Runaway

she had been looking out the window and how she couldn’t do that any longer so she had tried or had pretended to read her book, how he had asked where she had got on the train, and found out where she lived, and kept trying to make headway with the conversation, till she just picked up and left him.
    The only thing she did not reveal to him was the expression
chum around.
She had a notion that if she were to say that she would burst into tears all over again.
    “People interrupt women,” he said. “Easier than men.”
    “Yes. They do.”
    “They think women are bound to be nicer.”
    “But he just wanted somebody to talk to,” she said, shifting sides a little. “He wanted somebody worse than I
didn’t
want somebody. I realize that now. And I don’t look mean. I don’t look cruel. But I was.”
    A pause, while she once more got her sniffling and her leaky eyes under control.
    He said, “Haven’t you ever wanted to do that to anybody before?”
    “
Yes.
But I’ve never done it. I never have gone so far. And why I did it this time—it was that he was so humble. And he had all new clothes on he’d probably bought for the trip. He was probably depressed and thought he’d go on a trip and it was a good way to meet people and make friends.
    “Maybe if he’d just been going a little way—,” she said. “But he said he was going to Vancouver and I would have been saddled with him. For days.”
    “Yes.”
    “I really might have been.”
    “Yes.”
    “So.”
    “Rotten luck,” he said, smiling a very little. “The first time you get up the nerve to give somebody the gears he throws himself under a train.”
    “It could have been the last straw,” she said, now feeling slightly defensive. “It could have been.”
    “I guess you’ll just have to watch out, in future.”
    Juliet raised her chin and looked at him steadily.
    “You mean I’m exaggerating.”
    Then something happened that was as sudden and unbidden as her tears. Her mouth began to twitch. Unholy laughter was rising.
    “I guess it is a little extreme.”
    He said, “A little.”
    “You think I’m dramatizing?”
    “That’s natural.”
    “But you think it’s a mistake,” she said, with the laughter under control. “You think feeling guilty is just an indulgence?”
    “What I think is—,” he said. “I think that this is minor. Things will happen in your life—things will probably happen in your life—that will make this seem minor. Other things you’ll be able to feel guilty about.”
    “Don’t people always say that, though? To somebody who is younger? They say, oh, you won’t think like this someday. You wait and see. As if you didn’t have a right to any serious feelings. As if you weren’t capable.”
    “Feelings,” he said. “I was talking about experience.”
    “But you are sort of saying that guilt isn’t any use. People do say that. Is it true?”
    “You tell me.”
    They went on talking about this for a considerable time, in low voices, but so forcefully that people passing by sometimes looked astonished, or even offended, as people may when they overhear debates that seem unnecessarily abstract. Juliet realized, after a while, that though she was arguing—rather well, she thought—for the necessity of some feelings of guilt both in public and in private life, she had stopped feeling any, for the moment. You might even have said that she was enjoying herself.
    He suggested that they go forward to the lounge, where they could drink coffee. Once there Juliet discovered that she was quite hungry, though the lunch hours were long over. Pretzels and peanuts were all that could be procured, and she gobbled them up in such a way that the thoughtful, slightly competitive conversation they were having before was not retrievable. So they talked instead about themselves. His name was Eric Porteous, and he lived in a place called Whale Bay, somewhere north of Vancouver, on the west coast. But he was not going there immediately, he was breaking the trip in Regina, to see some people he had not seen for a long time. He was a fisherman, he caught prawns. She asked about the medical experience he had referred to, and he said, “Oh, it’s not very extensive. I did some medical study. When you’re out in the bush or on the boat anything can happen. To the people you’re working with. Or to yourself.”
    He was married, his wife’s name was Ann.
    Eight years ago, he said, Ann had been injured in a car