The Coast Starlight is the name of Amtrak’s overnight railroad journey from Seattle to Los Angeles.
For me, this was meant to be the highlight of the trip. I had never slept overnight in a bed on a train, and wanted to experience its sensation. So I had booked two sleeper suites, each with its own toilet and shower.
A Sleeper Car Attendant who looked like Mr. Clean from the old TV commercials welcomed us aboard.
I had visions of old-world elegance, freshly shined brass rails, incandescent lamps—and clean windows.
Reality cut a major swath into such an expectation: You couldn’t swing a rat in Amtrak’s sleeper suite, which after fifteen minutes had all the ambience of a jail cell. Seven minutes after that, looking at motional blur through window, you feel like a goldfish.
Nebraska bought a standard seat at the station and they stamped her ticket to share one of the suites, so she got off cheap, but at our mercy for a bunk.
Again, New Riders of the Purple Sage in my head.
We pulled out of Portland town, almost right on time,
The little girl I had found, her I left behind.
Mularski made an immediate mess of his suite, so Nebraska sought refuge in mine.
We were still adults who looked to one another as eight year-olds with eight year-old emotions, following a near-death experience aboard an airplane a few days earlier at the start of this journey.
Just as I was about to call Picnic! the dining car manager appeared to say he expected us for lunch. So we skipped to the dining car and, jostled by the train’s movement, whooped in delight as the connections between train cars tested our balance.
Hamburgers and fries for Mularski and me; a veggie burger for Nebraska.
Soon after, sleeping car passengers were summoned for wine tasting, but the wine on offer was not much better than Gallo-by-the-jug, so we started a game of Monopoly in the Parlor Car.
Each of us managed to acquire a monopoly and build houses and hotels, but Mularski had the bad luck of landing on ours, several times before we might have landed on his, and this soured his temper, which he took out on me by selling his properties cheap to Nebraska after it became clear he’d be bankrupt and gone within a roll or two.
I thought this was grossly unfair—an infringement of the rules—and I protested accordingly, accusing him of being a sore loser, causing him to issue counter allegations of same.
And pretty soon, all three us were sitting in different parts of the Parlor Car ignoring one another.
Mularski caught my eye. “You know,” he said, “I have more friends on Facebook than you.”
“How many?” I asked.
“Three hundred and four,” he smugly replied. “And you only have ninety-one.”
“You probably don’t even know three hundred of yours,” I said.
He took serious umbrage. “I know personally every one of my friends on Facebook.”
Nebraska piped up. “I’m doing better than both of you.”
“Huh?” I said.
“More than three hundred and four?” Mularski demanded.
“I’m not on Facebook,” she said. “And I pride myself on not having a lot of friends, but treasuring the few I do have.”
This stumped Mularski speechless, returning him to sulk mode, until he had another thought and again broke the gentle drumming rhythm of the train. “Ya know, we’re all gonna die one day.”
“So what?” I said.
“It’s okay with me,” added Nebraska.
“It doesn’t bother you that one day you won’t be here and you have no idea where you’ll be instead, or not be anywhere at all?” said Mularski.
“We worry and worry,” I said. “Worry about money, worry about taxes. Worry about our loved ones, about relationships. Worry about our health, worry about death. Then we die anyway. And guess what? There’s nothing to worry about any more.” I paused. “I thought I was going to die on that plane a few days ago. Every day since feels like a gift, which I guess is why right now is called the present.”
“Being eight years old again is a present?” Mularski snorted like a warthog.
“Actually, yeah.”
“Well, I’m tired of this nonsense.” Mularski stood and stalked back toward the sleeper cars.
Nebraska got up, too, but only to sit in the swivel seat next to mine. We both gazed out the window. “Do I have this correct?” she asked me. “He’s tired of being eight so he’s acting, what, like an eight year-old?”
“I don’t think he’s acting,” I said.
Nebraska giggled. “Do you believe in heaven and hell?”
“No.”
“Reincarnation?”
“If you come back as something else and don’t remember your past life, it doesn’t matter if you had one.’
“Some people remember past lives,” said Nebraska.
“Could just as easily be false memory syndrome.”
“Why is this happening to us?”
I shrugged. It had gone on much too long to be a dream.
“There must be a reason we’re eight, and not seven, or nine,” said Nebraska.
I considered this. “If this goes on much longer, we will be nine.”
Mularski had cooled off by dinnertime, which on Amtrak comes early. The Conductor and his staff, it is clear, want their train locked down for the night as early as possible.
I had hoped for a piano bar. But the Coast Starlight doesn’t even have a real bar with stools, only a service counter with standing room for two, which the server discourages.
The busy period to dine is the hour between five and six o’clock. Nearly all train passengers, we discovered, are very, very fat—and, no big surprise, very hungry.
Perhaps it was because very large people cannot fit into airplane seats. Or into cars. But the obese, I now realized, travel by train.
