Lone Star (20 page)

Was that really true?

“Tomorrow is our last day,” Chloe said—because
that
was the important part.

His eyes were on Chloe, amiable like a brown bear's. “So what were you two doing in Liepaja? Not many American girls head to Liepaja on their own.”

For some reason Chloe felt puffed up for a second to think that she was the kind of brave girl who would head to Liepaja on her own.

“How would you even know to go there?” he asked. “It's only in the last ten years that the city's been open to tourists. How did you hear about it? Did you like it?”

“We didn't see much of it,” Hannah confessed. “But what were you doing there?”

Chloe pretended to read.

“Oh, I was . . .” he trailed off, his hand swirling in the air. “I met my father there. In Liepaja, they keep records on the Poles, Russians, Bulgarians who went missing during the war. Very poor records, as it turns out.”

“Your dad is looking for them? Why?”

“That,” the boy said, “is a very good question. Damned if I know.”

“Is that why
you're
in Latvia?”

“One of the reasons. I'm on my way to Italy, actually. Need
to make a little money in Riga first. Are you girls visiting family?”

“How in the world do you make money in Riga?” Hannah asked.

“Lots of ways.” He raised his eyebrows and made a scabrous chuckle. “I give tours, for one.”

“Of Riga?”

“Sure. Of Riga, of Jurmala. Why are you so surprised?” He glanced over at Chloe. “Are you surprised, too?” he asked her, all charm and smiles and destruction.

“I wasn't listening. What?”

“Well, it
is
a very absorbing book you're reading,” he said. “I'm Johnny, by the way,” he said. “Pleased to meet you. And you are . . .”

“Chloe.” They were sitting too close for Chloe to turn her head and look him in the eye. His face was barely a foot away from her face. She half nodded in his general direction, keeping her eyes on his denim-clad knees and the pointed black leather toe of what looked to be a very snazzy cowboy boot. Lucchese perhaps? Wow. Leather jacket, beret, an ancient guitar with new strings. What the hell?

“Hi, Chloe,” he said. “Would you like to book a tour of Riga with me? I'm very good.”

How good could he be? Didn't he just tell her he couldn't get out of a briar patch? “No, thank you.”

“Hi, Johnny, I'm Hannah,” Hannah said, reaching across and extending her graceful hand to him. “Chloe, let's not be hasty. We actually were thinking of hiring a guide for tomorrow, remember?”

No steely daggers out of Chloe's eyes would dissuade her friend from talking. “Johnny can give us a tour,” Hannah continued. “Are you expensive?”

“Like a piece of steak. But I'm very good. A filet mignon.” Every word spoken through two rows of exposed teeth.

“Hannah is a vegetarian, so there you go,” said Chloe.

“No, I'm not! And he's not being literal, Chloe,” Hannah said in a patronizing tone. “I think a tour would be great, Johnny. Tomorrow is our last day. We haven't seen very much.”

“Where are you headed after this?”

“Poland. Then Barcelona. We're traveling for three weeks.” Hannah said it as if to impress him. “What about you?”

“I'm not traveling to Barcelona.”

Hannah giggled! “No, silly,” she said, all coquettish. “How long have you been on the road?”

“On and off about two years, I guess.”

Hannah whistled. Even Chloe blinked in wonderment. She couldn't help a small question. “In Latvia for two years?” she asked.

He looked so happy she'd asked him anything. He turned his whole body to her before he answered. “No. In Latvia almost one, though.”

“What have you been doing in Latvia for a whole year?” asked Hannah.

“This and that,” he said. “Where are you girls from?”

Was it Broceni and then Dobele or Dobele and then Broceni? How long was this going to continue? As the train lurched on, Hannah told Johnny everything there was to tell about them, and then some more stuff. She told Johnny where they were from, where they were staying, when they came, and even why.

Chloe concentrated on the fields and the rivers, wondering why Hannah was suddenly so garrulous. For God's sake. Normally you couldn't get her to share important news with her closest friends. Like her affair with the Noah of Bangor. Now she was blabbing as if Johnny was her therapist.

With the professor next to her fretting in disapproval, Hannah asked Johnny questions about trains, and comfort, and Riga. Every time he would answer Hannah, he would glance at Chloe and smile. His thigh kept pressing against her thigh in a way that was galling.

