February Fever (5 page)

Seven

Of course the girl
at the Detroit Lakes train station clutching the Velveteen Rabbit wasn't Noel, and the doll wasn't Rabbie. Noel would be my age, if she were still alive. My eyes grew tight at the thought. I'd never thought of her as alive or dead. My brain had always been fixated on that last terror-filled image of her face and all the ways I'd let her down.

My parents never mentioned Noel to me after that summer, and I never asked. I thought about her less and less as the years went on. Sometimes I'd have nightmares about the man in the silver car, and I'd wake up thinking about Noel, and I always wished for the same thing.

I wished I had saved her.

I should have looked at the license plate. I knew my letters and numbers. I could have looked, and I could have remembered, and I could have saved her if I'd been smarter and braver.

The sound of the train whistle startled me back in the moment. I was surprised at the hot tears pushing against my eyelids. I blinked them away and waved back at the little girl who had sparked this whole memory. Her face lit up with a gap-toothed grin. Beyond the missing front teeth and the Velveteen Rabbit, she really didn't look much like Noel. My friend had been blond, and this girl was brunette. Noel had been petite, with a pointier chin.

And she'd been so courageous, so beautifully perfect and bossy and bold.

I tried to catch a last look at the girl's mom, the woman who had originally bumped into me, but she was wearing oversized sunglasses. Even so, I could make out a little of her profile. I was struck by how little mother and daughter resembled one another. Oh well. I didn't look much like my mom, either.

“Mira! The train!” Jed yelled into my ear. “The train!”

I jumped, thinking of
Fantasy Island
. Jed was too young to know who Tattoo was, so I spared him the rerun memories. The train was indeed firing up, a silver behemoth with smoke unfurling from its chimneys. The whistle blew again, and the crowd began to shuffle like anxious cattle. I struggled to push away thoughts of Noel, but remembering her had dusted me with sadness.

“You stay by the luggage, and I'll get Mrs. Berns,” I said.

Jed nodded happily, perched on his tippy-toes to get a better view of the train. He was as excited as I'd been earlier. My heart warmed a bit. He was such an amazingly upbeat person that he elevated the mood of everyone around him.

I located Mrs. Berns toward the rear of the station, which was easier to navigate now that everyone was crowding outside to get in line for the train or to see off loved ones. She was near the pop machine, a red-and-white, bubble-shaped, old-fashioned appliance that still dispensed glass bottles. It was in keeping with the style of the rest of the station, which was somewhere between “cool retro” and “college-boy basement apartment” in both appearance and smell. Plywood walls had been erected to create a corner office in what was otherwise an open space rimmed with benches, the walls lined with maps and schedules.

“Mrs. Berns!”

She glanced over at me. I realized an older gentleman was talking to her. It was funny because she usually went for the younger guys. This one was white-haired, pushing eighty least. Maybe she knew him from Battle Lake? She gave me the “just a minute” look, and so I pretended to read the
Why Train Travel Is Better
poster while she finished her business. I stood there for all of two minutes before she appeared at my side.

“Time to go?”

I glanced over at her, surprised she'd reached me so quickly, then back toward the soda machine. The old guy was still standing there. “That was fast,” I said. “Do you know him?”

“Name is Jack, he's traveling to Missoula, widowed, and wants to get in my pants.”

I raised my eyebrow. “You guys covered a lot of territory.”

“The important stuff, anyhow. But he's not my type. They get to be that age, once you get to the bedroom it's like trying to stick an oyster in a slot machine.” She pointed toward the door. “We better get on that train. It's not gonna wait for us.”

She turned on her heel without giving me time to process her comment. It was probably just as well. The less I thought about her sex life, the better, especially since it was often more interesting than mine—recent events being the notable exception.

I caught up with her near Jed. I balanced my suitcase in one hand and Kennie's package in the other and led the way to the back of the line. People were moving forward fluidly. When it came to our turn to board, I started to pull out my driver's license before I mounted the stepping stool.

“What're you doing?” the porter asked. He was in his late thirties, I would guess, and looked tired or strung out. His blue uniform was wrinkled though his porter's hat was crisp.

“Getting my identification.”

“Just get on the train.”

