day at the office the train ride home afforded him a great opportunity to unwind. Robert worked in the computer server room for a bank in Santa Fe and had spent all day getting everyone their email working after a server had gone down. Someone had opened a message with a virus and it had taken him all of sixteen hours to get everything back in working order. He was tired, pissed and ready to go home.

Robert stood in front of his usual train car. The smell of the diesel engine was hanging subtly in the cool night air. He climbed aboard and found a seat with a table on the mezzanine level, hoisted his backpack onto it and put his head down. Now it was really over. He would be home in an hour and a half and wouldn’t look back on this t**d of a day. T**d of a life really, he thought.

He was jerked awake by the brakes as the train pulled into the 599 station. Sometimes the engineer overshot the small station and had to do a hard reverse back to the platform. Robert couldn’t have been asleep more than five or ten minutes but he felt as though he’d been asleep for hours. He looked around and was startled to see one of the most strikingly beautiful women he had ever seen in his life sitting across from him. She had the most beautiful olive skin, pale brown almost golden eyes and long, straight dark hair. She was looking right at him, smiling.

“Hello,” Robert said. He heard his voice shake. “I’m, Robert.” He offered his hand, she accepted with a shy smile.

There was energy in her touch Robert couldn’t explain. It ran up his arm like the thrill he could only compare to the first time he touched a woman’s breast. Robert couldn’t help it; before he knew it the laugh escaped him. With everything he was he tried to choke it back. Like laughing in church, the harder he tried to stop, the harder he laughed. He looked up and the laugh died in his throat. This time she had a full smile and it absolutely took the breath right out of him. She could add perfect teeth to her repertoire. Her entire face smiled at him.

“What’s so funny?” Her eyes teased him, dared him to answer, asked him to please flirt back.

“I have no idea.” He lied.

“Come on, share.” She leaned in to him and folded her arms between them on the table.

“I was looking for a line,” He leaned towards her folded his arms on the table between them as well.

“Give it to me.”

“Ok,” he looked her dead in the eyes, “take the train often?”

“Oh, GOD, that’s it?”

“Did it work?”

She folded her arms and leaned towards him on the table. “Remains to be seen I would have to say.”

“Fair enough,” Robert said suddenly realized he had nothing left to say.

He strained, struggled but nothing would come. As he strained for something, he brain decided to vomit something out for him. “Today is the first anniversary of me getting kicked out of my house.”

The rails were uneven on this stretch of the route. Loud clicking noises sounded as the train sped over the oldest section of the route. The train rocked back and forth as it sped through the night. They both spent this uncomfortable silence looking out into the pitch black for a moment. Wow, he thought, didn’t take me long to blow that one. Then she broke the silence.

“Today is one of my anniversaries too,” she whispered, “happened on this very train.”

“What was it?”

She turned and looked him full in the face, one eyebrow raised, “You first.”

“Huh?”

“You first…”

The only huh after that was the one that began the diatribe of the last eight years of his life. He spilled his guts to this stranger for what seemed to be hours. Her eyes never dipped or glanced away. She absorbed his every word, drank in his sorrow and pain. Robert told her about all the silly lies and the terrible lies he told over the years; how he lost the trust of the only woman he truly believed her would ever love with his whole heart. He told of the step children he would, no doubt, never see again. The only thing it seemed he was good at over the last eight years of the relationship was being a step-father, coach and friend to children that he adored. It was his favorite dark joke that he was a great father but a lousy husband. At this she took his hand in hers and his voice waivered for a second as he adjusted to the surprise in the coldness of her skin.

He glanced up and was surprised to see a tear glistening in her eye; the tear running down his own face went unnoticed. She cupped his face in her hands, so damn cold, he thought. She smiled solemnly and let go.

Robert’s confession continued with the last months of the relationship. He had found the digital camera on the dresser in the bedroom and almost didn’t even look through it. But he did. He found the pictures from the golf tournament she had organized at work. There were pictures of them hugging; pictures of her sitting on his lap with drinks; pictures of them kissing. Robert was surprised by his reaction: complete and total understanding. And why not? He had asked himself. I drove her there.

Robert knew he had torn her down, built her back up again with promises of change; then without a thought, he had torn her back down again with the lies. No one had to tell him how mean he had been, he knew exactly what he had done, the weight of it all, testament to his selfishness.

At that point he didn’t leave. There had been many times when he had fantasized about being single. He supposed that every married man does that at some point. He had actually felt that he was getting what he deserved. Didn’t she deserve some happiness? Didn’t she deserve the look that was clearly in her eyes in the arms of this other man? He had driven her there right? Yep, in a long black limousine with champagne in the back, his mind added with a bitter poke.

It was around Thanksgiving that this had transpired. Family was coming into town and the house needed to ready. Robert had set out to get the yard clean before she got home. He raked and picked; clean out the pond; and with a knowing that he would never set foot in it again, cleaned the patio. Everything back here he had done with his bare hands. Every tree, block and structure had been a labor of love. With a pathetic sigh, he put his head down and went to task.

