Ed saw her, like a vision, through the tubular chaos of congested bodies, standing and sitting and swaying in an old train that trundled its weary way deep into the deserts of Northern Mexico. She was iridescent, with bare white arms and a slender figure. Her broad ivory forehead seemed to glow and was crowned with a tiara of tumbling maple tresses. She stood by the window observing the simultaneous advance and retreat of the arid mysterious desert.
Ed moved towards her through the jostling bodies of families, old women, sullen solitary men with mustaches. He had been on the train for 6 hours already, heading to a small town to seek a vision, to seek more, to cease seeking, to expand a scope of seeing through being, of doing without knowing or needing to know, why. His friend Josh had scrawled directions to a town called Wadley on a bar napkin in his jean pocket: “Take a right at the Neon Cross, walk 3 miles and you’ll find the hostel, hopefully.”
Ed eased himself next to her and over the rush of wind through the window and the sounds of steel wheels on tracks he spoke to her in English. She turned and looked at him, a distant and perplexed look on her face. Ed leaned closer and smelled her scent mingling with the heat and aromas of tortillas, rice and beer, and the coal smell of soot and grease from the train. The crease in her neck at her shoulder was wet, and the light hairs above her lip covered in sweat, and Ed looked into eyes that were as green as malachite stone.
“Me llamo Eduardo, y como te llamas?” he said, this time in Spanish.
“Me llamo Emmanuella,” she said. Ed detected a foreign accent. She was French.
It was a strange feeling. The tension and movement and uncertainty, a bizarre trip taking twists and turns, opening portals of opportunity and fantasy, far from a reality of job, family and home town. The train rumbled and shook and everyone on it swayed and leaned with its incessant off beat rhythm.
He stared into her eyes and knew he was in love with her. They spoke in broken English, Spanish and French, as the train tumbled forward. She said she was traveling with three other Frenchmen who were somewhere in the car ahead.
Ed wanted to take her away with him. He felt the insanity of the idea butting heads with the visceral reality that she might actually come with him and wander for a spell through the sacred and magical lands of this Mexico.
He asked her, “Quiere viajar conmigo?” Do you want to travel with me? She hesitated, smiled briefly, taken aback, her green eyes shimmering with an inner light. Just as she parted her lips to speak, one of her companions came through the sticky jostling sea of sweaty bodies and gave her a big kiss on the cheek and a possessive hug. He rattled off something in French and looked at Ed. The guy knew, he sensed it, like rival animals in heat hovering around a potential mate. Ed shook his hand as Emmanuella looked at him helplessly. What could she do? Her companion stuck around and Ed melted back a ways into the oozing mass of limbs and sweat. He watched her glowing by the window as the train carried on and on. He saw that she kept looking at him, almost furtively, as her companion did not leave her side. The other two guys joined her and after a while a Mexican dude produced a joint which they and others proceeded to smoke. Ed stayed back, far too frayed already to alter his mental like that. About a half hour later the train slowly came to a stop. Ed looked out a window and there was no station. It was dark. An official of the train, with a grey mustache and a cap, ordered Emmanuella and her three partners and the others off the train. Mexico is laid back but you’ve got to choose the right time and place just like anywhere else. Outside was pitch black and no town for miles. They made a feeble protest but the cap wearing man wouldn’t hear it. Ed took her place by the window and watched the motley crew walk down the stairs with their packs and stand with their bags in the one bright light from the train. It pulled away slowly, snorting and smoking and Ed leaned out the window and saw Emmanuella looking at him, her eyes blazing green in the darkness; they seemed to hang there as the train pulled away and the warm Mexican night swallowed them whole.
No comments:
Post a Comment