I pointed this out, in whispers, to Mularski and Nebraska, as we sat in the Parlor car, awaiting our turn to dine—we’d tried to book for eight o’clock, but the manager insisted it be seven-thirty—and we broke into the giggles.
Then Mularski got serious and checked his wristwatch. “In exactly twenty-four hours we’re going to pull into Santa Barbara, we’ll be home, this trip behind us. But we’re still eight years old.”
“I don’t really care any more,” said Nebraska.
“That’s okay for you, Miss Weed Whacker,” said Mularski. “But I’ve got two sons to take care of who are now older than I am.”
“Look,” I said, “this all started with almost being in an airplane crash, right? Maybe this train is going to run off the rails or something, and we’ll revert back to adults.”
“That’s a charming thought,” said Mularski, mildly alarmed.
Said Nebraska, “I’ve re-read the endings to Alice in Wonderland and Wizard of Oz three times. In both stories they wake up, simple as that.”
“So we’re all three having the same dream?” I asked.
“All I know is what I’m experiencing,” said Nebraska. “So, yes, this is my dream, and sooner or later I’m going to wake up.”
“So how do you account for the fact that I’m experiencing this too?” demanded Mularski.
“Easy.” Nebraska grinned. “You’re telling me that as part of my dream.”
Mularski threw up his hands. “I give up. Me-me-me-me-me,” he sang, as if in an opera.
Nebraska rolled her eyes. “If I want whine, I uncork a bottle.”
“You know what?” I said.
“What?” said Mularski.
“Whatever happens, we don’t have any control over it. And it’s been really interesting for me to be eight years old again.”
“Why?” demanded Mularski.
“I’ve learned a few new things about myself that I didn’t know before.”
“Like what?”
“Like that I didn’t do well at school because I’m A-D-D. It wasn’t my fault.”
“Me too,” said Mularski. “So what?”
“What?” Nebraska perked up. “You too… what?”
“I’ve spent most of my life on Ritalin,” said Mularski.
I digested this. “A-D-D seems to be a common denominator among us.”
“What are you suggesting?” said Nebraska.
“Maybe A-D-D has something to do with finding ourselves eight years old again.”
“I’m lost,” said Mularski.
“Just a thought,” I said. “Maybe the key to getting back to our real age is realizing something, learning something, an unresolved issue.”
“Got an issue, here’s a tissue,” said Mularski.
A voice over the intercom announced an upcoming “fresh air and smoking stop,” a paradox that made me realize all windows on the train were locked shut, and the air we breathed was being re-circulated over and over again.
“Let’s get off,” I said.
Outside the train, I filled my lungs with sweet air, and asked Mr. Clean why we couldn’t open windows on the train.
“It’s about insurance liability,” he replied. “People used to stick their heads out the window and get them lopped off by trains coming in the other direction.”
At 7:30 we took our seats in the Dining Car. I considered opening my bottle of Ridge Geyserville, but decided to save it for the next day; that’s when we’d have our picnic with goodies we’d bought at the deli in Portland.
Mularski and I ordered New York strip steak; Nebraska, a salad, as the train bumped into the darkening night.
We laughed through dinner as main course plates piled up before we’d finished our appetizers, the crew desirous of speeding us through the eating process as if we were in the food court of a shopping mall with closing time looming.
“How does it feel to eat flatulent cow?” asked Nebraska.
“Mooo,” said Mularski. “Hey, I did that on purpose. The aboiement has gone away.”
“A resolved issue, maybe?” I posed.
Said Mularski, “I resolve that we play an old fashioned game of hide & seek.”
Nebraska and I closed our eyes and Mularski scampered off. After counting to fifty we looked eat each other and laughed, reading one another’s thoughts that we should just stay put, let Mularski sweat it out hiding in some dark corner all night.
But after two minutes we relented and began to seek. First we searched the sleeper cars, poking our noses against glass windows shielded by partly curtained windows to discern if Mularski was hiding in an empty room, all the way to the front of the train.
Then we turned round and retraced our tracks, back through the Parlor and Dining cars, into steerage.
Still no Mularski.
“He’s probably locked himself in a toilet,” I said. “And once he thinks we’ve passed, he’ll go back to his sleeper suite assuming we’ve already checked it and stand in the shower stall.”
The shower and toilet occupy the same tiny stall, and ultimately you’d feel dirtier if you showered, so why bother? The obese knew better; they’d mostly taken the “roomettes” without private toilet/shower, having doubtless discovered on previous trips that they could not even get through the door, and if they did, they’d never be able to turn around or get out.
Sure enough, that had been Mularski’s strategy, and that’s where we found him.
Nebraska’s turn. But she didn’t want to hide on her own. So she and I skipped off together as Mularski covered his eyes with his hands and counted.
Quickly, we discovered an unlocked closet probably meant for staff uniforms, in the no man’s land where train cars connect. Amid the loud click clacking of the track below, we huddled in the dark. I felt Nebraska’s hand grip mine; our fingers entwined.
