Field Notes on Love(27)

“Questions about her life. Her hopes. Her fears.”

“Well,” he says, leaning back against the window, “we know Roy’s fear is that they’ll run out of apple pie.”

Outside, there’s the muffled sound of Ludovic yelling “All aboard!” and then heavy footsteps as people climb back onto the train. The curtain is still drawn across their compartment’s doorway, but they can hear their neighbor return to his room, and the train jerks forward once, then twice, before starting to pull away from the station.

    Hugo nods at her notebook. “So what’s the plan?”

“I think,” Mae says, looking up at him through her glasses, “I might be making a documentary.”

“About Ida.”

“Sort of. I mean, you saw the way she was with Roy last night. Think about how many other people are on this train right now, how many other love stories. That’s what I want the film to be about.”

“Love and trains?”

“Love and trains,” she agrees, and then she tips her head to one side, studying him. “Hey, if you had to describe love in one word, what would it be?”

Hugo blinks at her, his heart quickening for no particular reason. “I have no idea.”

“It could be anything. Like, say…pizza.”

“Pizza?” he asks, surprised. “Why pizza?”

“That’s…not important,” she says. “It could be something else too. Anything.”

“Wait, do you think love is like a pizza?” he asks with a grin, and she looks at him impatiently.

“This isn’t about me.”

“How do you reckon love is like—”

“Hugo.”

“Okay, okay. I’d need to think about it more. Especially if I’m going to come up with something better than pizza.”

“You have to say it quick. The first thing that pops into your head.”

Hugo’s first thought, for some reason, is of their conversation last night, how easy it had been to talk to her in the darkness. But that’s not a word, and they’re not in love, so he turns his mind to Margaret instead, flipping through the pages of their years together, trying to find something that might sum it all up. But his mind goes entirely blank.

    “This isn’t really my style,” he says with a frown. “I prefer to think things through.”

“You’re no fun.”

“You know what might help?”

“What?”

“Pizza,” he says, and when she rolls her eyes, he laughs. “Only joking. I meant coffee.”

They decide to skip the more formal breakfast in the dining car. Instead they buy a box of doughnuts in the lounge car and then find an open table to themselves. Behind them, a couple of the assistant conductors are sorting through tickets, and there’s an old man playing solitaire with a deck of Chicago Cubs cards. Otherwise it’s mostly quiet at this hour.

“So why love?” Hugo asks as he opens the box of doughnuts.

“It might be a little too early for big philosophical questions,” Mae says, raising her cup of coffee.

“No, it’s just…I understand the train part, obviously. But why love stories?”

“Because,” she says, her eyes flashing, “what could be more personal than that?” Hugo is still trying to figure this one out when she goes on. “Also, I’ve never had a chance like this before. All my films have been really small because my life has been really small. I think that was part of the problem. I mean, I once made a short about a squirrel that got stuck in our heating vents, and honestly, that squirrel was only a marginally worse actor than the drama club kids I usually put in my films. Most of them were set at the grocery store or the high school or the gas station, because there was really nowhere else. And now here I am on a train full of all these different people from all these different places, and they must have a million stories to tell.”

    He considers this a moment. “So you’re taking field notes.”

“I mean, it’s not super scientific or anything, but…yeah.” She licks some powdered sugar off her finger. “I guess I am.”

“Field notes on love,” Hugo says, glancing out the window, where the world is moving by too fast.

Mae nods. “And trains.”

“Do you remember that video you did for me?” he asks, turning back to face her, and she raises her eyebrows. “Sorry. Not for me. For this trip.”

“Yeah…”

“Well, it didn’t feel small to me at all. In fact, the moment I saw it, I knew—”

She cracks a smile. “That you wanted to invite an eighty-four-year-old instead?”

He shakes his head, eager to be understood. “No. I knew there was something interesting about you. Something that made me want to meet you. And all that happened in just a couple of minutes. It was short. But you managed to say so much.”

“You asked good questions.”

“Maybe. But your answers—they meant something.” He feels his face grow warm. “Or maybe they didn’t. I don’t know. But it certainly felt that way.”

Out the window, there’s a blur of houses and trees and highways. For a while, Mae stares at the telephone lines as they zip past. Finally she turns back to him with an unreadable expression. “You’re right.”