A Warm Pretzel

The bartender asked if I wanted a drink. He was a short blond guy, a middle-aged surfer type, face hidden behind big glasses. A drink I couldn't turn down. It was like being called to something higher, like Mount Shasta, all 14,000 feet of it upswept from the tracks, so close that a jogger might sprint to the top. Those white stripes must be glaciers.

A Virgin Mary, I told him. He opened a small can of Bloody Mary mix, poured it over some ice. To the morning, I said remaining stockstill, afraid to release my one-handed grip on the swaying bar and lift the drink to my lips. Over there, said the bartender. I slid into a booth. He sat down opposite.

Nice train, I said. Oh yes, this was the Coast Starlight, Amtrak's best train. Recently upgraded, he said, thanks to a guy at Amtrak West. Brian Rosenwald. He had thought up this Parlour Car. Did I know it had a movie theater downstairs? The diner was a real one, with food cooked fresh in a kitchen. Brand new sleeping cars. Even a kiddie car for families. Rosenwald's idea was to take a slow scenic train, fancy it up and you'd have a land cruise. Like an ocean cruise but without shuffleboard. I told the bartender that I could see it working, this land cruise idea. He said the train had been selling out. It's kind of late, I said, six hours. He sighed. Yes, there were some problems with Union Pacific. They owned the tracks.

Oh ho ho laughter further down the lounge car, and there she was with her gray stripe. She had an elderly couple in her thrall and seemed lost in extroverted merriment. Peeking over the top of my Virgin Mary, I watched them tying up three of the armchairs, and barely looking at the view. She'd found her elderly suckers for the next few hours. How could she keep talking, that woman? A sweet roll was all I'd gotten from her. Calculating and holding all the cards, as women do. I felt it rising in my chest, a jabbing urge to do her harm. Also rising, nausea of my own bile.

My bladder started pinging as Shasta's side peaks came into view. The bartender helped me to my feet. How stunted, my life of urine. En route to peeing I would miss the young pines in dead lava rivers, the white shard of the peak, all so exquisite and turning with the tracks. I missed everything by choosing coffee over life, by not using a catheter and a leg bag like a sensible quadriplegic. Bad choices. I frantically crutched, keeping close to the table edges. No time. Pass her, force a smile, keep going, or risk going in my pants. Pee might flood me anyway. A urinary reminder of my breakfast-invitation cowardice and shame of 50-year-old woman failure. I raised my head to flash her a smile. She was gone, her seat empty, the elderly couple staring out the window. I must have driven her away.

Not quite in time to the toilet. Fuck it. No returning to the Parlour Car with a wet crotch. I continued through the narrow corridors. In my compartment, I flopped on the bed. The window shades were up, and Mount Shasta was down if I wanted to look. Which I didn't. I was tired of things going by outside. This was my room, and I was inside. And with a few minutes staring at the Amtrak ceiling, I had drifted to where inside always was.

* * *

Early evening in Sproul Plaza, the December dark already black as the asphalt, I sprinted to my bicycle. Throngs of people surged across the Berkeley campus, horns honked, a red-faced evangelist yelled his last for the day. Some impulse made me stop running. I stood by a tree, as though awaiting instructions. An impulse, mildly foolish, to linger in the early evening, to savor something in the enclosing dark, before bicycling away. In months this would all be over with graduation, whatever that meant. I had no plans. Which was fine, because something would happen. Something always did. I recognized this as a new feeling, trust in the future, trust period.

Lights spilled from the student union. The night sky sparkled and the scent of pretzels heating in a cart at Bancroft Avenue suffused everything with yeast and promise. I had nothing to do, standing by the tree, but I had no reason to move. I was a senior now, and I had a claim on this evening and everything around me. Despite the aching failure that I had hardly had a date in college, I could stand straight. Something like confidence had settled in my chest. Even girls, with their unpredictable warmth and terror, seemed almost within reach. Now for minutes at a time, I could talk to them, eye to eye, face to face, and maybe soon, body to body.

The stand was so close, and a moment like this called for a pretzel. And even if the French's mustard wasn't good, there was too much salt, and the thing was gone in an instant, it proved to be a fine instant. Enough to start me pedaling home. I hiked my book bag over my shoulder and caught a glimpse, an absolutely positive glimpse, of that girl. All svelteness and black tights and leotard top, the sexy intellectual, one hand on her hip, talking to someone in front of the Student Union. Oh, well. I unlocked my bike.

It wasn't as though we didn't know each other. We had tried out for a campus political play, Vietnam Follies. I had stood in front of an empty classroom with a mimeographed script, portraying a US Marine. She, Judith, had played a Saigon prostitute. I had dominated and abused her, while she strutted and flounced. Our audition lasted two minutes. Outside in the hallway, she became surprisingly unlike the part, her eyes, warm, open and steady. Mesmerized, I fumbled for conversation. See you around. And now I was seeing her around. No, I couldn't do it. Besides, I'd just unlocked my bicycle. But I could walk it, walk the bike over to her, and chat. Who knew?

Now I was doing that, me walking and the bike rolling, approaching her, the impossible. Hello. Oh, hello. She recognized me, even remembered my name. I would bolt right now, except she was laughing about not getting the part. We?re not for Broadway, she said. We?thrilling. We?re not even a sideshow at a peace rally, I said. Laughter being wonderful. Especially from a thin faced Jewish beauty. And maybe we both had thin faced Jewish beauty. This came to me now, the possibility of my own big-nosed handsomeness, hitting like a drug, exhilarating and preposterous. Though I was already running out of the next thing to say, already running out of nerve. But running was okay, particularly with a bike, which made you look like you were on your way. So, why don't we do coffee some time? And her face brightening said it all, so much that mine flushed and reddened in the darkness. Quickly tearing off scraps of paper from our notebooks, numbers exchanged. See you, see you. And that was it. I walked on, bike clicking.

Now I was heading back to my rented room in a house full of rented rooms. I leapt off the bike, grabbed my keys. Then leapt back on. There wasn't room in the rooms. I pedaled up into the hills, getting higher with each block. The hills did that, they took you up. And the higher you got, the more you looked down. And what was down was small and manifold and singing with night. And I was singing too, old songs from my parents' record player. I was surprised that I still had the songs, even though the records were gone. Where were the records? This was something I could talk to Judith about. On our date.