Yellow.

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Mary checked her watch for a third time, the tiny crystal face slightly obscuring the numbers in the sun. The beam sent a rainbowed streak across her upturned, slightly protruding nose. The time if she could have read it was 6:15 pm. She could hear passengers milling in the station around her, the chugging of locomotives coming and going, the bark of conductors signaling last call. The usually exciting mill of travel life. She looked at her watch again, 6:16…maybe he was late. The Baltimore line certainly wasn’t what it used to be. She quietly reassured herself. “Late is not left.” She knew it was true surely she could remember a time when he had been late before. It was just becoming increasingly harder to focus on befores.

Instead she thought about the first time they had met like this. A dark night, two strangers seated in the dining car of a north bound midnight-train. One coming from somewhere not knowing where she was about to end up, and one going to…”somewhere”.

He’d sat down across from her with his evening tea, and teased her for her Coca-Cola. Mocking her green train travel and making her feel wholly new. Mary had still been wearing the yellow cotton summer dress from her sisters engagement shower, when he’d first brushed her black t-straps with his polished oxfords. She had talked about Sam Cooke and the Beatles while he pretended to listen and not look at her breasts. She tried to ignore it but when he “playfully reached” for the North American Bird Almanac splayed across her lap, even wholly new she became suspicious. She wasn’t sure how to receive his looks, she’d only gotten her first kiss from a boy not 3 months prior at the senior goodbye picnic. This sophisticated stranger had her out of her depths. His salt and pepper hair was swept back off his face, and his dark amber eyes were rimmed in soft green accented by mink lashes. He wore a gray traveling suit, and carried a matching gray briefcase. He had told her he was staying in one of the staterooms. He was handsome, but Mary had to concede to at the very least herself that he was the same age as her father. His hand brushed her knee again.

“No stockings?” He asked with a raised amused eyebrow.

Mary scrambled for an answer she surely was supposed to have, she slowly counted backwards from seven, saw his eyes on her legs and had to begin again from five.

“No” she finally squeaked “ too uncomfortable for long travel.”

He chuckled somewhat darkly.

“I thought a proper lady always wore stockings.”

She fumbled for what to say. Was she being inappropriate, had she done something wrong? She felt tense she couldn’t quite tell what ground was safe and what would not hold her weight.

Before she could say anything he caught the bird almanac and began to drag it slowly down her thighs deliberately. She could feel its heavy weight shift as the pressure made her feel the need to squeeze her legs together. The knot in her stomach got tighter, she feared he’d notice. When the book met his other hand at her knees he lifted it. Her light skirt briefly drifted up for a moment, with it the cool air hit her legs. It felt like ice. She could not tell how to receive it. She looked at his hands, she could imagine them traveling up her tan legs, stark white sails making a determined course, a course she’d not let any boy attempt before. Why hadn’t she worn stockings?

“…together with the Eastern Barn Owl group, and sometimes the Adnaman Masked Owl, make up the Barn Owl class.”

Mary’s focus was brought back to where he sat across from her. His neat suit not mussed, his eyes possibly trusting? They were from very different worlds she reminded herself. His choice to sit across from her in the dining car in no way closed the gap in their worlds. She was not even yet a Barnhart College freshman and he was clearly a successful business man all spit and polish. Mary could feel her unsprayed hair curling around the yellow ribbon securing it back. Soon he’d tire of teasing her and return to his state room, and his family life. But, he was here now, for nine pm outside of Pittsburgh he was hers, but she was unsure what to do with him.

He read again aloud from her book this time Mary focused on only his lips as he read. Has he kissed many women? She wondered. If he kissed her would he be able to tell she hadn’t kissed… really anyone? Would they be friends if she let him kiss her? Would she want to be friends? Would he?

“Careful!” He whispered. Almost inaudible, threatening, ringing a bell in her that yelled: listen! She went to stand up and he wrapped his hand around her slight wrist holding her in place.

“That’s a look that could make someone presume you’re not the daisy fresh girl you seem. Maybe you want the attention. maybe you’re a wild thing journeying at night intentionally …”

As his voice trailed off his eyes traveled to where her thighs met. Mary clenched them together and felt a heat rise from her chest to engulf her full face.

“That blush does nothing to help matters I’m afraid.”

He snapped the book shut authoritatively and stood.

Mary was scared and confused but she followed his lead when he’d instructed her to stand too, she followed him to his stateroom. He promised he’d give her book back if she joined him. On some level she knew that was a lie, that he only dealt in falsehoods and his own desires. In the morning he took the yellow ribbon and left her sore.

The first time lead to many times, many secrets, many concessions, many compromises in the dark.

In a way he did keep the promises his body made. For her 19th birthday he encouraged her to drop out of her animal studies program and gifted her a small apartment over a friends auto-tbody shop. It wasn’t a proper romance, or the marriage she’d seen for herself. But he found a rhythm of getting away for work, of getting what he wanted. Mary got to play pretend in every hotel nestled within the B & O line. He never made promises, he never wrote letters, or stayed on the line long when he had his secretary call…But, behind those tumble-locked numbered doors, he was something even she wasn’t any longer, he was hers. Only hers.

Mary Checked her watch for the 43rd time. It was 7 pm. Over an hour after his train was set to arrive. She’d written him 3 weeks ago plenty of time for travel arrangements. Also, she’d included the ticket in the letter. She had spent all of her summer savings to cover his usual state room. She wanted him to travel in the way he preferred. She’d known he’d be angry about her writing it was a great risk. His wife had to have suspicions by now. However, Mary never entertained the notion that he’d not come. She checked her watch again. The numbers were getting increasingly hard to read in the fading light. She could feel her hair falling from its ringlet curls, straining the crisp starched white ribbons. At the same time she felt a line of sweat run down her spine and bleed into the white cotton and lace pinafore he had gotten her, in anticipation of their next meeting. The white pinafore which was now straining across her chest. She brought a shaking hand to rest on her stomach. Frozen.

She sat into the night, listening as the lines came and went.

Somewhere, just after eleven pm, when a friendly line worker told her the café was closing, just faintly out of reach, the hoot of a barn owl echoed.

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