On the very last day of a bad year,I was leaning against a pillar in theBaltimore railway station, waitingto catch the 10.10 to Philadelphia.There were a lot more people waitingthan I had expected. That airy, light,clean, polished feeling I generally gotin the station had been lost. Elderlycouples with matching luggage stuffedthe benches, and swarms of college kidslittered the floor with their bags. A grey-haired man was walking aroundspeaking to different strangers one byone. Well-off, you could tell: tannedskin, nice sweater, soft, beige car-coat. He went up to a woman sittingalone and asked her a question. Then hecame over to a girl standing near me.She had long blond hair, and I had beenthinking I wouldn ́t mind talking to hermyself. The man said, ‘Would you by anychance be travelling to Philadelphia?’ ‘Well, northbound, yes,’ she said. ‘But to Philadelphia?’ ‘No, New York, but I’ll be ...’ ‘Thanks, anyway,’ he said, and hemoved toward the next bench. Now he had my full attention.‘Ma’am,’ I heard him ask an old lady,‘are you travelling to Philadelphia?’When the woman told him, ‘Wilmington,’he didn’t say a thing, just marchedon down the row to one of the matched-luggage couples. I straightened up frommy pillar and drifted closer, lookingtoward the platform as if I had my mindon the train.Well, I was going to Philadelphia. He could have asked me. I understood why he didn’t, of course. No doubt,I struck him as unreliable. He just glanced quickly at me and then swerved off toward the bench at the other end of the waiting area. By now he was looking seriously stressed. ‘Please!’ he said to a woman reading a book. ‘Tell me you’re going to Philadelphia!’ She lowered her book. She wasthirtyish, maybe thirty-five – olderthan I was, anyhow. A school-teachersort. ‘Philadelphia?’ she said. ‘Why,yes, I am.’ ‘Then could I ask you a favour?’ I stopped several feet away andfrowned down at my left wrist. (Nevermind that I don’t own a watch.) Evenwithout looking, I could sense how shewent on guard. The man must have sensedit too, because he said, ‘Nothing toodifficult, I promise!’ They were announcing my train now.People started moving toward Gate E,the older couples hauling their wheeledbags behind them like big pets onleashes. Next I heard the man talking.‘My daughter’s flying out this afternoonfor a study year abroad, leaving fromPhiladelphia. So I put her on a trainthis morning stopping for groceriesafterward, and came home to find my wifein a state. She hardly said “hello” tome. You see my daughter’d forgotten herpassport. She’d telephoned home fromthe station in Philadelphia; didn’tknow what to do next.’ The woman clucked sympathetically.I’d have kept quiet myself. Waited tofind out where he was heading with this. ‘So I told her to stay put. Stayright there in the station, I said, and
I would get somebody here to carry up
her passport.’
A likely story! Why didn’t he go
himself, if this was such an emergency?
‘Why don’t you go yourself?’ the
woman asked him.
‘I can’t leave my wife alone for that
long. She’s in a wheelchair.’
This seemed like a pretty poor
excuse, if you want my honest opinion.
Also, it exceeded the amount of bad
luck that one family could expect.
I let my eyes wander toward the two of
them. The man was holding a packet,
not a plain envelope, which would have
been the logical choice, but one of
those padded envelopes the size of
a paperback book. Aha! Padded! So you
couldn’t feel the contents! And from
where I stood, it looked to be stapled
shut besides. Watch yourself, lady,
I said silently.
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