The sliding door slammed open. “What are you doing?” her voice from behind him, the tone accusing and fierce.

He turned to see her, a hand on her hip the other leaning on the door frame.

“Excuse, me?” he had asked timidly.

“Why are you doing that?” The retort was quick and deliberate.

“Just straightening up back here.”

“Why?” Abrupt. Wants to fight.

“I just wanted to get stuff done before our company gets here.” He trailed off.

“Since when?” It comes in the form of half words, half snort.

“Look, let’s not start, ok? I just want to get this done, please let’s not do this now”

“Or what? You’ll hit me?” These words echoed around for a while; bounced off the wall like the crazy professor’s flubber. With these words he knew that his marriage of eight years was over.

Robert had never so much as raised his hand at anyone in his entire life let alone his wife. Yet the words had resonated. It was a set up. She had been a cop all of her life and knew exactly what words to say that would set the stage for what was to come.

Thanksgiving was painful. She went out of her way to be mean to everyone. Lots of snide remarks, none of which he wanted to remember. All of it, he told himself, he deserved.

The next three weeks he found himself coming home late; taking the proverbial extra lap around the block to avoiding making the inevitable turn into the driveway. He also found himself frequenting the lounge inside the Sandia Casino more and more often. It was there that he had met the one who finally gave him the strength to set his wife free.

He was going to order a Corona and a shot of Tequila when he noticed her sit down two bar stools away. She sat down with noticeable trepidation. Her eyes darted around; unsure�"it seemed�"about what to do in this place. The bartender approached her with the usual, ‘whatchahavindarlin’, and she froze for a moment before timidly asking for a rum and diet Coke.

Robert smiled and stole another glance at her. She was certainly attractive in a nonconventional way. She had short, dark hair and green eyes�"dilated by the adrenalin pouring through her with this experience. She wrung her hands nervously as her drink was prepared in front of her with a little flare. With a wink and a smile the bartender declared her cocktail done and requested ‘six-fifty, Doll’. She stumbled through her purse. Robert saw his opportunity, and took it.

“Look,” he began. “I’ve never cheated or even came close to cheating. And that was not my intention that night. I was lonely and just wanted to flirt; to feel like someone might be attracted to me that was it. I offered to pay for her first drink and she turned bright red, smiled a little and just said thanks.

“I scooted myself over to the seat next to her and we both just started talking. Turns out she was having some of the same problems I was. She told me about her loveless marriage. She had been married for twenty years, had five kids who were grown and out of state in college. She wanted the romance to come back but no matter what she tried, couldn’t get her husband to bite. Nothing she tried worked. She said she was at the bar to meet her boyfriend. Her story was compelling and I could imagine my wife telling her new boyfriend the same things. What a liar I was, how insensitive I was and how inattentive I was.

“As I sat and listened to her, all the things I had done in the past began to creep up on me and I didn’t like what I was remembering. I wanted to feel something from someone other than contempt and hostility. I wanted so desperately for someone to like me. So I lied to her.” Robert drew a deep breath and leaned back into his chair. He looked out the window at the darkness, during the day the Pueblos would be passing them by, smoke coming from the little domed ovens.

“So what happened with her?” The woman asked.

“I told her a story of woe. I worked the true story backwards and told her how my wife two-timed me. I told her how desperately I loved her children and feared I would never see them again. I told her about my passion for life and love and how my unfeeling wife would have nothing to do with me because she was nothing but a selfish ungrateful b***h.” He waited for a response. None came. The woman took her turn to look out the window into the darkness, this time the river and Bosque in full foliage would be going by.

So he continued.

“After a time I began to really believe my own stories. We met at the bar for the next three weeks.” Robert leaned back in his seat away from the woman and began rubbing his hands nervously. He had never told anyone what he was telling her. Over the past year the same story came out time and again with anyone who cared to listen, but never the truth. The truth was really more than he could bear.

“She was the first one I called the night I left. I don’t know what I was hoping would happen with that. Part of me thought she was waiting for me to make my move so that we could be together. Another part of me knew that we would never be.

“But I always had this woman’s story in the back of my mind. It was like the fates were letting me hear my wife’s story from someone else’s mouth. I heard the pain and knew that I had caused it and that my wife deserved to be free. So the first chance that presented itself, I acted.

“Yet I’ve told the same story I told her to countless women that I’ve slept with in the past year. It’s like I don’t know any other way to be and I am just tired of it. I’m tired of living this way.”

The woman rested her chin in her hand, elbow propped on the table between them. Robert looked at his lap. He hadn’t felt shame about what he’d done until this very moment.

“Tell me more about what you planned on doing today to celebrate you anniversary.” The knowing grin on her faced sent a chill down Robert’s spine then radiated to his very soul.

How could she have known?

Just a week ago, Robert had an epiphany. He realized that the truth would very soon consume him; that it would catch up and just utterly destroy him. The patterns were repeating. He was lying, cheating and metaphorically stealing at every turn. He would build himself up; then, as if possessed by a gremlin, tear himself down. All his successes were marred by self destruction. And all this feeling of impending doom was sealed with an unexpected meeting.