His rudeness gave me pause. “Don't you even need to see my ticket?”

“We get that once the train is moving.”

That seemed like incredibly lax security—anyone could get on or off at a stop—but I guess it was their party. I held up Kennie's package. “I'm transporting this for a friend. Where's the best place to store it?”

He stared over my shoulder like I was wasting his time and jerked a thumb toward the rear of the train.

“There's a storage area in back?” I asked glancing behind me. The line wasn't that long. We had plenty of time to board and still be ahead of schedule.

“Next!” he said, trying to push me up and into the train.

“Wait,” I said, anger burbling. “I need to store this package. Can you tell me where to go with it?”

He sighed as if I'd ask him to donate his spare kidney. “What is your seat number?”

Mrs. Berns popped her head up, inserting herself into the conversation. “We are in Sleeper Car Eleven, Room Two, you rude bastard.” She employed the same even tone she used to discuss the weather or order a meal. I still wasn't accustomed to a friend who spoke her mind, but boy did I enjoy it. “If you'd just answered her question like a normal human being, we'd already be out of your hair.”

The porter's eyes widened, and he had the good sense to take her words as the wake-up call she'd intended. “Sorry, ma'am. I'm pulling a double shift. The Car Twelve porter is sick, and so I haven't slept in twenty-eight hours.”

She held eye contact.

He grew paler, if such a thing was possible. “But that's no excuse, of course. Here. Let me take your package. I'll see that it gets to the storage car. Sleeper Car Eleven, Room Two, you said?”

“Yup, and that's more like it,” Mrs. Berns said, stuffing a five-dollar bill into his hand. Her creased face was lit by the most beautiful smile. “Buy yourself a shave and keep the champagne coming. I'm here to have a good time!”

The people in line behind her cheered.

I grinned. You would have too, if you'd been there.

Eight

“Did we accidentally get
on the ‘It's a Small World' train, rather than the ‘Normal Human Proportions' train?” Mrs. Berns asked, incredulous, on the threshold of Sleeper Car 11, Room 2.

I had to agree.

We'd jostled our way through three different train cars, all set up the same—two rows of comfy-looking chairs on one side, two rows on the other, and storage racks over both. It was promising, especially compared to airplane travel, at least what I knew of it from secondhand descriptions. The coach seats reclined to almost a 45-degree angle, at which point a foot rest sprang up. They each also had a dedicated table and cup holders, and several of them had outlets.

We'd dropped Jed off at his seat in Car 8, before heading back. When we reached Car 11, the aisle narrowed. Rather than running straight through center, the hall veered off to the right, leaving only windows on the right side and rooms on the left. A refrigerated cart stacked with mini champagne bottles stood at the head of the aisle.

Mrs. Berns grabbed four tiny bottles with her free hand. “Stuff some in your pockets.”

“You don't have to tell me twice.” I managed to juggle seven of the teensy bottles.

And then we made our way to Room 2.

And then Mrs. Berns slid open the door.

“It's bigger than a breadbox,” I offered helpfully.

She turned to glare at me. The room wouldn't even be considered big for a closet. About five feet wide, it contained a single window that displayed the industrial park of Detroit Lakes. Over the window a bunk was attached with a thin mattress, pillow, and blanket resting on it. Below that were two reclining chairs similar to those found in coach class. They faced each other, the foot rests almost touching. A table was attached to the bottom sash of the window.

A bathroom the size of a cupboard was to our left, and to the right, a storage cupboard half that size.

“I can't sleep here,” Mrs. Berns said. “Jesus H. Christ, Superman couldn't even
change
in here.”

I let out a long breath. “I love it.”

I wasn't lying. The room appeared cozy and safe with a clear exit. What more did a person need? Sure, maybe the fact that I'd barely survived a serial killer's attack in December and had taken up sleeping under my bed since had colored my perspective, but dang if I didn't want to marry this room. Hanging out here would be like playing fort with your best friend crossed with all the greatest parts of a road trip and none of the downsides. A wide grin cracked my face.

I opened the storage cupboard and tried to slide my small suitcase in. It wouldn't fit. Undeterred, I plunked it onto the overhead bunk. I took Mrs. Berns's luggage and did the same, and then with only a little huffing and elbow grease, maneuvered our small carry-ons into the cupboard. There also wasn't room for our winter coats, so I flung those over the backs of the reclining chairs, along with our purses.