With the emotions of an eight-year old, I wasn’t yet attracted to the opposite sex, but feeling Nebraska’s warm breath invoked a strange feeling in my soul.
“Whatever happens,” Nebraska whispered, “I’m always going to remember this as one of the greatest experiences of my life. And I’m glad you’re here to share it with me.”
I could barely see her in the dark, but with my free hand I felt for her face and, discovering it, leaned over and kissed her gently on the forehead. “Me too, Nebraska.”
And then Mularski knocked furiously on the door. “Open up, I know you’re in there!”
Mr. Clean was right behind him. “Would you like me to make up your beds now?” he asked.
I checked my watch. It was not quite nine-thirty. What did he think we were, kids?
“Yay!” said Nebraska. “Slumber party!”
We stood by as Mr. Clean unfolded the couch into a bed and prepped the upper bunk. Then our threesome crowded into my suite while Mr. Clean tended to Mularski’s.
“Shall we open the wine?” I asked.
No. No one was in the mood for wine. We wanted hot chocolate with marshmallows.
This was too ambitious a request for Amtrak. The service bar was supposed to be open until 10:30, but was already shuttered and locked tight.
“Why don’t you watch a movie?” suggested Mr. Clean. He guided us to a shabby den on the ground floor of the Parlor Car.
Their eight o’clock showing was already over, and everyone had gone to bed. But Mr. Clean, suspecting possible troublemakers, made an exception and set the large screen TV to play August Rush, a movie about a twelve year-old boy’s search for his parents.
A hundred and fourteen minutes later all three of us were in tears.
Mularski tried to hide his, but teardrops streaked Nebraska’s face, and mine too.
It was I who broke the ice. “It’s okay to cry,” I said.
Nebraska began to sob, while Mularski continued a cover up until he could no longer help himself, burst out crying, and ran off.
Nebraska started to dab at her tears. I reached for her hand to prevent this. “Let them drip down your cheeks,” I said softly. “It’s a good feeling.”
She sniffled. “Okay.”
“It is healthy and therapeutic to cry,” I said. “Tears are a kind of poison that builds up in your body. You need to release them, eject the poison. You know how they say there’s nothing like a good cry? It’s about the tears. All expulsion therapy is good
“Expulsion therapy?”
“Think about it. Whenever your body expels fluids you feel better. When you exercise and sweat, you’re body releases endorphins, which are compared to opiates in the way they make you feel good and ease pain. Even when you go to the bathroom…”
“I always feel better after a good dump,” interjected Mularski, re-joining us.
“And also sex,” I added. “Ultimately, it’s about the ejection of bodily fluids, which bring relief and tranquility.”
“The irony,” said Nebraska. “From the moment we’re born, we’re told not to cry. No wonder the world is so screwed up. And all those other things are also shamed.”
“Teardrops are the best,” I said. “Eyes are the window to the soul, to the brain. So when you cry tears, it is the brain—the soul—that is immediately relieved. You notice how hard it is to look anyone directly in the eye for more than a few seconds? People get uncomfortable and turn away. Very few can keep an eye grip going. It’s because they instinctively know they’re exposing their thoughts. And, in fact, it’s true.”
“What’s true?” said Mularski, dabbing his eyes with a paper napkin he’d grabbed from upstairs.
“If you look deeply into someone’s eyes, and they hold your gaze, after about fifteen seconds you can download their brain.”
“C’mon.”
I shrugged. “It’s true.”
“Prove it,” Mularski demanded. “Stare into my eyes and tell me what I’m thinking.”
I shook my head. “This isn’t a party trick. And if you’re intent on reading somebody’s thoughts, you don’t warn them in advance, you just do it.”
“Cop-out,” said Mularski.
I laughed. “What are you gonna do about it, double-dare me?”
Nebraska looked around the makeshift cinema. “It’s creepy in here—let’s go upstairs.”
The Parlor Car was dead as a morgue. Plus a couple of obese persons had left their seats in steerage and snuck into the more comfortable Parlor Car swivel chairs, were snoring the night away.
So the only thing left was bedtime.
In his Sleeper Suite, Mularski rummaged for a new model to construct.
In mine, Nebraska took the top bunk. Lights out, I faced the window and watched time and space sweep by in a motional blur.
“What do you think?” Nebraska asked softly from above.
“About what?”
“Is being eight years old our new reality?”
I breathed in deeply, exhaled slowly. “I don’t know. But I don’t really care any more.”
“Be careful,” she said. “The Care Bears may appear.”
“At this point, that would not surprise me one bit.”
“You know, you’re right.”
“About Care Bears not surprising me?”
“No. About the power of tears. I feel a great sense of relief.”
“Me too. Nighty-night.”
“Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”
The train’s motion rocked me—and Nebraska too—into deep slumberland.