The Train

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

It was midnight, and nearly dark in the stateroom. One light bulb spread shadows across the ceiling. A man lay comfortably snoring, stretched upon a chair levered into a bed.

“Promus McGee,” said Thompson, indicating the sleeping man. He shrugged. “Says he’s in show business. A talent scout. Who knows?”

Kelli’s mind invoked visions of heroic crusaders.

“You are a pretty thing, my dear, but even beautiful girls shouldn’t primp overly long. Time enough for the steward to lower the seats and spread the blankets.”

John Thompson paused a moment before producing an endearing grin.

“Thank you, Mister Thompson,” Kelli said.

She turned sideways so he might not notice the hickey.

“No matter,” he said.

He patted the chair next to him where the coverlet was turned down. “You had better come over by me.”

“All right. Of course,” she whispered.

Thompson lifted an edge.

“I’ll freshen while you crawl under,” he said.

He nodded to the man lying coma-like nearby.

“He is a bit of a rounder, isn’t he?”

Kelli surveyed the man. He was a tub, she thought, resembling a salt shaker, and was rather triangular and squat. His pink face was spherical, and his round head supported strands of mud- colored hair, combed over. Hidden on either side of an overly developed, pock marked, bulbous nose, she suspected his eyes were small and round, and perhaps as black as coal.

“He looks like a Promus McGee,” she voiced respectfully, and in the process slipped off her tennis shoes, slid onto the couch and snuggled beneath the woolen cover, certain her clothes would be wrinkled by morning.

Thompson laughed at her joke. Moving toward the lavatory, he snorted in laughter, which she accepted in gratitude.

Afraid to make a sound or to open her eyes for fear of displeasing the man who had taken charge, she faked sleep. She was wondering what laying-over would be like, when she heard the lavatory door opening. John Thompson strolled toward his bed. Her seat-partner’s feet were bare, and his chest was lightly furred. Her heart danced as his body reclined beside her. She would be sleeping next to a nearly naked man in maroon-striped pajamas bottoms.

Thompson is as old as my dad, she judged— taller though, and more muscular. Even the bulge at his groin, even flaccid, seemed gigantic. Inadvertently she wondered if he coveted young girls like her father did. She fanaticized about kissing him and caressing him. Her secret angel was disgusted for thinking such thoughts, but her intimate membranes moistened and even her toes curled.

“I’ve never kissed a man with a beard,” she remembered.

She had never even kissed a man. Well, maybe she had kissed her algebra teacher.