Mae
“Go back to wherever you were,” Nana says sternly, her face a little too close to the phone. “I want to clap eyes on this fellow of yours.”
“I’ll give you twenty bucks.”
“Nana.”
“Fifty.”
“No!”
“I’ll let you pick the movies at Thanksgiving.”
Mae laughs. “Fine.”
When she walks back over, Hugo looks up from his book. “Did you know that Chicago isn’t called the Windy City because it’s windy?”
“Yes,” Mae says, then turns the phone around. “Nana, this is Hugo.”
Hugo blinks at the screen, momentarily startled. Then he gives a little wave. “Hello!”
“Well, aren’t you handsome,” Nana says, getting so close to the screen that her nose disappears, and there’s nothing but a pair of watery blue eyes and a wrinkled forehead. “Mae told me as much, but I had to see for myself.”
“I did not—” Mae starts to say, then turns to Hugo. “I didn’t tell her anything.”
Hugo laughs. “It’s nice to meet you. I’ve heard such lovely things about you from your granddaughter.”
“Listen, I’ve known Mae a long time, so I thought you could use a few tips,” Nana says. “First of all, she’s always got one eye behind that camera of hers, so sometimes you have to take it away so she doesn’t trip.”
“One time,” Mae says. “That happened one time.”
“And she’s afraid of heights, so don’t go joyriding on top of the train or anything.”
“Noted,” Hugo says, nodding very seriously.
“She hates spiders—”
“Covered that one already.”
“And talks a lot.”
“You guys know I’m still here, right?” Mae says, her eyes traveling up to the board, where the track number for their train has just been posted. “Hey, we gotta go.”
“Last thing,” Nana says, shifting her gaze to Hugo. “She’s one of the best people I know. And she’s a real catch. So be good to her, okay?”
Mae closes her eyes for a second, mortified. “Thanks, Nana,” she says as she brings the phone up to her face again. “I love you, and I’ll call you when we get to Denver.”
Nana gives a little wave. “Happy travels!”
After hanging up, Mae turns to Hugo. “Well, that’s Nana. She’s—”
“Brilliant,” he says with a grin. “Let’s make sure I’m there when you call her from Denver, so I can hear the rest of her tips.”
This train is bigger than the last, with two floors and an observation car at one end. An attendant named Duncan—a short white man with bright red hair—leads them to their compartment, which is about the same as the last, two seats and a fold-down bunk at the top.
But this time, when he leaves them, there’s no awkward silence or uncertainty. This time, as soon as he’s gone, Hugo takes a step forward and puts a hand on her elbow, and Mae tips her head up to look at him, and they smile at each other like they’re the holders of some great secret.
“You still have sand in your hair,” she says, reaching up to brush it away, but before she can finish, he’s folded her into his arms, and they’re kissing again.
Mae has wanted to do this all morning. Sitting across from him at the diner, walking beside him along Michigan Avenue, lying next to him on the beach: it was underneath and around every other thought, a persistent drumbeat beneath every gesture, every word, every look.
She knows this can’t last—whatever it is; that a few days from now, they’ll be getting off at different stations, going in different directions. But she doesn’t care. Because for now, they have this: a happiness so big it doesn’t leave room for worries.
When Duncan returns, he has to clear his throat several times before they realize he’s standing in the hallway. They break apart so quickly that Hugo nearly falls back against his seat, and Duncan stares hard at his notepad, trying not to laugh.
“Sorry to interrupt, but will you two be joining us for dinner tonight?”
After they’ve made their reservations, Mae’s phone buzzes, and she grabs it before Hugo can see the long row of exclamation points that Priyanka has sent, followed by a second text that says Call me.
“I’m gonna make a quick call,” she says to Hugo. “So I’ll just—”
“No, you stay here,” he says. “Meet me in the observation car when you’re done.”
On the way out, he leans to give her a kiss on the cheek, and then she waits until she hears his footsteps on the metal staircase to call. All Mae says when she picks up is hi, but this is enough to make Priyanka immediately start laughing.
“What?” Mae asks, grinning into the phone.
“Nothing. It’s just that I can practically hear you smiling. It’s so unlike you.”
“Hey! I smile.”
“Yeah, but hardly ever about a boy.”
Mae flops back onto the seat and puts her feet up on Hugo’s. “So how’s college life?”
“No way. We’re talking about you first. Tell me everything.”
And so she does. By the time she gets to the part where they kissed last night, Priyanka is laughing again. “Only you would use your grandmother’s line to get a guy to kiss you,” she says. “Bet you don’t think those movies of hers are so unrealistic anymore, huh?”
“This isn’t like that,” Mae says. “It’s just a fling.”
“It is not.”
“How do you know?”
“Because a fling suggests it doesn’t mean anything,” Priyanka says. “And I can tell that it does.”
“No, a fling is a measurement of time. And this has an expiration date.”
Priyanka sighs. “Stop being so…you.”
“What does that mean?” Mae asks, indignant.
“Just that it’s okay to give in and enjoy it. You’re on a train making out with a guy you barely know. It’s romantic.”
Mae laughs. “A week ago, you thought he was going to kill me.”
“Well, he didn’t. And you sound really happy. So don’t overthink it. Just—”
The line goes dead, and when Mae lowers her phone, she sees that there’s no service anymore. She waits a few minutes, and when it doesn’t return, she sends a quick text: Sorry I lost you. But I’m off to go enjoy it. Aren’t you happy I’m taking your advice?
