Lines in the Sky

“It’s never too late to turn back.” Isn’t that what they say?

In my deep sleep I was dreaming that I was in my childhood home. As in all my dreams it was but it wasn’t. There was a balcony on the top floor and the neighbours’ houses were too close, looming over my head with wide, dark window panes that let in just enough light to make you wonder if there was someone watching from behind the tinted glass. I held a crumpled shirt up to my chest to cover myself as I stepped outside and looked down over the white steel railing. An old boyfriend of mine (Steven?) was there calling up to me, coaxing me out for an evening rendezvous in the warm summer air. His slender build and almond shaped eyes were friendly and inviting. He had on one of his classic brightly coloured and bold patterned shirts, a stark contrast to his always tatty pants and shoes. He was beside his bike - reliable but rust-covered. I felt exposed peeking my head out over the railing, back bare to the waning heat. The delight of his presence and the surprise of his beckoning was overwhelming and exciting.

My arms were hurting. Like half deflated pool floats they were numb from the weight of my torso bearing down on them. I turned over on the rough cotton sheets, tension releasing. The gentle sway of movement from the train caught me by surprise and I opened my eyes.

It’s a funny thing to notice that you’re on a moving train. A thought that might cross your mind might be to sit up, but I laid still, feeling the gentle swing of the locomotive pull me back and forth, slow and rhythmic. A curved metal roof above my head held a small, concave window, like a rectangular half-bubble poking out into nowhere. I could see up into the sky, white clouds hanging heavy and dense like the fluff of a poplar tree building up along a paved path. Where are the lines? The thin lines in the sky were missing.

The bed I was on was tall and comfortably wide. If I extended my arm upward I would only be another hands width away from touching the finely soldered edges of the tiny window above. I was wearing a blue pajama shirt and matching pants with small black leopard print evenly arranged across them. The last thing I would choose for myself, but they were soft to the touch and it calmed me. I turned my head to the right, away from the metal wall to my left, and surreptitiously peared around the small cabin. The space was cool and bright. It could probably fit 4 stevens and their bikes, I thought. The silver metal walls extended around the room, great luminous bulbs were held still inside rounded metal castings extending from the walls like half-lanterns swallowed by the wall.

I sat up and looked around, bewildered by the clash of deep and longing emotions from my dream and the stark reality of an unfamiliar place. There didn’t seem to be anyone else in the coach, and it was just as I thought that I might be alone that I heard a small voice from below.

“No ticket” said the voice. I bent over my thighs, feeling the pinch of my belly skin against my legs as I reached to see under the bunk. A petite middle aged woman, not more than 10 years my senior, stared at me. Her delicate features and brilliant, wide eyes drew me in instantly and made the cold metal of the coach suddenly feel warm and inviting. She was smiling calmly and had a small gap between her very square front teeth that added youth to her features. She was in similar clothes to me, but pink, and she was reading a book in the back corner of her bed, her legs stretched out with a bend to her knees and a great fuzzy pillow behind her back. It was bright in the bed below me, a wide window beside her was letting in a brilliant amount of fresh sunlight and I could see every detail of her slender figure. She had a tightness to her olive skin that indicated sun and although she wasn’t thin, her clothes hung off her like a weighted blanket over a stiff chair.

“Just say “no ticket” when they come past” she said again.

“Where are we?” I asked, suddenly perplexed at the lack of terrain outside the window beside her.

“We are caving in,” she said, giving me a quick wink.

“What do you mean, caving in?”

I was on a train, I thought, shifting my weight to relieve the pinch in my mid section. It smelled like a train - although strangely my only reference point to how a train might smell was somewhere in the back of my mind, somewhere that I couldn’t quite reach.

“Oh I’m sorry, are you new? They never tell us when a new one is coming on board, and I can never remember what the old one looked like. I don’t notice much of the looks as we are all looking about the same.”

Suddenly the coach door opened. If I didn’t think I was raging mad before, I was definitely on my way there now. Two women who looked identical to the woman below me stood in the doorway. They were wearing dark blue suits with green bow ties poking out over neat white collars and shiny black shoes hiding under fitted pants with largely cuffed bottoms. It was the kind of uniform you might expect to see from a person taking tickets on a train. Their body language was neutral, both idling in the doorway. One of them was holding a clipboard and fussed with her long wiry black hair. The other, who had shortish grayish hair said, “staying aboard?”

“Yes, thanks!” Said the woman below. She looked up at me pointedly, encouragingly, mouthing the words “no ticket.”

“No…uh.., no ticket,” I said.

“Perfect, thanks!” said the short haired woman. She turned quickly and walked out of the doorway. The long haired one jotted something down on her clipboard, fussed with her hair again, gave a grand smile, said “welcome aboard!” and trotted off towards her twin.

“The train will be caving in in the next few days.” Said the woman below. “We are just about to start our descent. That must be why you’re here! What is your name again?”

“It’s Ellroy”

“Ooo, that’s a new one! Oh, right, right, you’re a new one. “ELL” she mouthed while writing out the letters into the air with her finger, “ROY” she finished, swiping the air where she had been writing as if clearing it away like dust on a table.

“When is the next stop?” I asked.

“Stop? Oh no, we won’t be stopping,” she laughed joyfully.

Her laugh echoed in my ears and something suddenly hit me round the back of the head. It wasn’t a physical object, it was a thought, a memory. I had heard that laugh before, and those eyes, I knew them.