This story describes an actual incident that occurred on the train between St. Louis and Chicago in October, 1986. It was written down some time during the following six months.

ROMEO IN JOLIET

I saw her first in the station in St. Louis, waiting for the train to Chicago. She was walking back and forth, her thin lips pressed together seriously. She seemed the very picture of the hard businesswoman, dressed in a light blue suit, a blouse with straight pleats, a scarf knotted around her neck like a tie. She carried a leather bag and looked always straight ahead. Her dark-blonde hair was tightly coiled on top of her head. Maybe it was this, or perhaps her height, or perhaps the shape of her nose, with its slightly outcurved fleshy tip, that reminded me of a girl I knew in high school.

It seems they always remind you of a girl from high school. Something about the imagination of the heart at that age, that a shape impressed on it then, when it is still hot, never leaves. In those years I loved—always from afar—a girl with dark brown hair and blue eyes, and still the sight of blue eyes under brown hair sets me longing. This one was not like that. She looked hard, like her model in my mind, all business, unapproachable. This would be a woman, I thought, musing on her and not on my book, who would never bend, who would always have a reason for everything. She disdains all lesser mortals, especially men who are not wealthy, strong, and sure of themselves: all that I am not.

But even if she had looked approachable, I don't do things like that. I pushed the thought down. I didn't even see where she got on the train.

I don't remember what book I was reading then, some Victorian novel or mystery, or if I had tried to use the time profitably with a scholarly journal. But once the train had passed through Alton, into the countryside of Illinois, I looked up often, watching the country pass.

The land of Illinois is rich and flat, or gently swelling. That time of year, the stubble covering the harvested fields lets fertile brown show through. The track cuts straight on its low embankment; everywhere you see the fields stretch to where the groves of trees wait blue on the horizon. There are houses, sometimes, among the trees, and sometimes a tractor passes down the county road. Then there are the towns, each with an elevator backing on the track. It is a world the passenger train, intent on the hearts of cities, does not touch. As we pass through it is a pattern, the dry cornstalks of autumn in flashing lines, the long straight roads, the smoky trees in the distance, and everywhere the rich inviting soil.

Inside the car, beside the rhythmic sounds of the train on the track, all was silent. My fellow passengers slept, or read, or listened through their headphones. A few fortunate not to travel alone whispered to their companions. Past Bloomington, where the track follows I-55 and the train races cars through the still and alien farmland, I got up to go to the club car for coffee. I wanted more than coffee; I wanted to see people outside the storage room of the coach.

I got my coffee and sat down. Across from me, were four young people around a table covered with plastic cups, beer cans, and ashtrays full of cigarette butts. The two young men, sitting by the aisle, wore slacks and knit shirts. Their hair was fashionably cut, a little over the ears, combed without parting. Their two companions sat by the windows, one short and dark-haired, but the other was the woman I had noticed in St. Louis. Strands of hair had escaped the coil and trailed about her ears; the scarf was undone, its knot askew; her face was mobile as she laughed. As I had thought, the tip of her nose moved as she talked. Like the others, she was drinking beer from the little cup, and she held a cigarette from the pack of Salems at her elbow. Although I was about six feet away, their conversation was unintelligible, not because I could not hear it, but because it appeared to consisted entirely in allusion and innuendo, a few words of a joke sufficing for the whole. They were all laughing heartily, although, from what I could hear, they were strangers to one another, having only met on the train. As I drank my coffee I glanced at them now and then, observing as one might observe some fairy dance in the woodland, fearful of disturbing by my clumsy presence.

As the train slowed into Joliet, the two women stood up to get off. The tall blonde picked up the jacket to her suit and brushed it off as they bid their new acquaintances a polite, laughing, somewhat tipsy, farewell. By the time the train had stopped, they were gone.

We had pulled out of Joliet before the two young men spoke. They drank their beer philosophically as the train swayed from side to side and picked up speed. This time I could hear and understand all that they said.

"Hey, those girls were all right," said the one who had been sitting next to the short dark-haired girl.

"Yeah, I'd say, all right," said his friend. "Lots of laughs."

"That one with you was something, wasn't she?"

"Yeah, she was something," agreed the companion of the tall blonde. "She really was. You didn't see where I had my hand."

"Under the table, you mean."

"Yeah, under the table. She really loved it."

"I wondered why she got so quiet all of a sudden."

I finished my coffee and went back to the coach.

After Joliet, the train moves out of farmland toward Chicago. The houses have old cars in their driveways and broken lumber along the chain-link back fences. Chicago invades the countryside along the railway line. There are junkyards, factories, warehouses along the track, built there to be near the train. Into the midst of clean and quiet suburbs the train draws the noise and ruin of the city, while the city is still far away.