The Haunted Traveler December 2017 Edition

152
They looked like Latinas, but I couldn’t catch enough of their conversation to
be certain; they could have been Italian or Greek. Whatever their language I didn’t
understand it, but the younger of the two had the sort of dark coloring and dignified
bearing I’ve always favored, perhaps because—I think Freud says this somewhere—it
reminded me of my mother. She had on a scarf and sunglasses that made her look like
she wanted to avoid attention, but when she removed them and turned around, I saw
she was the very image of Marci.
My gaze fastened on the woman and she realized it, for she stared right back at me at
first, as if to put me in my place or to be certain I wasn’t going to accost her. I backed
down and lowered my eyes, but I couldn’t help but look up again. She was still looking at
me, not with anger, certainly not with emotion, just—staring. Finally a smug little smile
contorted her lips; she lowered her eyelids—I can’t say seductively—and she turned
around to chat with her companion, again in a language I didn’t recognize.
My wife slept as I sat nervously in my seat; the ghostly avatar of my former lover
occupied the window seat on the land side of the train, and whenever she turned to talk
to her friend she would cast an unnerving glance back at me.
My wife slept on—she’d been restless at night for months, the product of her age,
she told me—while the wraith of my former lover played with me, like a cat with a field
mouse. Her travel mate got off at the last Rhode Island stop and, after they said their
goodbyes, the haunting image turned in her seat, opened a book and eyed me—openly
but discreetly—with every turn of a page.
That, I thought, was so like Marci; she soaked up words the way a sponge absorbs
water. It was her, whatever strange language she spoke. I felt the blood in my face—my
ears were throbbing; I knew if my wife woke she would sense something wasn’t right. I
began to make gestures with my head towards the woman, nodding at the space between
the cars to see if I could persuade her to meet me there. She seemed to understand and
closed her book with indifference, as if she were merely tired of reading.
I allowed her to go first and kept my distance so that we wouldn’t attract attention.
She walked before me, holding the backs of seats with delicacy when the train swayed.
I stayed a few yards behind her until the glass doors slid shut behind us and she turned
to look me squarely in the eyes.
“What are you doing alive?” I asked.
“Whoever said I was dead?”
“They found your body—in the river.”
She laughed, coldly. “You haven’t changed,” she said. “You still attach too little
importance to the soul, and too much to the husk that it’s wrapped in.”
The conductor passed through and advised us of the location of the dining car and
rest rooms, doing his job, assuming we needed his help. I smiled and thanked him,
hoping he’d move on, which he did. When he was gone I turned back to the woman
who I once knew, now in the body of another.