While shopping for a new pair of plain brown shoes, he saw her.

She was twenty-one when he and her mother had split; the very mother who was an accomplished marksman with the right shoe. At the time she was living away from home. They had tried having a relationship based solely on the relationship they had established as step-father and step-daughter and actually it had been going well. The ex, however, was not going to have it. The loyalty trump card had been played and one simple lie told�"by her�"just one big, simple lie had separated them forever.

To seal his fate, to punish him for what he had done, she had pulled her whole cards and they were pocket aces. She had filed a fictitious restraining order claiming domestic violence. He had seen it coming with the comment from before Thanksgiving, but had done nothing to prevent it and nothing to fight it except to stipulate in court that he would never come around again. How could he fight it, he owed her that one, didn’t he?

“She walked up to me in the store and I froze.” Robert’s chin was trembling on the verge of tears. “I couldn’t move. I just stood there staring into the face of this girl that I loved more than anything.” His hand moved to wipe his runny nose and the defiant tears that insisted on running down his face.

“Finally, I managed a weak, ‘hi’, and her eyes squinted, went dark and then she looked me square in the face and said, ‘Do I know you?’ and she turned and walked away.”

That was the day Robert decided he wasn’t long for this world.

The train rumbled on and on. Nothing was said between them for several uncomfortable minutes. Then she turned on him.

“Who do you think you are that you can just decide to end your own life?” Her countenance was stern and knowing. She was sitting full upright in her chair now and Robert realized that he hadn’t noticed how tall she really was. She seemed to be looking fully down on him as a mother would with her six year old child.

“I know who you are.” The Woman stated. “You’re the reason I’m here.”

“I’m sorry,” Robert began, “do we…? Have we met before?”

“No. We’ve never met.” She looked out the window into the darkness that was the northern New Mexico desert. At this time on this train it was only blackness. “I’m here because I can’t be where you are. I’m here because…” She didn’t finish, instead she reached over and touched his check with her ice cold hand and Robert knew no more.

Robert heard an echo of a voice coming from behind him. He felt tired and confused. Where am I, he thought, what am I…?

“SIR!” Came a loud voice behind him

Robert turned to see a young man in a red vest staring at him. His oversized named tag declared him to be, Tony, and that he was, indeed, Safety Certified.

“Wake up, sir! We’re at the end of the line in Belen. What’s your stop?” The young man asked then added, “Man, you musta crashed hard.”

“Where’s the woman who was sitting with me?” Robert rubbed his eyes hard and was surprised to find a scratch of paper in his hand.

“No one was sitting with you, sir”, Tony answered. “You crashed as soon as you sat down. You need to get off the train because this is the end of the line. Maybe you can get a cab.” This last part he said as he turned his back and walked away shaking his head.

Robert ignored the conductor�"this must have been who he was�"and turned his attention to the paper in his hand. It was a receipt, his receipt from Home Depot now torn into four pieces. Why do I have this, he thought. Robert knew he always pitched receipts in the trash on the way out of the store.

He laid it out on the table and puzzled it back together. What he read made his blood run cold:

Nylon Rope - 10 feet $7.99 - NO SALE.

Epilogue

Robert stared at the rope. It was laying in his garage right where he had left it six months ago. He hadn’t seen it since the day he talked to the woman on the train. For some reason he could not explain, he hadn’t thought of it since that day either. The dream had brought it all back.

In the dream the rope was soft like warm cotton. He spun the knot the requisite thirteen wraps then slung it around his neck and mounted the chair. Robert’s mind was clear and determined. He looked straight ahead intending to kick the chair out and release himself from this world and then She materialized through his garage door and was walking briskly towards him wearing a look of mean determination. He thought she meant to stop him, to save him from himself and was surprised to find he was relieved.

As he reached out for her, she kicked the chair out from under him.

Robert woke up coughing, choking and screaming. As he caught his breath in the darkness of his room, the conversation he had with her on the train came back to him in a rush.

He spent the next few months riding on different routes of the train. He asked people about her, but no one seemed to remember seeing her, or anyone who looked like her on the train.

Then one night he saw her moving through the cars as he looked down the stairs onto the middle tier of the train he liked to call the mezzanine level. He got up and ran down the stairs. As he hit the floor he knocked over a nice young man in a red vest.

“Hey, look out!” The man exclaimed.

“Sorry, excuse me; I need to talk to that woman.”

“Well you can’t go through there.” The young man said, wiping his hands on his vest.

“Why?” Robert was out of breath.

“Because if you go through that door you’ll fall off the back of the train”

Robert was confused, he was sure he saw the woman go through that door. “A woman in a brown dress just went through that door and I have to talk to her.” He insisted.

The young man went pale. He took Robert by the arm and sat him down. “Look, you didn’t see anyone.” His eyes darted around cautiously. “A year and a half ago this train ran over a woman near Bernalillo. They say she was wearing a brown dress when she was killed. They also, say she’s on this train, you know… On this train”