Something Apropos (Short Story)

            When her train pulled into the station on that cold morning, Sarah climbed up into it and found a seat in the near-empty car. Aside from her, there was only a man of about thirty, dressed in a black wool coat and gray slacks. He had a lean, hungry look, not aggressive but intensely dispassionate, and long angular limbs out of proportion to his rather average frame. He was staring relentlessly across the car and out the window opposite him, one row forward of where Sarah had settled in. When she entered, those cold, dry eyes had slid over her but just as quickly returned to whatever fixed point outside the train had bewitched them.

            Sarah gathered her navy overcoat over her legs, cold beneath a long skirt, and produced a slim volume by Kant from the recesses of her large bag. She opened the book and made attempts on it, but an agitated fidget thwarted her in each case.

            After a little while, she gave up and held the book absently on her knee, letting her eyes meander here and there without object. Whenever they happened to glide toward the staring man, he would return the look for a fraction of a second before resuming his strange vigil, his lips moving silently as though in murmured conversation with something unseen outside the train. For all that—and perhaps it was only the clean part in his black hair and the vaguely lupine handsomeness of his neatly shaven face—he did not seem to Sarah to be crazy or disturbed so much as deep in thought and self-forgetful. A sudden impulse made her rustle fitfully for a few seconds before relocating to the seat across the aisle from him.

            “Excuse me,” she said, twisting to see him from her new vantage. “I would never do this, ordinarily, but there’s something about you—and I have this thing weighing on my mind… Well, anyway, would you mind talking to me about something? Or even just listening. I mean, if you… If you don’t mind.”

            As she began, his head turned stiffly—almost mechanically, like a puppet’s—to bring his eyes to hers. His expression did not vary at all from its intent focus, but his lips fell still.

            “I will certainly listen,” he said. His voice was soft but somehow absolute, as if it could betray not one iota of doubt. “But I will not speak unless I am entirely sure that I can help. Because you seem to be troubled. And I will not do anything to add to that trouble if I can help it.”

            Sarah looked at him for a long moment before she had satisfied herself that he was serious.

            “Alright,” she said. “My name is Sarah.”

            “Eli,” said the man, and he clasped his hands and set them in his lap.

            Sarah inhaled sharply through her nose and let the breath out smoothly.

            “Okay,” she said, “the first thing to know is that this is about my work and my boyfriend. Unoriginal, I am aware.”

            “Real things are rarely original,” Eli said.

            “That’s true,” she said, and lapsed into an uncertain silence.

            “Please, continue. What do you do? What is your boyfriend’s name?”

            “His name is Tom… I’m working on a dissertation at Boston College. Kant,” she said, and waved the book vaguely in front of her.

            “What about Kant? Ethics? Aesthetics?”

            “Epistemology, actually. You’ve read him?”

            “Some time ago,” Eli said, and nodded to himself after a beat. He gripped one of the large, shiny buttons on his coat between two fingers and twisted it gently, back and forth. “Anyway,” he said suddenly, “please continue. What is this problem of yours?”

            “Well,” Sarah said, “I’ve been offered a teaching position somewhere else—the University of Chicago. I’m done with all my coursework, so it doesn’t interfere with my dissertation at all, and it’s an enormous opportunity…”

            “That’s a very good job for someone without a doctorate.”

            “Yes, well. They read a few articles I had in some of the journals…” Sarah grew pink around the cheeks and hairline.

            “Ah,” Eli said, and waited, looking at her intently.

            “So,” she began again haltingly, “That’s the crux of it. Tom can’t leave with me—he’s a lawyer at some important firm, just got the job. So, do I stay or go?”

            Sarah hung her head, a feeling of distinct embarrassment washing over her, further flushing her face and scalp with hot blood.

            “I’ll need a little more than that,” Eli said, and there was some soft amusement in his voice. Sarah was unsure if it were mockery or not.

            “Like what?” she said, lifting her head again. She rested it in one hand and fixed her eyes on his feet. She breathed deeply and finally returned his gaze. “Like do I love him?”

            “Fah,” he answered, and the fingers of his left hand flicked out in a somehow intricate gesture like a charm or some bit of sign language. “Who knows what that means to anyone else? No. Just tell me about him.”

            “He’s… driven. Ambitious. Worked his way through college and law school.”

            “Is he kind?”

            “He can be very much so, when he thinks of it, which isn’t always, but often. He’s generous, and a good friend. He likes to spend time with me. Responsible.”

            “How did you meet?”

            “Friends set us up. I’m from here, originally, and when I came back after grad school an old friend told me she had a guy for me… They’d dated for a while but it didn’t stick. She thought we’d be a better fit.”

            “And you liked him.”

            “Yes. He was sweet. He listened to me rattle on about my work and asked questions. He took me on a walk after dinner and told me I was beautiful. It was nice. It still is nice.” She paused.

            “So things are good between you, then?”

            “Yes. Essentially. We argue, of course.”

            “Of course.”

            “We fight sometimes, but everyone does. And when we do, he always tries to make peace, he—” Sarah frowned. “Whenever we fight, he buys the same bouquet. Half a dozen red roses, half a dozen daisies… He leaves them in front of my door…”

            Eli’s eyes glittered, and he flicked his fingers again on the edges of her vision. “Go on,” he said.

            “The same bouquet, every time. And he apologizes but never with— It’s just so stupid,” she said. “Like he can’t think of anything else to do. Flowers and ‘I’m sorry.’” She let a hard breath out, and looked down at the floor.

            “Why do you want to be with this man?” Eli said quietly.

            “It’s not… I didn’t mean I don’t love him,” Sarah said, reddening again. “I do love him. And isn’t that worth making sacrifices for? Worth pain and disappointment?”

            “All, das gross und schön ist…” Eli said, nearly under his breath.

            “What? ‘All that is great and beautiful?’ What is that supposed to mean?”

            “Forgive me,” Eli said. “Of course you speak German, studying Kant. I wasn’t thinking… Just a joke, for myself. Not a funny one.”

            “Alright,” she said, and let her eyes drift.

            Eli bowed his head and cocked it slightly, as though listening to something whispered.

            “I’m sorry,” he said. “You were being sincere. You say you love the man. Something to consider, certainly. But—something else to consider: Antony loved Cleopatra.”

            A quick anger came over Sarah: contempt for the opinion of a stranger, contempt at herself for having asked for it. She sat upright and set her mouth in a hard line.

            “That is a very unkind thing to say about two people you don’t even know, and one of whom you have not even met.”

            “You’re right,” Eli said. His eyes slid back into their strange, distant focus. “I apologize.”

            Sarah twisted to face forward in her seat and opened the book in her lap. She read the same sentence five times before conceding defeat and simply staring at the page.

            Some ten minutes or so went on like that, the train bumping and groaning over the rails while outside the window the muddy brownness of a snowless New England winter stretched on to the horizon.

            “I’m sorry,” Sarah said, not looking up. “I asked your opinion. I shouldn’t be upset that you gave it.”

            “That’s alright,” Eli said vaguely.

            Before long, the train was rolling to a slow stop at a little station in some suburban satellite of Boston. Eli stood slowly and steadied himself with one hand while the other slung a canvas satchel over his shoulder.

            “This is my stop,” he said. “And I’m sure this isn’t welcome—but you should go to Chicago.” He waited while the train crawled its last few yards.
            “Alright,” Sarah said, but his eyes again were caught up in the contemplation of invisible things, and as he walked away from her and off the train toward the bloody sunrise, she was not sure if he had heard her.