Dinner With A Convict
My favorite
→ A trans-America trek via train from New York City to Flagstaff, Arizona.
The woman across from me in the diner car was enjoying her first beer of the adventure at four in the afternoon.
I seldom drink, she says.
Me neither.
And immediately upon saying so I wanted a beer. An ice cold one to bring out the hard facts. Things were on the upswing.
We were driving through absolutely delightful scenery. Castles and loons on lakes, green crusted mossy marshlands and east coast lush.
The woman was less scenic and more like a skeleton from some childhood horror movie with hair that seemed like it was born dyed, teeth and eyebrows that were not there at all and a jean jacket. Clasping the beer were bright purple fingertips and tattooed knuckles with crosses on them.
Beer overflow!
She says, addressing the unsightly foamy stain on the cater white tablecloths.
Hot dog overflow!
I say, as I rip open my packaged wiener and it squirts hello on my eyeglasses.
She asks me if I've been to college. I say yes, and she says it doesn't seem like it. I tell her it is because I haven’t watched a television in ten years. We agree TV is an educational portal to the world. We confess it is something we should do more often.
Outside there are water-skiers being pulled taught behind boats. It’s almost fall and the trees are feeling it. She’s watching Bionic Woman, the new season on a portable DVD player. America is turning on the charm outside and I could be in either one of their lives. Out there on the lake moving on a boat-instead of a train. Thinking about how we are all tied to something like Pig Pen and his company dirt. She recommends Chip Shop to me and twice fried cherry pie. She tells me she is adopted, just fought a ten year sentence in a woman’s homeless shelter, and won.
She raises her glass to a random passenger on the train
To fighting federal law! And winning!
She toasts. I congratulate her and asked how it feels. But she’s watching bionic woman. I’m writing in a yellow Wexford 70 sheet realizing this woman across from me is happy. And smart.
I admit when the train food car conductor placed us at the same table I was eager to re-seat myself with some more pleasant-faced, more regular folk. Which I did until I saw that hers was in fact the only table with an outlet.
Ashamed, I enjoy her company. The train waiter is having a bad day, or a bad decade-and the more interesting the conversation gets the more sweet revenge I feel against his plan to ruin my upswing or my hot dog dinner alike.
Bionic Woman is smart
She says without request for response sporting pink headphones. Pink headphones like the asshole kids at union square wanted to wear underground while walking as slow as summer tourists in city July.
She {Bionic Woman} says there is no Mr. Right, there’s just Mr. Right now.
We drive past a graveyard.
My territory!
She explains, and I accept this as one would, not questioning the fact that she was clearly raised from the dead not too long ago and still had a bit of bringing to life to do.
Without me inquiring, she elaborates. She has a degree in paranormal studies, and an IQ of 178. I believe her, no matter her scary face and gangling appearance-the woman is sincerely sane.
UFO’s and stuff? I say.
No, real stuff-stuff that it takes. A field that only a few are able to enter. Ghosts, possessions of demons. It takes someone like me to do jobs like that.
I was immediately interested. I’d been known to need a demon-getter-outer. I wondered if she had a business card, what her rates were and if she was currently taking on any cases.
I wanna ask her if she has any expertise with dreams,if dead people have them, and if, when I have them about dead people, it means anything.
But she’s off. With her second beer to another part of the train. She departs telling me that she prefers hanging out with dead people. Ouch?
I find them to be more funny, and more interesting.
Oh I fully agree with that.
She’s going to the west, like me. And I’m sure there will be more chances to hear from her later on in the journey. Its common to think we will always have time to do things later on in life when we won’t.
I can hear her getting louder on the other side of the car. When I had asked her how the woman’s shelter was she gave me a scared face.
“I’d rather be on my tempurpedic”, she said.
Me too.
I figure most people who take a train across long distances are either astoundingly patient or really, really scared of planes. We can celebrate one thing together and that’s land.
There are two major lessons I learned in the past year.
- Life is important
- Death is interesting
Oh, and apparently twice-fried cherry pie, rocks.
[accompanying photos found here]