Field Notes on Love(29)

    Roy twists around in his seat. “I’m all yours,” he says. “And I was barely listening, so it doesn’t count as cheating or anything.”

This interview is shorter. Roy insists on opening with a joke (“Why was the train engine humming? Because it didn’t know the words!”), then spends most of the rest of the time talking about fishing, which—incidentally—is the word he’d choose to describe love.

“But if Ida asks,” he says with a wink, “tell her I said it was her.”

Afterward, Ashwin is overcome by curiosity too. He sits across from them in his uniform, hands folded as he talks about visiting his grandmother in Mumbai when he was a kid and learning to make samosas. One day he hopes to open a restaurant where he can use her recipe.

“That’s love,” he says. “An old woman making something for one person, and then years later, even after she’s gone, feeding all these different people on the other side of the world.”

It’s more than one word, but Mae doesn’t mind.

Not long after that, Ida returns with a middle-aged Asian couple in tow. “These are our neighbors,” she says, introducing them to Mae and Hugo. “Not in real life. Just on the train. I told them about your project.”

And so they interview the Chens, and then Marcus, their waiter from last night, and then a family of four from Iowa who stop to ask what they’re doing. By the time lunch starts and Ashwin needs the booth, Mae feels dizzy from all these stories, all the different lives she’s been allowed to glimpse, and she has a list of words to describe love that ranges from togetherness to joy to a 1962 Mustang convertible.

She and Hugo are halfway back to their cabin when they run into Ludovic.

    “I heard a rumor that you’re making a movie,” he says, looking at them expectantly, and so they duck into the open area near the doors, and Ludovic puts on his cap and straightens his tie, and Hugo holds the microphone close so they can hear over the rattling of metal on metal.

Later, after they’ve done several more interviews and had lunch and returned to their compartment, Hugo sinks down into his seat with a happy sigh. “So is it my turn now?”

Mae is busy fidgeting with the settings on the camera. “For what?”

“For an interview.”

“I don’t need to interview you. I already know you.” It takes her a second to realize exactly what she said. She lifts her eyes to see that he’s looking at her with amusement. She doesn’t know him; of course she doesn’t. She only meant that he isn’t a stranger, and even that is only marginally true. She gives her head a little shake. “The point is to interview strangers.”

“I thought the point was to interview people on trains,” he says with a good-natured smile. He spreads his arms wide. “And here I am. On a train.”

Mae gives him a long look, her heartbeat quickening at the thought of sitting him down for an interview, listening closely as he tells her about his dreams and his fears, about what love means to him. She wants to know what he would say. All morning as he’s sat beside her, she’s wanted to know. But something is holding her back. A week ago, she was with Garrett, and Hugo had a girlfriend so serious that they were planning to take this trip together. A week from now, she’ll be in Los Angeles and he’ll be back in England, almost six thousand miles apart.

“Maybe after Chicago,” she says, putting her camera away.





Before long the city of Chicago rushes up to meet them. Hugo peers out the rain-speckled window at the skyline, the tops of the buildings lost in the clouds. It’s so different from home, where everything is built low to the ground, where you can look up without losing your balance.

As they get closer, dozens of rails converge all around them, littered with rusty freight cars that sit ghostlike in the mist. Then the light disappears, and Hugo feels a jolt of excitement as they sweep into the tunnels underneath the sprawling city.

He looks over at Mae, who is still collecting her things, which are scattered everywhere: a tube of lip gloss, a crumpled copy of their tickets, a pair of socks. Hugo can only imagine what her bedroom must look like.

“Got everything?” he asks, arching an eyebrow.

She gives him a look as she tosses a stray cord into her bag. “You know there have been studies that prove the most creative people are the most disorganized?”

“Were you one of the featured subjects?”

As the train slows, they both stand up, but the space between the seats is too narrow and he almost falls backward trying not to bump into her. She reaches out an arm to steady him, her nose practically touching his shirt, and they both laugh. But underneath that, his heart is thumping wildly at the sudden proximity.

    The train jerks to a stop, and this time he’s the one to catch her. They stare at each other for a second, both flustered, and then she reaches for her rucksack, which is wedged onto a small shelf, and steps out of the compartment.

Across the hall, the cowboy walks out at the same time. He gives them both a nod, then adjusts the brim of his hat before heading off. Mae turns around with a slightly bemused look. “Didn’t expect him to be getting off here.”

“What, there are no cowboys in Chicago?”

“Maybe he came to wrangle some pizza.”