Marcia Talley - A Quiet Death

‘Cuisine?’

‘Anything but fried.’ I mentally reviewed the items on offer at the numerous prepared foods bars of the upscale supermarket, factored in the heat of the day and concluded, ‘Salads! That’s the ticket.’

‘Will do.’

‘And wine. I could use some right now, in fact. A bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. Well chilled. With a straw.’

‘Hold that thought,’ Paul said, and rang off.

I stared at the screen on my iPhone for a moment, wondering if I had time for a game of Bejeweled, when the guy sitting next to me stirred. ‘You like it?’

I turned to face him. ‘My iPhone, you mean?’

He laid his bundle across his knees. ‘Been thinking about getting one, but I’ve got Verizon.’

‘Apple’s working on that,’ I said, noticing that his shopping bag carried the Julius Garfinkel & Co label, a landmark Washington, DC department store that had gone out of business more than twenty years before. ‘My mother sent me off to college wearing clothes we bought at Garfinkel’s,’ I told him, indicating the bag. ‘Back when dressing for dinner meant something more refined than pushing a tray through a cafeteria line while wearing clean jeans and an Eminem T-shirt.’

‘I know what you mean,’ he said, dark eyes serious under pale, shaggy brows that marched across his forehead like caterpillars. ‘Nobody’s got standards any more. Although I can’t wait to get out of this suit.’ He plucked at his shirt collar, open wide at the neck. His tie, navy blue with minute red and yellow stripes, had already been removed, rolled up and tucked into the breast pocket of his jacket, where it peeked out like a plump sausage. ‘Jesus. If the heat doesn’t break soon, people are going to start going postal. Is it always this hot in September?’

‘Rarely,’ I chuckled. ‘Usually we go straight from summer into winter, skipping the business of fall altogether, except for a few perfectly splendid days in mid-October which make one ridiculously happy to be alive.’ I paused for a moment. ‘Do you sail?’

‘Me?’ He managed a smile. ‘Never. Boats don’t agree with my stomach.’

‘Cruising the Chesapeake Bay in October is one of life’s greatest pleasures. We don’t have a sailboat,’ I added, ‘but my sister-in-law does, and she’s always looking for crew. I provide ballast,’ I said with a grin.

‘How long is this heat supposed to last?’ my seat-mate wanted to know.

I shrugged. ‘Couple of days? Wait a minute.’ While he observed over my shoulder, I tapped the weather app on my iPhone. When the five-day display appeared, I turned the tiny screen in his direction. ‘Looks like we’re back to normal on Friday.’

‘What’s normal?’ my seat-mate asked as he watched the Cheverly station roll by outside the window.

‘Low to mid-seventies,’ I informed the back of his head, which was covered with a tangle of sandy curls.

‘Huh,’ he replied.

The four o’clock Acela Express screamed past on its way north, sucking the air out of our car in one greedy, pneumatic gasp. My seat-mate jumped like he’d been shot, then settled back into his seat and continued staring silently out the window, our deeply intellectual conversation about the weather clearly over. I zoned out, mesmerized by the blur of passing scenery and the comforting chubunk-chubunk-chubunk of the wheels along the tracks.

As we pulled into the station at Landover, my seat-mate stood, tucked his package under his arm, and eased past my legs into the aisle. I thought he was preparing to get off, but when the train rolled out of the station again, he remained standing in the aisle near the door, grasping a metal pole with one hand and his Garfinkel’s shopping bag with the other.

My iPhone peeped. A text message from my daughter, Emily, asking if I’d RUN C’PL TOM. I was mentally rearranging the next day’s schedule so I could drive my grandchildren to school, when a voice from the front of the car screamed, ‘Oh, no!’

Startled, I looked up just in time to see my seat-mate vanish into a cloud of dust, glass, seats and carpeting that rolled up the aisle toward me in an undulating wave – ten feet, five feet, four, three – before sucking me into the undertow.

The squeal of metal against metal, a teeth-rattling jolt. The train rocked once, twice, before settling nose up and tilted to one side with a mournful, metallic groan. For a few moments, there was utter silence.

And then the chaos began.

What had just happened?

Stunned, I lay on my side in a bed of debris and broken glass and tried to make sense out of it. The train must have hit something. Had we derailed?

Dust filled the air, thick as smoke. I coughed and tried to roll over. Why was I looking up into a cloudless blue sky?

When we left the Landover station there had been no more than a dozen passengers remaining in our car; New Carrollton was the end of the line. Now they all seemed to be crying out:

Help me! Please! My foot’s stuck!

Baby! Where are you, baby? Are you OK?

Jessie! Jessie! Oh my God!

Somebody open the door! Get us out of here!

I eased myself into a crawling position and tried to move toward the nearest exit, but when I pressed my left palm against the carpet, a lightning bolt shot up my arm and across my shoulders, a pain so intense that I fell sideways against what remained of one of the seats, now lying bottom side up, blocking a pair of exit doors. I didn’t have to look to know my left arm was broken, but I inspected it anyway, fearful I’d find bones sticking out through my skin. There was no blood, thank goodness, but my arm was bent in a way Mother Nature never intended: I appeared to have a second wrist midway up my forearm. ‘This can’t be good,’ I muttered, drawing the damaged arm closer to my body.

‘Do you need help, ma’am? I heard you scream.’

I was eye-to-eye with a pair of combat boots that I’d last seen jutting out into the aisle from the seat behind me. I looked up, way up, into the face of their owner, a lanky black man who appeared miraculously uninjured, save for a one-inch gash on his stubbly chin. Sweat glistened on his cheeks, beaded his forehead. He wore a green, tan and gray camouflage uniform, and the Velcro patch on his chest told me he was a staff sergeant. A second patch over his right pocket said: Boyer. I tried to answer, but dust seemed to be coating my vocal cords. ‘Broken arm,’ I croaked.

‘Can you walk?’

‘I think so.’

Sergeant Boyer bent down, extended his arm. Using my good arm, I grasped his forearm tightly and held on while he stood, pulling me gently to my feet. ‘I’m Will,’ he said. ‘Anybody with you?’

Struggling for balance, my fingers dug into his sleeve while I bent double, coughing until my lungs burned. The sergeant waited me out.

‘There was a guy sitting next to me,’ I wheezed. ‘He was standing up when the train…’ My voice trailed off as I took in the condition of the front end of our car. The impact had savagely twisted seats, doors and windows, compressing them into a mountain of wreckage that spanned the entire width of the car.

The dust was beginning to settle when another man staggered out of the debris field, dragging a young woman by the hand. Strands of hair had escaped her bun and hung lifelessly around her face which was bloody and pocked with glass. ‘Get me out of here, baby,’ she wailed as she limped along behind him. One of her shoes had gone missing.

‘The side doors are jammed,’ the man called Baby reported, waving vaguely. ‘And the windows won’t pop out like they’re supposed to. How about the rear door?’

‘I just tried,’ Sergeant Boyer informed him. ‘No joy. You can see that the bulkhead’s collapsed.’