“After you,” I said, indicating the chairs. I had to suck in to give her enough room to pass. She dug an elbow into my stomach before plopping into a chair.

“We better get started on the drinking,” she said, pulling a miniature bottle from her tracksuit. “Take five of these to even catch a buzz.”

Great plan. “One bottle each, and then we explore!”

She grimaced before taking a deep swallow. “Why are you so excited? This room is like a sardine tin, and we'll be as lucky as Larry if it smells that good come Portland.”

I opened my own bottle, savoring the tiny pop as the miniature cork flew to the ceiling and ricocheted off the walls. “It's an adventure! We can try new food while the world whisks by, we can play hide-and-go-seek, and”—my heartbeat picked up—“think of the people watching!” Train travel was right up my alley. Who knew?

I was taking another swig when a commotion erupted outside our door. It sounded like a scuffle, followed by a shrill voice.

“You didn't clean my room? Why not?”

I peeked out. Two people were crowded in the aisle. The high-
pitched speaker was Ms. Susan Wrenshall in her faux fur coat,
clutching her pink purse. She was cornering the porter Mrs. Berns had given a talking to. The man appeared resigned to his fate, so I guessed this wasn't his first rodeo with Ms. Wrenshall.

I cleared my throat. “It looks like we're going to be neighbors.”

I indicated the open door of the room they were standing in front of. I didn't want to focus Ms. Wrenshall's frustration on me, but I'd found that distracting a person having a hissy fit was often the best way to defuse a situation. Maybe I could divert her long enough for the porter to escape. He wasn't my best friend, but I'd worked my share of service jobs and recognized a soul in need when I saw one.

Her jaw clenched, and she looked unwilling to give up haranguing the cornered man. I didn't move. She finally had to acknowledge me.

“He said he'd clean my room,” she said by way of explanation.

The porter shook his head vigorously. “I'm sorry, Ms. Wrenshall, but that's not true. The porters make your bed in the morning and turn it down at night. I explained to you that any maintenance beyond that is your responsibility. I'm afraid I've been called on to help in the dining car besides taking over another sleeping car, so we're tremendously understaffed at the moment.”

I'd gone from thinking the guy was a jerk for how he'd treated me when I boarded to feeling sorry for him.

“How messy can your room get?” I asked her lightly. “My refrigerator is bigger than these cabins.” I leaned forward to peek into hers, but she backed into it like a hermit crab and tugged the door tight around her so I couldn't see in.

“Sorry,” she said. “I'd let you look in, but you can't trust anyone these days.”

It was an odd statement, and even more peculiar was her expression as she said it—as if she was scared.

I felt a familiar sensation, a hot weight dropping into my stomach, and it meant only one thing: something was not quite right with Ms. Wrenshall.

Nine

Once the train started
moving, at the porter's advice, Mrs. Berns and I settled into our chairs and read the materials describing the amenities available to us on our journey. Suddenly shy, I reached over and grabbed my purse.

“I got you a present. You know, to thank you for setting all this up.” Probably she'd lost any rights to it by tricking me onto a Valentine's train, but I was choosing to focus on the positive.

Mrs. Berns raised her bushy eyebrows. “Now you're cooking with Crisco. What is it?”

She leaned forward and we bumped foreheads. “Oof,” we said in unison.

I did not let the collision or the small space deter me. I continued my search, digging around until I came up with the two white boxes. I yanked them out and handed her one. “Ta-da!”

She grabbed for the box like a child, opened it, and dumped out the contents. It fell into her lap with a tiny thud. “What the helicopter?”

“It's a reading light designed to look like an eighties boom box! So if one of us wants to read and the other wants to sleep, we can.” I was initially too pleased with myself to note her expression. I'd been given the reading lights free at a library conference and been looking for the perfect place to use them. What better time? We could have the nerdiest slumber party in history. “See? You open this speaker, and the light comes on. You open this one, and there's a clamp so you can attach it to your chair or bed. You snap them shut, and voil
à
! You're back to a tiny boom box.”

