Dodging Trains (2 page)

PAISLEE

Y
ou know what sucks?

Train stations.

Train stations have the power to distort lives. When I was twelve, my brother and I started getting on trains to our grandparents’, pushed out of the way while Mom and Dad exchanged blame, fought over why they’d gotten married, and who loved each other the least.

Years later, they concluded the family thing didn’t work. Dad and Cugs should move out, they decided. Cugs was too much like Dad, the only thing they agreed on.

Dad and Cugs have the same thick, floppy hair. Same droopy eyes and nose slightly bent to the left and uneven nostrils shaped like giant teardrops. Cugs’ laughter rolled out easier than Dad’s though, while Dad’s voice boomed louder than Cugs’ when he yelled. I miss my brother’s laughter.

In a world where cars rule, train stations can still keep kids trapped until it’s time to ship them off to wherever they don’t want to be. Train stations are like World War II. They sent kids to the countryside back then, to be safe from the bombings in London. I told my brother once, but he was too little to understand. He laughed, saying we live in the US, not in England, and that World War II was over a thousand years ago.

But what if its effects still linger? Those pictures of parents waving from platforms and already missing their babies. Of heartbroken children crying through open train windows. I’m sure those trains in London formed the children’s lives, maybe
their
children’s lives.

Trains aren’t as bad as train stations though. Except the trains in Germany during World War II. The Nazis ushered Jews onto them and shipped them off to concentration camps. Those kids, adults—mothers, fathers, grandparents—they didn’t know their destinies. All they knew was that they were sent off to work somewhere. Later, in the camps, the Nazis starved them to death or killed them in gas chambers, and though these are not my memories, homemade film clips of them often surge in my head.

But trains aren’t to blame for who I’ve become. Train stations are.

Somehow I’ve turned twenty-one already. Twenty-one-year-old Paislee Marie Cain, who finished high school with a scream of mercy, who’ll never move out of gossip-town Rigita so high up in America that the tendrils of our snow graze glaciers on the wrong day.

I’m that girl, the one who’ll never see her brother again, or India, the original Hall of Mirrors in Versailles, her father, or the glassblower museum at Murano. I’m the town slut who works at the only place in this sleepy white dot on the map where no one judges her: Win’s Hall of Mirrors, hidden in the nook beyond a hole-in-the-wall falafel storefront on Broad Street.

The Al Admony restaurant is tiny compared to Old-Man’s mirror factory beyond. We used to show our products there, attracting customers, but Old-Man doesn’t need a display; his obsessed customers mail-order, web-order, even drive into town to see him hand-make his angel-gilded, one-of-a-kind pieces of art.

Old-Man can take you to Heaven with the beauty of his craft, and our customers leave knowing they’ll cause bliss-filled havoc wherever they hang their acquisitions. Yes, Old-Man’s mirrors, once you’ve stared into one, become an obsession.

I could never afford his mirrors—they’re too expensive to make for him to sell cheap—but for my twenty-first birthday, Old-Man gifted me a piece I didn’t see him make. He surprised me by hanging it in my loft studio above the factory and didn’t know what to do when I cried. See, people don’t do things like that for me without asking for favors.

Old-Man names all of his pieces. I don’t recall the name he’d given mine, because to me it came without thinking; my
Murano
lights the sun in my space.

I work hard here, in Win’s Hall of Mirrors, from within my fume hood and my protective suit. This place is my sanctuary. Whenever I shed my gear, I’m on the phone and the computer, doing Old-Man’s marketing and keeping up with his website.

I’m appreciated in the three-man business he runs, and every day I thank the gods for giving me this job. I’m good at it. One could say I excel at it, and on the phone, on the Internet, no one knows who I am.

But where Win’s Hall of Mirrors is light and hope, train stations are violence and darkness. They’re the crushing of futures and dreams and self-respect. I know this because Cugs and I frequented the Sherrelwood Railway Station for years on our way to and from our grandparents’.

Only once did I go alone. Only once did the bathroom stall door get pushed open by an unknown man craving twelve-year-old virginities. And only once did an unknown man tell me he’d kill my family if I squealed.

But that was a long time ago. Nine years to be exact. By now, the shivering, sleepless nights have become rare, and I’ve stopped believing that all men are monsters. It took effort, but I accomplished that on my own, and I am proud.

You have to take the bull by the horns. If you stare death down without flinching, you end up learning things, like that you’re gorgeous. That you’re sexy. That you’re irresistible. That you can bat eyelashes, pucker stained-red lips, and draw a corner of your mouth up in ways that rule a man’s world.

To me, men aren’t dangerous unless they’re in railway stations with twelve-year-old girls they’ve frightened stiff.

I seek them now. Instead of stealing my power, they squash what once happened. Over and over they squash it, and I welcome their caresses, their heated looks, and the gleam in their smiles when they ask me if it’s good for me too.

“Let’s get
Eden
into her frame and we’re done for the day,” Old-Man shouts over the high-pressure setting of the water. It rushes over the mirror like liquid silk, erasing the last chemical stains he wants gone. When he lifts the mirror, the sun takes over the room, and Mack straightens next to me too, hands on his hips, and the two of us exchange contented looks.