They were only at Broceni. Damn it. Dobele and Jelgava still to come. Why wasn't anyone getting off? To think that she might have to sit squeezed like this against him until Riga. She glanced at her watch. Why was her stupid heart beating so fast?

He stopped talking and, with his army manual open on his lap, dozed off. Hannah kept gesturing to Chloe, who finally turned her head from the window. “What?” she said, pretty loud.

Johnny's head drooped forward.

“Shh,” said Hannah. “Well?” She pointed in the general vicinity of him.

“The worst,” Chloe mouthed. The train pitched sideways, and his head bobbed sideways, toward her. His clean shiny hair was touching her shoulder. She cleared her throat and shifted in her seat, to rouse him, to force him to change his position. Oh, he changed it, all right. By slumping even further to the right. The boy was practically drooling on her arm! “Why are you talking to him so much?”

“Why aren't you? I'm making chitchat.”

“Weird how I didn't hear you volunteering any chitchat about Blake and Mason.”

“He didn't ask.” Hannah grinned as he had grinned, like a Cheshire cat. It was hopeless.

He woke up a while later, stretched his ridiculously long body, like a sapling twig, one of his arms nearly hitting Chloe on the head, sat up, leaned forward, pulled out a silver flask from his duffel, swigged it, and offered it to her!

“Um, no, thank you.”

Hannah of course grabbed it. She coughed a little, surprised by its high alcohol content.

“Stoli.” He smiled. “Good, right? Excuse me, I'll be right back.” He asked Chloe to keep an eye on his stuff, got up, and vanished. He was gone a fairly long time. When he returned he was awake, flushed, and full of energy. He fitted in snugly between the
lasciviously smiling zaftig woman and an ill-disposed Chloe, turned to her, and said, “So what are you doing after?”

“After what?” She tried not to snap, but failed.

“Do you mean later?” Hannah said. “What are we doing later?”

“No, I mean after all this. Did you just graduate high school? Are you headed to college?”

Lucky for Chloe, Hannah took that one. “Chloe and I are going to the University of Maine, up in Bangor,” she said. “Do you know where that is?”

But Johnny, who had been looking at Chloe when Hannah replied, didn't answer, blinking with awareness at the shadow passing across Chloe's face.

Hannah kept on and on at him about things. “Where are you headed in Italy?”

“Tiny place. Tarcento. Do you know it?”

Of course Hannah didn't know it. Why even ask?

“I'm going to visit my mother,” Johnny said. “She's staying in Tarcento, and I'm on my way to say goodbye to her before I fly to Columbus, Georgia. Fort Benning. First OCS. Then the 75th Ranger Regiment.”

Ah. Maybe that's why the conductor had half saluted. But how would he know that from the travel pass?

“You're going into the army?”

“Not just the army. I'm going to be a Ranger!”

Hannah was drowning in a pool of amazement. “You're enlisting? That's awesome. Where are you going to be deployed? Afghanistan, wow! Aren't you scared? Are the Rangers like an elite force? Special operations, you say. Your family must be proud of you, no? When do you leave for overseas?” She giggled again. “I know you're overseas now, I meant Afghanistan. November? That seems so soon. So Ranger training is not that long? Do you get a weekend pass when you're at Fort Benning?”

Chloe listened to this, drowning in her own pool of amazement.

He smelled of cigarettes, possibly something carbonated, there was a man smell, but also a stale smell, not necessarily unpleasant, but unfamiliar and not altogether pleasant. But . . . not altogether unpleasant, either.

Could Hannah sustain this level of excitement at every new fact about himself the boy shared? Johnny, while fielding Hannah's questions, kept smiling at Chloe. “Where are you from, Chloe?”

“Maine—like my friend said. We live next door to each other. Like she said.”

Why did that amuse him, please him?

“Where are you really from?” His fingers circled around her face, uncomfortably close to it, one heave of the train and his pointing digit would graze her cheek.

“You mean, where is my mother from?”

“Or father.”

“North Dakota,” Chloe said, stubbornly refusing to participate with him. “And Maine. Is that what you wanted to know?”

