Now We’re All On Facebook
They sat with Moira in the Croton-Harmon station, across from an escalator down to the platform. The train from Albany was forty minutes late.
“Amtrak.” Bill rolled his eyes.
But it was still better than putting Moira on one of the two locals that came and went while they were waiting. The locals would have taken her to Grand Central, and from there she would have had to schlep all her suitcases onto the subway or else pay for a cab to Penn Station.
“All the southbound trains leave from Penn,” Bill said.
“I know,” Moira said. “That’s how I got here.”
“This way we get to wait with you.” Ellen put her arm on Bill’s shoulder and felt her fingers under his collar. It had been her idea, having Moira up for the weekend. Moira had moved to Philadelphia in August. Ellen had been talking about having her up since finding her on Facebook.
“Philly’s not that far,” Bill said. “We’ll have to see you more often.”
“Now we’re all on Facebook,” Moira said.
Bill and Ellen laughed.
“Do you want a coffee?” Bill said. “I want a coffee.”
Ellen looked over her shoulder after him. A school trip had gotten tickets from the ticket machine and was in line at the coffee shop ahead of him.
“I don’t know why he wants coffee,” she said. “Wouldn’t you think he’d see there’s no time?”
“You would,” Moira said.
Metal clacks and a diesel roar slid beneath them, and blowers, and a steady bell. The roar receded and wound down to a lower pitch and volume. The clacks slowed and stopped. As if vacuumed towards the blowers, a crowd accumulated at the top of the escalator.
Moira stood. “I’d better go.”
Everything Ellen wanted to say sounded perfunctory or excessive: how glad she’d been to find Moira on Facebook, how much she’d thought about Moira’s visit and planned for them to do; how you had to get to know Bill. She didn’t know Moira well enough to say that, not after only a weekend and the conference where they’d met. Moira had been sitting next to Ellen during the main lecture. Moira had whispered such smart gibes that Ellen had hesitated to introduce herself, worrying—foolishly worrying—that knowing Moira would only mean an opportunity to mess something up.
Bill came back with a black coffee for himself and a latte for Moira, just as Ellen saw Moira step from the bottom of the escalator. Moira didn’t look back up to the mezzanine, or wave. She walked under the platform roof and they didn’t see her board the train. They didn’t see her again.