It bounces back, but there’s nothing to be done about that now, so she winds her way through the other sleeper cars, past the dining room, where the tablecloths are already out, and into the observation area.
Hugo is in one of the seats facing out toward the huge rounded windows that reach all the way up to the ceiling, and when Mae sits down beside him, he turns to her with a smile.
“How’s your friend?”
“Good. We got cut off.”
“Hopefully not before you had a chance to tell her all about me,” he says with a grin, and she punches his arm.
“Someone’s pretty full of himself.”
He laughs. “Someone was told this morning that he’s a good kisser.”
“Someone had better be careful about getting a big head.”
“Someone will try his best,” Hugo says, propping his feet up on the ledge and looking out the enormous windows at the houses whipping past. “This’ll be brilliant when we’re in the mountains, won’t it?”
Mae nods and takes her camera out of the bag on her lap, ready to capture the changes in scenery as they head west, first through Iowa and Nebraska, and then on to Denver, which they’ll reach tomorrow morning.
“I think I’ve already spotted some good potential interviews,” Hugo says. “As your assistant director, I feel like I should get first crack at choosing one this time.”
She laughs. “That’s a pretty big promotion for someone who couldn’t stop talking through the shots yesterday. What are your salary requirements?”
To her surprise, he leans in to give her a quick kiss, then sits back, looking pleased with himself. “I think we’re all squared away now. Unless you’d like to discuss some sort of raise.”
She grabs the front of his shirt, pulling him back toward her, and this time she kisses him in earnest. When they sit back again, she’s grinning like crazy, and so is he.
“I’d say you’re off to a good start,” she says. “What else you got?”
Hugo nods at an older black couple sitting a few seats away.
They have a tablet propped on a tray beneath the window; it shows a digital map with a blue dot that’s following their route.
They’ve also got binoculars, a compass, and two packs of Starburst. “You should ask them. Clearly, this isn’t their first rodeo. ”
The way he says rodeo is so charming that Mae feels desperate to kiss him again. It’s enough to make her want to write a list of funny American words—dude and zonked and cotton candy—and have him recite them all afternoon. But instead she begins to adjust the settings on her camera. “Good call.”
“So what do you do with these, anyway?”
She glances up at him. “What do you mean?”
“Your films. Do you post them somewhere? Have screenings? Send them around to your friends? If my name’s going to be in lights, I need to know where I can find it.”
“I have a website,” she says, still tinkering with the dials. “I put my favorites up there.”
“What about the rest?”
She shrugs. “I learn from them and move on.”
“So you could spend weeks—”
“Months.”
“—on a film and then never show it to anybody?”
“Sure. If I’m not happy with it.”
“How often does that happen?”
“Often,” she says with an air of resignation. “I have a folder on my computer called Rejects that’s alarmingly full. Sometimes you get to the end and the magic just isn’t there.”
“Is that what happened with USC?”
“That was different.” Mae looks over at the couple with their maps and gadgets; the man holds out a stick of Starburst, and the woman takes one off the top. “You know when you think you’re about to eat a pink Starburst, but you realize too late it’s an orange one?”
Hugo smiles. “I like the orange ones.”
“Well, you’re just weird, then,” she says, giving him a playful kick. “But I don’t. And I really thought I was sending USC a pink one.”
“You have no idea what went wrong?”
There’s a part of her that wants to tell Hugo what Garrett said.
But every time she thinks about it, she feels such irritation at the critique—Impersonal!
Seriously?—that she can barely concentrate.
She tried to watch the film one more time the night before she left, already composing the text she’d send to Garrett—which involved a certain number of actuallys—but in the end, she didn’t work up the nerve.
Now there was a word attached to the failure, something too specific to ignore, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to see it through his eyes.
Even so, the rebuttals continue to scroll through her head, stubborn and persistent.
“No idea,” she says to Hugo, who doesn’t look convinced but also doesn’t press the issue.
They’re well out of the city now, the houses getting farther apart as the train moves across the state. The windows have a slightly yellow tint, turning everything sepia toned, making it feel like they’ve fallen into one of Nana’s old movies.
Mae looks around the car. There are people playing a board game at one of the tables, a kid teaching his grandfather how to take a selfie, two men drinking beers and talking about this year’s wheat crop, a young couple reading their books.
All of them on their way somewhere, barreling across the country in this long metal tube.
“I really would love to see it,” Hugo says, and she turns back to him, a little dazed.
“What?”
“Your film.”
“Oh,” she says with a frown. “I don’t think so.”
“Would you at least tell me what it’s about?”
“Hugo…”
He doesn’t look the least bit put off. “Will I have a guess, then? Is it about a dancing platypus?”
“What?” She lets out a surprised laugh. “No.”
“Is it about a porcupine who can’t find his way home?”
“Not exactly.”
“Is it about the first man to win a bowling tournament with a tennis ball?” he says with a grin.
“Or a woman who swallows a piece of gum and discovers a gum tree in her stomach years later? Or a girl who runs away to Antarctica and becomes best friends with a walrus? Or a boy with a scar on his forehead who goes off to a wizarding school?”
Mae is shaking her head. “I’m pretty sure that last one’s been done before.”
“I’ve got it,” Hugo says, his face brightening. “Is it about you?”
“No,” she says, and her smile slips. “Not exactly.”
He looks at her closely, so closely that she finds herself shifting beneath his gaze. “Well then,” he says, “maybe that’s the problem.”