“She’s a beauty,” Mack confirms what the three of us know. “One of your best, Old-Man.”

Old-Man just grunts, but his upper lip disappears beneath his salt-and-pepper whiskers, and I know he’s hiding a smirk.

The frame depicts Eden, hence the name of the mirror itself. It’s lavish and decadent, bursting with gold fruits and songbirds. When I first started working here at the age of seventeen, I thought,
Who the heck would buy something so over the top?
At each pompous new piece Old-Man created, I thought this.

I don’t anymore.

Most of Old-Man’s creations are customized pre-orders, but when we have time, he’ll indulge in ripping a beauty straight from his fantasy world. Since he’s not actively trying to sell these, they always, always go for more than the custom orders.

“Want to grab dinner?” Mack asks me as we’re tidying up for the night. He’s not blunt with Old-Man around. Mack and I have a tacit understanding, because my after-hours life saddens Old-Man.

“Okay, sure,” I say, and his eyes ignite and skim my body before he grabs his jacket.

“I’m actually hungry,” he tells me on the way up my stairs.

“Do you have any food?” he asks while he lowers my pants and puts his hand between my thighs. I’m twisting the key in the door lock. The power I have over Mack right now makes my heart bounce.

“No, not really. Just pickles and applesauce. I need to get to the store.”

“Ah never mind.” He works quietly on my shirt once we’re inside. Hits the light switch so he can see me. “I’ll just pick up a falafel on the way home.”

I don’t answer. I just close my eyes and enjoy his eager hands. I know the feel of them well. They’re the same every time, gentle and to the point, finding what he wants and making sure he doesn’t hurt me when he joins us somewhere in my apartment. It’s easy and fast. We’re friends. Sometimes I come too. It makes him happy when I do.

“Thanks, Paislee, you’re a lifesaver,” he says as he pulls his jeans back up and brings me my robe from the bathroom door hanger. He starts to put it on me, which makes me smile. Mack is nice.

“I can dress myself,” I say.

“Right, okay,” Mack chuckles, embarrassed. “See ya tomorrow.” His hand goes up in greeting on the way out the door, and I wave back, all fingers on one hand fluttering.

“Sure, tomorrow.”

“Geez, look at that
!” Rob, one of Mom’s regulars, hollers and points at the TV monitor. “First the guy deserts town and now, all of a sudden, he wants to be our mayor? The nerve of some people!” He rocks on his barstool, butt cheeks spilling over the sides. My mom twists for a glance, used to Rob’s tactless exclamations. She dries a wine glass and hooks it above the counter with the others.

“It’s his duty to become our mayor, Rob. And that’s the inauguration they’re talking about. Plus he does live in town again,” Mom says, and Rob hisses quietly through his teeth.

“Bah, you know Mayor Thompson won again, not that guy, Margaret. He should just take his foreign wife and go somewhere else where they want him.”

“Should I remind you again what happened?” Mom asks, voice patient like she is with Rob. “Old Cyril Thompson passed away.”

“So?” Rob huffs, not finding a better comeback.

“So the city director of law becomes the mayor for the remainder of his term. He’s a good person, Rob,” Mom says and scoots another draft across the counter at the crook of his finger.

“Thanks. You’re putting it on my tab, right?”

“Yes, but this is the last one. It’s the end of the month, darling, and time to pay up.”

New hiss from Rob. “It’s like the new guy’s celebrating Cyril’s death now. What the heck, Margaret. The rest of the country must think Rigita’s nuts.”

“Cyril died two months ago,” Mom soothes him. “We
wanted
a party, a real inauguration. We even voted on whether or not we wanted it. You know this.”

“I think he’ll be good too,” I chime in, my statement upsetting my stomach. “And we did grieve over Cyril. That was a big funeral.”

Mom’s fellow bartender, Cindy, glares at me. I’m used to it. Women in this town hate me. They complain about me sleeping with their men, but if they asked, I’d tell them it wouldn’t happen without their men needing me.

“Miss Know-It-All,” Cindy mutters, surprising me. Then again, if she spoke to customers the way she did to me in high school, the owner would fire her.

I respond by sliding a slow look over a preppy boy who started frequenting Ivy’s Café a week ago. Cindy’s been eyeing him. She’s too shy and not much of a looker as they say, so why not? Payback rocks.

“They took over the Coral Mansion,” Rob informs us, still scowling.

“Duh, Robert,” Cindy retorts, mad at me for eye-flirting with Preppy Boy and taking it out on Rob. “It’s where the mayor lives.”

“Yeah, but Cyril’d lived there for a decade, and that’s just not right.”

“Well, he lived there because he was the mayor for a decade,” another, more patient customer says. “And Cyril doesn’t need a house anymore. Does the new mayor have little ones?”

“He doesn’t.” Mom pushes a dishrag over the trails of beer Rob leaves on the counter. The man never uses his coaster. “Ulises and Silvia are my age and have one grown son. I doubt he’ll be moving back to Rigita.”

“Yeah,” I add, swallowing a small tremble in my throat. “He’s a mixed martial arts fighter, and his name is Keyon.”