He pointed to his own elfin face: high forehead, square jaw, prominent cheekbones. “Do you see? My mother is Indonesian.” He thought they were kindred spirits! How precious of him. Well, Chloe would put paid to that immediately.

“Yeah, I'm not from Indonesia.”

“Where in North Dakota?”

“Pembina.”

“Really. There's an army base close by.”

“I know,” said Chloe. “My dad was stationed there. That's how he met my mom.”

“Aha,” Johnny said. “So your dad was a military man?”

“He was in the National Guard for a few years. He's the chief of police now.” He was less impressed by this than she'd hoped he would be. Smiling, though. Thoroughly entertained.

“Chloe's mother is originally from China,” Hannah said.

“Nooo,” Chloe drew out. “My mother is originally from Pembina, North Dakota. And her mother. And her mother's mother. And her mother's mother's mother. And . . .”

“I get it,” Johnny said. “Your mother's from Pembina.”

She didn't want to be telling him any of it. “Back when North Dakota was a territory,” she told him anyway, “and not a state, over a hundred and sixty years ago, the missionaries from Canada went to China and brought back eight girls and two boys. The children were nine or ten at the time. They lived in a missionary compound, near Dauphin, north of Lake Manitoba, but when they were old enough, some of the children went south for warmth. They stopped at Pembina, two miles south of the border, declaring it warm enough.”

Johnny laughed. “Only a true Chinese would deem Pembina on the 48th parallel to be warm enough,” he said.

How did he know this!

“So where in the States do you live?” Hannah asked while he was still laughing.

“Oh, I've lived everywhere.”

“Except Texas,” Chloe pointed out.

“Correct! Except Texas. And North Dakota. Tell me, is Pembina close to Manitoulin Island? That's where I'd want to escape to, if I could.”

Chloe suppressed a mocking chuckle. “Manitoulin Island is nowhere near there.”

“It's near Canada, though, right?”

Chloe would not catch his twinkling eye. “Canada is the second-largest country in the world. So technically yes. But a thousand miles from Pembina.”

“What is distance anyway, right?” he said. “Just a blink. A number on the page, nothing more. Manitoulin's got a place called Misery Bay. Isn't that the best name? How could one not want to go there?” He leaned in to Chloe, like a kid, already familiar and undaunted by her hostility, oblivious to it. He inhaled the air around her and said, “You smell nice.” He tilted his head, this
way and that. “Like a girl. You smell . . .” He inhaled again. “Like lavender and vanilla.”

For a moment Chloe caught his smiling eye. He blinked, slowly. She blinked slowly back. When she replied, she felt slightly heady, as if she'd been winded. “You're telling me I smell like fabric softener?”

And he, without missing a beat, said, “I don't know, what's fabric softener?”

Chloe sighed and stared at her watch, as if by staring, she could somehow will the time to go faster. Had they passed Jelgava yet? She couldn't believe it. She had missed Jelgava.

“Jelgava is next,” Johnny said. “You should get off there another time. It's got a most splendid castle. Like Versailles, but bigger. You like castles, don't you, Chloe?”

“I don't know,” she said. “I've never seen one.”

“Latvia has castles?” Hannah was surprised.

“Latvia has lots of castles,” Johnny said. “Kings and queens and dukes and princes lived here for many centuries. Chloe, really? You've never seen a castle?” Like a whiskey burn, that was the low-register timbre of his husky voice.

How long was this insipid chin wag going to continue?

“What's your full name?” He had been addressing Chloe, but Hannah replied.

“Hannah Gramm.”

“Uh-huh. What about you, Chloe?”

“She's Chloe Divine. With an I not an E.”

“You're Chloe
Divine
?”

“What's so funny?” said Chloe. “What's your name?”

“I'm Johnny Rainbow,” he said, grinning wide.

“Your name is Johnny Rainbow,” she said, “and you're laughing at
my
name?”

“Because yours isn't real.”

“And yours is?”

“Sure.”

“If yours is, then mine is.”

What he might have said was, she wasn't
for
real. Except she knew she was. Maybe she feared he was right. In any case, since she knew almost for certain that she was Chloe Divine, she had to conclude that the mirage was not her, but the strumming vagabond next to her named Johnny Rainbow.