The Last Ballad(57)

“Wonderful,” he said. “Wonderful.” He felt around in his pants pockets, removed a billfold, and set it on the table. On top of the billfold was a silver badge with an eagle cresting the top of it. A banner unfurled itself across the badge’s middle, but it was turned and caught the light in a way that kept Claire from being able to read it. The man searched his pockets until he found a pack of cigarettes.

“Cigarette?” he asked.

Claire looked at the pack where it rested on the table. She felt emboldened by her anonymity. It was the middle of the night. Mrs. Barnes was old; she had probably been asleep for hours. Even if she were to wake she probably wouldn’t shuffle down the hall and come to the dining car this late at night. Were they to find her smoking, none of the girls would mention a word about it to anyone. She wondered what Paul would think to see her here, alone, speaking to a colored man close to her own age and having a cigarette with an older man, a stranger in the middle of the night. She was going home. Her life would change soon, and she did not know what lay ahead, but this moment in the middle of the night was exciting and uncertain and tinged with danger, and she could not help herself.

“Yes,” she said. “Please.”

The man picked up the pack and gave Claire a cigarette. Then he shook another free of the pack and put it between his lips.

“Now, if only we had some matches,” he said.

Hampton walked back into the dining room. He slowed when he saw someone sitting with Claire. Something changed in his face. Something must have changed in Claire’s face as well, because the stranger turned to see what had caught her eye.

“Oh, good,” the stranger said. He lifted his cigarette toward Hampton, raised his voice. “Matches?”

Hampton stood still for another moment, and then he walked toward their table. He took a book of matches from his pocket, struck one, and held it over the table. The stranger didn’t move, and it wasn’t until he looked at Claire and raised his eyebrows that she remembered that she held a cigarette between her fingers and realized that the match had been struck for her. She put the cigarette to her lips and leaned toward the flame, drew on it. Claire chose not to look up at him, and from the corner of her eye she saw the flame’s reflection in the train’s window. She imagined someone standing outside the train and seeing this burst of light upon her face as the dining car rocketed past in the middle of the night.

The match had burned down more than halfway, but Hampton simply moved it across the table toward the stranger. The man leaned toward it and lit his cigarette as well. Hampton shook the match to extinguish it. He placed the book of matches on the table. He balled Claire’s napkin into his fist and picked up the empty glass and plate.

“Anything else?” he asked without looking at her.

“No,” Claire said, but what she wanted to say was “I’m sorry.”

He nodded and walked through the dining room and disappeared the way he’d come. She watched him go, her hand resting on the table before her, the lit but unsmoked cigarette burning between her fingers.

The stranger tapped an ash into an empty coffee cup that had been left out for the breakfast service. He leaned across the table toward Claire.

“Was that boy bothering you before I came in?”

“No,” she said. “He was in here when I sat down. He left when we stopped back there, at Charlottesville.”

“You sure?”

“Yes,” she said. Her face had grown warm, as if she’d been caught doing something that she should not have been doing. She feared that she was blushing. “I’m fine. Really.”

The stranger looked at her for another moment. She held his gaze in hers. She thought that to look away would mean that she’d been caught in some kind of lie, and she hadn’t lied; she simply hadn’t known what to say.

“So,” he said, flicking his ash into the coffee cup again. “What were you and your classmates doing in D.C.?”

“Sightseeing, mostly,” Claire said. She looked down at her cigarette, then brought it to her lips.

“What did you see?”

She inhaled, looked at the stranger, watched his face as the smoke spread between the two of them.

“Just the usual things,” she said. “The things everyone sees: the White House, the Capitol, the monuments.”

The man raised his eyebrows and gave a half smile as if he’d been expecting to hear what Claire had just said, had been expecting to hear that she’d only seen and done the things that tourists always saw and did. Claire looked down at the coffee cup between them. She turned it toward her and peered at the ash inside.

“Senator Overman gave us a long tour today—well, yesterday,” Claire said. She set the coffee cup upright, raised her eyes to the stranger’s.

The stranger cocked his head and smiled.

“How interesting,” he said. “I just met with Senator Overman. You must be with the group of young ladies from North Carolina.”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“What’s your name?”

Claire remembered what she’d just said to Hampton, and now she spoke without hesitation. “Donna,” she said.

“Donna what?”

“It’s not important.”

“It’s not important?” the stranger repeated. “Come on. You’re a southern gal, aren’t you? Riding in a fancy dining car in the middle of the night, getting tours from senators? Names are always important to girls like you.”