The Map That Leads To You

So I read. It was late. I was in Europe and had been for two and a half weeks. I was on my way to Amsterdam. Constance fell asleep next to me—she was reading The Lives of the Saints and was on her own spiritual journey to read and see everything she could about saints, and to see every statue or representation of saints, which fed her special passion and the subject of her senior thesis, hagiography—and Amy stuck her head over the seat behind me and began chatting up a Polish guy named Victor. Victor smelled like sardines and wore a fatigue jacket, but Amy kept elbowing me a  little when he said something she thought was cute, and her voice got that singsongy flirtatiousness that meant she was roping a guy and tying him up. Victor was good looking and charming, with a voice that made him sound vaguely like Dracula, and Amy, I saw, had hopes.

That’s where everything stood when Jack appeared.

“Could you hold this?” he asked.

I didn’t look up. I didn’t understand he meant me.

“Miss?” he asked.

Then he pushed a backpack against my shoulder.

I looked up. I saw Jack for the first time.

Our eyes met and didn’t let go.

“What?” I asked, aware one of us should have looked away by now.

He was gorgeous. He was actually more than gorgeous. He was big, for one thing, maybe six foot three and well built. He wore an olive fleece and blue jeans, and the way they hung on him made the combination look like the most inter esting outfit anyone had ever thought to wear. Someone or something had broken his nose a long time ago, and it had healed in an apostrophe shape. He had good teeth and a smile that started in dimples just an instant be­fore he knew it was going to start. His hair was black and curly, but not ’Fro-ish, just Dead Poet-y. I noticed his hands, too; they were large and heavy, as though he wasn’t afraid to work with them, and he reminded me— just a little bit, just a bit, because it sounded silly to say it even to myself—of Hugh Jackman, the freaking Wolverine. This fellow looked insouciant—a stretch of a word but accurate nonetheless—a man who lived  behind a wink that indicated he got the joke, was in on it,  didn’t take it seriously, but expected you to go along with it. What that joke might be or how it counted in your life wasn’t quite clear, but it made the corners of my mouth rise a  little in the ghost of a smile. I hated that he drew a smile out of me, even the reflex of a smile, and I tried to look down, but his eyes wouldn’t permit it. He dog stared me, humor just on the other side of his look, and I couldn’t resist hearing what he wanted next.

“Could you please hold this while I climb up?” he asked, ex­tending the backpack again. His eyes stayed on mine.

“Climb up where?”

“Up here. In the baggage rack. You’ll see.”

He plunked his backpack on my lap. And I thought, You could have put it in the aisle, Wolverine boy. But then I watched him roll out his sleeping bag in a space he had cleared on the baggage rack across from me, and I had to admire his skill. I also had to admire his hindquarters, and the V of his back, and when he reached for his backpack, I looked down out of shyness and guilt.

“Thanks,” he said.

“No problem.”

“Jack,” he said.

“Heather,” I said.

He smiled. He put the backpack into the baggage rack as a pil­low, then climbed up. He appeared too big to fit, but he wedged himself in and then took out a bungee cord and roped it around the supports so that he wouldn’t fall out if the train went around a bend.

He looked at me. Our eyes met again and held.

“Good night,” he whispered.

“Good night,” I said.