I returned my attention to her face too slowly to anticipate the arm pinch.

“Read? This is the Valentine's train.” She tossed the gift back into my lap. “Unless you meant to say ‘boob box,' I've got no use for those.”

“I'll just stick it in your purse, then,” I said, refusing to let my mood sour. “You never know when you might need it.” After tucking the box into her bag, I returned to the pamphlet describing the train's amenities and soon discovered that because we were bunking in a sleeper car, all of our meals had been included in the cost of the trip.

My eyes widened. The words came out as a whisper. “We get to eat while we're in motion?”

Mrs. Berns rolled her eyes, an action she quickly abandoned as I discovered increasingly regular “train treasures.” My loudest moment of train travel excitement came when I discovered our itsy bitsy bathroom had a tiny shower and free, honey-scented soap. Mrs. Berns was on her third bottle of champagne by then. In all fairness, the bottles were a tenth the size of a regular one, and the woman could drink an Irishman under the table.

“Look!” I said after I returned to my chair, dropping the laminated information card and pointing out the window. “A deer!”

Judging by how fast cars passed us, the train was traveling around fifty miles an hour. Detroit Lakes had vanished, and we were now in open country. Western Minnesota in February is mostly prairie, occasional tufts of golden-brown grass peeping through the snow dunes.

“Are you twelve years old? There's deer all over the place back home. Do you want to draw me a picture of it, and I can stick it on the fridge?”

I snatched her champagne from her hand and took a swig before handing it back. “Mrs. Crabby-appleton, rotten to the core …”

“Excuse me for believing the advertising. I was told our cabin would be ‘roomy,' and I get to be pissy about that lie for as long as it takes.”

“Come on, grumbly bunny. Let's go explore! That'll cheer you up, and you'll see that we get to use the whole train. It's not like we're going to be stuck in this one room the whole time.” The irony was not lost on me that only an hour ago, being stuck in this one room the whole time and avoiding social interaction had been my exact plan and she was the one who'd been excited for this trip. Something about being on a train stoked my feeling of adventure, while the smallness of the transportation seemed to have the opposite effect on her.

“No,” she pouted.

Someone knocked at our door. I leaned over and slid it open without leaving my chair. It was a new porter, maybe the one who had been sick earlier. He was wearing the same uniform as the previous one, but he was older, maybe sixty, and African-American. He handed me a card.

“I took the liberty of making a dinner reservation for you two at seven thirty, immediately after we leave Fargo.”

I squealed. It was all I could do not to hug him. Someone had made a reservation for me to eat a free meal on a train! Well, a meal Mrs. Berns had already paid for, in any case. “Is the dining car just like it is in the old-fashioned Westerns?”

His lips twitched. “Fewer cowboys, ma'am, but I expect the food hasn't changed much.”

I smiled back, glancing down at his name tag. “Thank you, Reed. By the way, I'm Mira, and this is Mrs. Berns.”

He tipped his hat at both of us. “Nice to meet you, ladies. You can contact me with any problems, but I'm not assigned to your car. There's a nasty bug going around—nothing to worry about, but a lot of us staff are pulling different shifts. Might see you in the dining car. That's my regular. Otherwise, Sylvester is your porter, twenty-seven-year-old kid, a little impetuous, but not a bad sort. He handled boarding at the last stop, so you may have already met him.”

Reed tipped his hat again and moved on to Ms. Wrenshall's room, number 3. I got out of my chair to watch the action. Ms. Wrenshall didn't answer. I glanced to my right, at Room 1. I hadn't seen anyone go in or out. I stepped into the hall and spotted the
Do Not Disturb
placard hung over their curtained window. I wondered why Ms. Wrenshall hadn't used hers. She'd said, after all, that the porter, presumably Sylvester, had been getting her up at all hours. Maybe she was just crazy.

Reed walked toward the rear of the train, probably passing out dinner reservations to all the sleeper cars. I turned back to Mrs. Berns to re-implore her to explore with me. She was snoring softly in her chair.

“You should have just told me you needed a nap,” I said softly, unfolding a blanket from the closet to drape over her. I grabbed the
Do Not Disturb
sign from our closet, closed the door behind me, and stuck the placard in its slot on the door before heading to all the action.