Hugo: Nice.
Poppy: The train or the girl?
Hugo: Both.
George: Do you miss us yet?
Hugo: At least two or three of you.
There’s a knock at the door, and then Ludovic pops his head in.
Hugo pulls his socked feet off the opposite seat. “Hello,” he says so brightly that the attendant looks a little startled.
“Hello,” Ludovic says, examining his notepad. “So we’ll need two sets of sheets in here, yes? What time do you want me to make up the beds?”
“Uh,” Hugo says, wishing he’d thought to ask Mae before she left. “I’m not sure. What time do you reckon?”
“A lot of people have requested nine,” Ludovic says with a shrug, “but a lot of people are also very old. How about ten?”
“Sure,” he says, but once Ludovic is gone, Hugo glances at his watch and realizes that ten o’clock is still hours away. He yawns and presses his cheek to the window, still knackered from all the travel and excitement and jet lag. The rumble of the train is enough to make his eyes flutter shut, and he wakes later to an announcement about dinner.
“All passengers for the six-thirty dinner seating, please make your way to the dining car. That’s six-thirty, folks.”
Hugo stands and examines what he’s wearing: worn jeans and a fraying yellow shirt and a thin pair of flip-flops. He wonders if he looks smart enough, suddenly picturing the scene with all the tuxes inTitanic,which is probably not the best image to call to mind. But it’s not as if he has anything much nicer to wear, so he pulls a jumper on over his shirt and heads off, swaying as he makes his way down toward the dining car.
When he reaches it, there’s a backlog of people waiting to be seated, and so he stands in the metal section that joins two of the cars, the plates sliding beneath his feet like the base of a Tilt-A-Whirl. He looks around for Mae and spots her at the other end—past all the waiters and white tablecloths and other diners, the bread baskets and silverware and menus—waiting in the same spot, and she gives him a smile.
They’ve spent only twenty minutes together. Maybe thirty.
But still, there’s already something familiar about her, standing there in the doorway with a book in her arms, and Hugo can’t help wondering if maybe the thing he was missing earlier was her.
For the past fewhours, Mae had watched a steady tide of people drifting into the café, ordering hot dogs and cookies and chips, trying not to spill their cans of beer as they tottered out again. Each time the door opened, she found herself looking up as if waiting for something, though she wasn’t sure what.
It isn’t until this very moment that she realizes maybe it was Hugo.
The waiter motions her over, and she picks her way through this strangest and narrowest of restaurants, giving Hugo a nod as they meet in the aisle.
“Hi,” she says, and he grins at her.
“Hi.”
They’re seated at a table with an elderly white couple who are already poring over their menus. Hugo slides into the booth first, and Mae joins him, careful to leave a few inches of space between.
“Hello there,” the woman says with a faint Southern drawl. “I’m Ida. And this is my husband, Roy.”
Mae starts to introduce herself at the exact same moment that Hugo says his name. They exchange a glance, both a little flummoxed, but Ida just smiles at them.
“Where are you two from?”
Hugo says, “England,” and Mae says, “Just up the road,” the words once again crossing between them. Part of her wants to laugh and part of her wants to crawl under the table. It’s like dancing with someone you don’t know very well, and she feels like she should apologize for stepping on his toes.
“You two are either very much in sync,” Roy says, “or very much out of sync.”
“England and New York?” says Ida. “That’s quite the long-distance relationship.”
“Oh no,” Mae says quickly. “We’re not—”
“You know, Roy was in the navy when we first met, so we had to write letters between visits. But I suppose the world is a lot smaller now.”
