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By Christopher Johnston

May 14, 1999 | It was warm in the economy class. The sun lay fat on the western horizon and the train hummed as it eased west into Kansas -- a dim noise, like the lazy murmur of the crowd during a lull in the game. I listened to the man across the aisle. The smell of whiskey and ashtrays radiated from him and he beat the heat by taking his shirt off. He must have been in his mid-40s -- about twice my age -- but he was muscular and he carried himself like a toy GI Joe, his sinewy arms jutting awkwardly from his ridiculously broad shoulders. Tattoos carved through his chest hair like a hedge labyrinth and he pestered the woman beside him. She was stout, hefty almost and plain; returning, she said, to her husband after a visit home. She rebuffed his advances but gently, incompletely, and when he retrieved a half pint of Wild Turkey from his jacket pocket and poured it into her Diet Coke, she laughed and let his hand linger on her dimpled thigh.

"I'm not used to rejection," he said.

"You're getting off the train in an hour," she said.

"I'd rather get off on the train, if you know what I mean."

The train rolled to a pause for no apparent reason. I left the pair and made my way to the observation car. The summer had lost its varnish, the landscape a patchwork of faded greens and browns and the river that edged up to the tracks sleepy and unimpressed. Nothing seemed to be moving.

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At some point, change stopped meaning movement. I had met a girl, June, five months before the train ride, in a club on the outskirts of Madison called the Inferno. She was quirky, unsophisticated but experienced. One minute she'd earnestly pronounce the "s" in Camus and the next she'd tell me about moving into her own place at age 15. She'd lived in Madison her whole life and kept asking questions about the various places I'd been. She made me feel worldly. I'm not sure what I made her feel.

We exchanged numbers that first night and just as I was getting ready for bed, the phone rang. It was June.

"Are you OK?" she asked.

"Yes, of course. You?"

"Yes," she said. "I just wanted to make sure you got home all right."

"You dropped me at my door."

"I know. I just ..."

I wonder why I couldn't just leave it at that. What is it about being in a new place that makes it so easy to be rude?

"You're ID-ing me, aren't you?" I asked. "You're seeing if I gave you the right number."

"Well," she said timidly, "you never can tell ..."

That was the beginning of my relationship with June.

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