Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
“Oh. My. God.” Gray couldn’t contain his pleased amazement, doing a Julie Andrews–style twirl on the platform. The hills are aliiiiiiiiive . . . “Your dad has his own train?”
“Not his own train.” She poked him in the back so he’d board the damned train already. “His own railcar.”
“It’s cute how you’re trying to downplay all the awesome. And those are real? I’ve only seen them in movies. Well, one movie.” Gray had been unbearably cute since he wore Amara down and invited himself along. “How have we been friends so long and I’m only now seeing your private car?”
“Yes, they’re real. Amtrak will let just about anyone latch a private car.”
“That’s so cool! You guys are like a royal family!”
She sighed as she followed him into the car. “Are you seriously taking pictures right now?”
“I hate when you ask questions when you already know the answer. You know, that thing you say I do all the time? Smile!” Click.
“Never.” She took the three lush, carpeted steps downstairs, stowed her carry-on in the first bedroom, and came back up. “I still can’t believe I’m letting you come along.”
“I still can’t believe your posh railcar has stairs and you packed six suitcases.”
“Four, you doof. We’ll probably just be there over the weekend, anyway.”
Amara doubted it would matter to Gray if they were stuck in Minot for a month.
He employed multiple side hustles: legal transcriptionist, medical transcriptionist, paid surveys with Prolific, and the occasional book review for Kirkus.
Well before the pandemic, Gray had a viable work-from-home setup, one he could take on the road whenever he liked.
“And what d’you mean, ‘letting’ me come? Like you could’ve stopped me.”
“I could have. You wouldn’t have liked it.”
Gray waved away her casual threat, walked past the kitchen to the lounge at the other end, ignored the plush couch, and flopped onto the nearest La-Z-Boy hard enough to make it rock so violently it almost pitched him to the floor.
“Tell me you have a private chef and a bartender,” he gasped, holding on as he stared up at the dome. Her second favorite spot in the railcar. At night, the stars streamed by, maddeningly close.
“There is no bartender. And we don’t need the chef for this trip.”
“Ah-ha! So the private chef exists, elsewhere for now.”
Amara shrugged.
“Cooooooool. So if you have a private train—”
“It’s just the one railcar.”
“—I’ll bet you have a private plane, too.”
She shook her head. “It’s unnecessary. My father is old-fashioned and never leaves the Midwest.”
“Because he’s Death for Minnesota and Iowa and Wisconsin.”
“And Michigan and the Dakotas and Illinois and Nebraska and Ohio. And parts of Kentucky. We don’t follow strict geopolitical boundaries. At least, not Midwestern ones.”
Gray started to reach for his phone. “And Missouri? I think Civics covered that. I might’ve missed that day . . . actually, I missed a crap ton of days.”
“The US Census Bureau decided Missouri counted as the Midwest. Not my father.”
“Ma’am?” She turned to see the friendly porter and had to resist the urge to turn her back. “Your other guest is ready to board. Can I get you any—”
“No. We’re fine.”
“Oh.” She was earnest and redheaded and sweet and Amara couldn’t stand the sight of her. “Okay. Well, if you n—”
“We’re fine. Thank you.”
Gray sat up and waited until the porter was out of earshot. “I know that look,” he stage-whispered, which wasn’t whispering. “You gave her the shoulder earlier, too, and you almost never do that. You’re pretty polite for a sociopath with great hair.”
“Thank you. And yesterday you said I had terrible bangs. Be consistent with your casual criticisms, please.”
“So when’s that poor girl gonna bite it?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Jesus.” Gray leaned back in the chair. “Do I even want to . . . ?”
Smoke inhalation. There was small comfort in knowing she’d be spared burning to death. “No. You do not.”
“I’m sorry. All this stuff—” He waved vaguely at the plush carpet, the soft chairs, the lamps, the view, the dark wood, the gleaming brass accents, the large windows so clean it was like there were no windows, the four bedrooms, the double beds .
. . “It comes at a cost, right? Some days maybe it’s not the best trade-off. ”
“Most days.” She smiled, because she adored the idiot. “But I like that you like it.”
“Yeah, well, I—oh, look, here comes the Marlboro Man. I don’t know what’s worse, that he’s gorgeous or that he knows he’s gorgeous.”
“I heard that!” La Croix bounded up the steps, beaming and immaculate and hilariously puffy. The moment he felt the warmth of the car, he shrugged out of the pile of Gore-Tex he called a winter jacket.
“You know that’s a woman’s coat, right?” Amara teased.
“It was the only one that covered my knees.” He flung the green jacket toward an empty chair and sighed. “Thank the gods both ill and blessed, they allowed cigarette smoking in the lounge! Well. Not really. But I was persuasive.”
“A death god smokes,” Gray observed.
“He doesn’t smoke,” Amara pointed out. “But he likes it when other people do.”
“Right, right, the food thing extends to smoking. Got it.”
