Michael Martone - Four for a Quarter - Fictions

SUSIE Q

“Susan?“ I hear him whispering in the corridor. I have a roomette on the Lake Shore Limited from New York to Chicago. He is riding coach on the Boston section. In Albany, the two trains hook up, the electric power blinking on and off as the cars are shunted back and forth in the yard. The old Pullmans creak as they are eased into each other, a shudder ripples through the cars as they couple, then again when the new engines pull the slack out of the train and accelerate into a curve sweeping out onto the bridge over the Hudson.

He is looking for me. We arranged this meeting. We haven't been lovers for years, though we stay in touch by phone, postcard, e-mail. This is for old times' sake.

“Susan?“ he says. “Susan? Susan? Susan?“ he whispers as the train reaches speed outside of Schenectady. Now it is dark outside, and the tracks are running through a cut, the high banks a sheet of black smeared here and there by a smattering of luminous trash reflecting the moonlight. I have the shade all the way up. I've turned out all the lights except the dull blue night-light near the floor. The little fan whirs above the door. I love the old pre-war cars with their stainless and gunmetal painted steel, the coarse orange brown fabrics smelling like old theaters. The nickel-plated hardware of the vents, switches, and fixtures gleams in subtle shadows. And I love the ingenious efficiency of the space, the way the sink folds into the wall, the pocket doors and the cubbyholes for glasses and jewelry, the racks for luggage, the disappearing closet, the secret compartment for my shoes that has another access door in the corridor for the attendant who will shine them overnight and return them polished in the morning.

“Susan?“

“In here,“ I breathe. I have already unfolded the bed, collapsing the chair with its complaining springs and hauling the mattress, bedding, and pillows from the hidden drawer behind the once upright seat. I've done this already naked as it is almost impossible to undress once the bed is in place. So I undressed while the train rocked by West Point, folded my clothes away. I put in my diaphragm while balanced precariously with one foot resting flat on the clever scissored armrest of the lounge chair and my butt, cold, propped against the mirror affixed to the inside of the sliding door. I tried not to think how I looked as I eased the diaphragm inside me, past the ingenious folds of my vagina. It expanded into place, foreshadowing the contraction and expansion of the roomette I then set about to transact.

He finds me at last. I am stretched out on the bed beneath its covers and blankets in the dark, punctuated only by the flashes of light sweeping by the window. He immediately begins to undress in the tiny space left between the bed and the door, which he has locked, manipulating the many moving parts of the metal handle and latch. My eyes adjust to the dark. In the shadows I can see him contort, wrestle with his clothes as if he is shedding skin too soon, as if he is making love to somebody else. He drapes his clothes over the recessed hooks, balls them in the corner. His penis springs up as he shimmies out of his shorts. It is at my eye-level and, in the dull blue light, I watch it expand and arch upward, another ingenious design. Above me, his head catches in the collar of his shirt he is too rushed to unbutton. His taut cock inches from my face transmits the rhythm of the train's movement, quivers and twitches as the steel wheels stutter over the joints of the rail beneath us. I fight my way out from under the covers as he strips off his socks and toys with the clasp of his watch. I work my way up onto my hands and knees. We say excuse me to each other as we bump and lurch into each other and with the train. At last, I am facing the window, my knees on the edge of the bed, my feet flat against the door on either side of his knees. He stands with his back against the door. He fumbles looking for the spot. I reach back through, making a few jerking attempts to grab his flexing cock as it recoils against my thigh, my cheeks, and then I guide him in.

I wanted to do this, this pushing against the picture window, pushing back against him. The train is running along a wide flat river, the water level route, an advertisement of a smooth ride, no heavy hauling over hills, over mountains. The compartment leaves so little room that behind me he can only grind against me, pushing against me and then pulling my hips, pulling me hard against where he is pinned. Outside, out in the country illuminated by the natural light of the moon, the layers of distance emerge — the streaking pattern of things close by and the slow creep of outlined details in the distance. I follow the lazy meander of farmyard light as it falls away, a blazing billboard on a distant hill as it burns out. There are sudden bursts of red at the crossings, the Doppler of sound, streaking across the window like rain. “Susan,“ he says. I feel him come. I can't always feel it inside — the sloughing of the spasms, each less intense than the last — through the skin, but this time I do.

And later, after a series of intricate maneuvers, we have bent and twisted our bodies into this position of rest. He's turned on the reading light over his head by flipping a toggle by my big toe. Instantly, we appear, reflected in the window, tumbled together, entwined with each other, the bed, the roomette. He consults the national timetable, noting that we will gain an hour as we head west. He reads to me the names of the towns we will go through, through the night, passes time relating the nicknames of rail lines: The C&NW, the Cheap and Nothing Wasted; the Rock Island Line; and the New York, Susquehanna & Western, the Susie Q. He turns off the light and toggles my right nipple with his left hand. In the dark, I feel around for my vibrator I've stored above the folding sink, an old Sunbeam with the heft and graceful lines of a Lionel gauge toy train car. I connect it up to the AC socket by the reading light.

At the head of the train are three massive diesel engines powering generators creating current for the electric motors turning the driving wheels pulling us along at eighty miles an hour. I plug into a tiny fraction of that power, some spilled amperage. The vibrator hums like a toy train's transformer. The thrum of those real engines gets communicated through the metal of the cars, carried across the couplings where the gaskets kiss. I feel his hand wrap around mine on the machine. The steel wheels squeal on a radical curve that brings us back to that river. We can feel the inertia of all the weight as the train coasts down a grade. The timetable says we have hours and hours, and the trains are never on time. The hum of the vibrator harmonizes with the pitch of the engines throttling up, four cars forward. We can see the engines, their strobing lights as they wrap around another curve ahead. The current streams back through the train as the sound of the horn peals off like skin. I nudge the vibrator's nob along the water level route, tracing the contours of the terrain. We are in no hurry. We are taking the train. He whispers, a decibel or two above the purring running though our fingers, through our arms, into our shoulders, through our bones. I listen to the names of the stations we'll be passing through, our possible destinations: Sioux Center; Sioux Falls; Sault Ste. Marie; Soo Junction; Sooner, OK; Susie, Iowa; Susanville; Susanna, someplace; Susan, Susan in Montana.