“I also like the scent of rum, friend Gray, if you’re feeling generous.”
“I’m . . . not. So purple and black, that’s kind of your thing, huh?”
“What gave it away?” he asked, shooting his cuffs, which were purple, and adjusting his suit jacket, which was also purple.
“Have a seat,” Amara said. “We’re pulling out soon.”
He crossed his legs and flashed them his lavender socks. “Hmmm. More terse than usual. It could be the hour, but if I know my Amara—”
“Not your anything.”
“—you’re sad about the girl who will asphyxiate tomorrow before dawn.”
“Oh, God.” Gray had been spinning his chair; now he planted his feet to bring the La-Z-Boy to a shuddering halt. “She doesn’t even get a whole day?”
Amara and La Croix shrugged in unison, looked at each other, and then Amara looked away. “I warned you not to come, Gray.”
“Oh, please. I don’t have to stow away on your ritzy train—”
“Car. One car.”
“—for you to talk about sad deaths. Full disclosure is the only way this friendship works. That’s the rule.”
“That’s the program,” Amara corrected. “Your program, not our rule.”
“Yeah, well. Program’s why I’m still alive.”
Not an exaggeration. He had the scars to prove it.
“You have to admit, the young lady’s manner of death is a bit farcical.” La Croix shrugged. “Given the young porter’s family history.”
Amara stomped the urge to stomp him. “It’s good that you’re reminding me of alllll the reasons I dislike you.”
“You wound me! You’ve always found me delightful.”
“Um. No.”
“Your mother would charge you to be kinder to me.”
“Leave my mother out of it,” she warned. “And my father. And everyone. Leave yourself out of it, while you’re at it.”
La Croix brushed invisible lint off his black pants. “Surely you have a kind thought to send my way when I’m not around, after all this time?”
“Nope. Not only am I fresh out of kind thoughts, I don’t actually think about you when you’re not around.”
“Ouch.” From Gray.
“Okay, not entirely true. I think of you every time I drink fruit-flavored seltzer. So, twice. Once it was blackberry, which was overdressed, and once it was peach/pear, which was disgusting. That’s the last time I thought of you, La Croix.”
“Ouch!” From Gray. “And am I crazy, or is there some weird vibe I’m picking up here?”
La Croix snickered. “Both of those things can be true.”
“All vibes in the death car are weird vibes. Speaking of, La Croix, why are you here? I told you I’d go home, and you know I never lie.”
“It’s true!” Gray piped up. “It’s almost pathological with her.”
“I’d think you would have wasted no time getting back to your territory,” she went on. “Especially because it’s sunny and seventy-five in New Orleans right now. You could have gone back to Minot without me.”
La Croix chose the La-Z-Boy opposite Gray and sat with a flounce.
How he could make flouncing so masculine was an eternal mystery.
“I missed you,” he replied simply. “As does your mother. I’m not just here on your father’s behalf; I promised your mother I’d see you to the train. It’s been too long.”
“It hasn’t, though.”
The train was pulling out. Gray cleared his throat in what he always assumed was a subtle way, but it sounded like a bulldozer in low gear.
“I think I’ll go downstairs and pick out my room.
Which is nothing I thought I’d ever say anywhere, much less on a private train.
I know there’s no way to stop you from talking behind my back once I’m out of earshot,” he added, slipping past them and down the stairs.
“All I ask is that you temper the snark with the sweet.”
Amara laughed. “We’re not going to be talking about you even a little, you vain slug.”
“Yes you are!” Gray punctuated that by shutting the first door he saw. Amara waited, heard his muffled curse, and then the door swung open. “Okay, obviously Amara’s room. The eighteen suitcases tipped me off. Maybe one of the other nine bedrooms will be unoccupied . . .”
“Four,” she protested.
After another door slam, La Croix shifted in his chair and crossed his legs. “I like friend Gray.”
“What’s not to like? He puts up with my weirdness and I put up with his generous nature and his twelve-stepping all over the place and love-me-love-my-dog loyalty. We both bring something to the table. Him more than me, obviously.”
“I would have thought you would share a bed.”
“It’s not like that,” she snapped. “It’s never been like that. And even if it was, it would be none of your fucking business.”
“Mmmm. Well, as I assured your mother, there’s plenty of time for you to take a lover and birth an heir.”
“Please please please stop discussing my reproductive future with my mother. Or anyone.”
“It’s a fine thing to have such a good friend, in particular one who knows what you are. What a pity you’ll soon bid him adieu.”
“Shut up.”
La Croix scrutinized her over tented fingers. “You haven’t told him.”
“Shut. Up.”
He sighed and had the gall to look sorrowful. “Must you do this dance every time?”
“Apparently.”
“Your window where denial serves your purpose is sliding shut,” he warned.
“Your metaphor sucks and also, shut up.”
Gray often wondered how she put up with her heritage and the baggage it brought.
She’d never told him: The only way to put up with her heritage was to deny it. Every day.