Eighty Days to Elsewhere

by kc dyer

  I stare at him, stunned into silence.

  “ExLibris?” I manage at last. “How—how did you even find out about the job?”

  He shrugs and pulls a tiny scrap of paper out of his wallet. When he holds it out to me, I see it’s got a handwritten phone number on it.

  “I spotted it on a street corner near the bookstore,” he says quietly.

  As I stare at the crumpled scrap, I remember the posted page that blew off the pole on my way to the bakery that day. I’d torn my coat chasing that poster down, after it blew away in the wind. It had been missing a single tab.

  Releasing his sleeve and snatching up the tab, I’m still not quite able to believe my eyes.

  I turn on him. “It’s not bad enough that your uncle is trying to ruin us, but you’re stealing my job too?”

  I’m shouting now, to make my voice heard over the engine; all the fear and fury and homesickness bursting out of me in a torrent.

  “It’s not your job yet,” he says, but he takes another step back.

  “The least you can do,” I continue, “is to tell your uncle to quit hounding me.”

  The Evil Nephew’s face blanches. “What? He’s been hounding . . . ?”

  “By e-mail,” I say, reaching for my phone. I have a moment’s struggle pulling it out of my pocket, and then bring up the lawyer’s threat on the screen. He glances at it, and then stares at me, wordlessly.

  I fold my arms across my chest. “So, I’m supposed to not only accept this level of harassment from your uncle . . .”

  “He’s not my uncle,” he mutters.

  “Well, whoever he is to you. I don’t really care. He’s obviously set his sights on destroying my family, including throwing me out of my apartment.”

  The Evil Nephew looks uncomfortable. “I—I don’t know what to say. He’s a total shit. But I have no control over what he writes to you or to anybody.”

  Somewhere up near the front of the train, a whistle sounds. Dom punches the button by the train doors, and they hiss open. He steps back onto the train.

  As I reach for the handrail, something flutters out of my pocket. It’s not until I’m standing inside the train that I see I’ve dropped the ExLibris envelope onto the station platform.

  With the whistle shrilling out again, I leap onto the platform and scoop up the envelope. But as I whirl back to the train, the door hisses shut in my face. The train begins to pull away.

  “Wait!” I yell, racing the car along the edge of the platform. Ignoring the piercing sound of a whistle behind me, I smack the side of the train as it hastens past. “Hey—wait!”

  I reach the end of the platform as the final car of the train accelerates by. My momentum is so great that I have to grab hold of the wire fence by one edge so as not to fly out on the tracks. I still have a death grip on my phone, but the whoosh of wind from the train’s departure rips the envelope from my hand. The torn envelope and its contents swirl onto the tracks behind the departing train.

  chapter twenty-one

  IMAGE: The Alps

  IG: Romy_K [Chamonix, France, March 28]

  #ReptilianTeeth #GoingUp

  91

  In shock, I watch the red lights on the back of the train as they race off into the perfection of the snowy mountain morning.

  This is a disaster. Leaving aside the fact that a competitor I didn’t even know existed has now got a lead on me, the train is gone, and all my things with it.

  Suddenly, someone grabs me from behind. “Arrête je dis!” comes a breathless voice. “Qu’est-ce que tu penses faire, petite folle?”

  Turning, I find an old man with an enormous white moustache and a pristine uniform clutching my arm. His face is a mask of horror. “La vie est belle, mademoiselle,” he says. “N’essaie pas de la terminer—surtout pendant je bosse!”

  I hold up both hands. “I’m sorry,” I gabble at him. “I can’t speak French, por favor.”

  His look changes to one of complete bafflement.

  “Shit. Sorry, that was Spanish.” I take a deep breath and try again. “Je no—uh—habla français, monsieur.”

  His eyes clear. “Ah,” he says, not unkindly. “American?”

  I nod. “I have a seat on that train, and it left without me—can you call them to stop?”

  And of course, in no way surprisingly, he cannot.

  What he can do, now that he understands I had no intention of throwing myself under said train, is to climb down and retrieve my envelope and its scattered papers.

  “Here you are, mam’zelle,” he says, puffing, as he climbs back up a recessed ladder from the tracks. “All is well once more, yes?”

  “No sir, it’s not.” I slump onto a nearby bench with my wallet, phone, and the contents of the envelope from ExLibris. “Apart from this, everything I own is on that train.”

  He gives me a kindly smile. “I promise you, mam’zelle, we can arrange to have your bags collected at the next stop, and book you a seat on another train. Where are you headed?”

  “Brindisi.”

  His face falls. “Ah. Well, tomorrow is a public holiday, so the next train destined for the south of Italy doesn’t come through here for two days. It can be arranged, but . . .”

  While the kindly station guard chatters on, my mind is racing. Even if I’m able to collect my bags at the next station, waiting for another train will put me two full days behind schedule by the time I get to Brindisi.

  And also? Behind the Evil Nephew.

  Worse, Kindly Station Guard tells me the highway tunnel connecting France and Italy is closed over the holiday.

  “Annual repairs and maintenance,” he tells me. “Only commercial vehicles allowed, and even they can’t get through until after midnight.”

  By losing my train, I’ve effectively trapped myself in Chamonix, unless I hike over Mount Blanc into Italy and catch a train there.

  I stare up into the sky, watching a new batch of paragliders flit like spring butterflies across the face of the mountain when the idea hits.

  A New Romy sort of idea.

  The station guard is winding down, and has already lifted his hat to me twice when I grab his arm and point at the paragliders.

  “How do those people get up there?”

  “They—I believe they take the gondola, mam’zelle.”

  “Which is . . . ?”

  He points mutely at a signpost near the station entrance. It has a pictogram of a skier striding toward a chairlift.

  I stuff my wallet and phone into the torn envelope with my ExLibris paperwork, and run, before Old Romy can find a way to stop me.

  * * *

  —

  After following the signs, I end up at the entrance to what is clearly a major tourist attraction here in Chamonix. A church bell tolls eight times as I hurry up the steps. This mountain is called the Aiguille du Midi, and according to the poster on the wall, it is home to the longest and steepest cable car in the world.

  I stare up at the thin black line tracing across the snowy, jagged cliffs above me. A tiny silver and red car hangs precipitously from the line about halfway up, bobbing like a single, dangling Lego block, until it vanishes out of sight. On a parallel wire, another Lego block breaks the clouds to head down toward me. Somewhere in the back of my brain, Old Romy’s voice starts to yell.

  A pale young guy with a blond man bun and an overbite lounges against the entrance, smoking.

  “Nous ouvrons à dix heures,” he says through a cloud of sweetly skunk-scented smoke.

  “Do you speak English?” I ask, racing up the steps. “I need to get up to those paragliders.”

  “Hell yeah, I speak English,” he says, holding out his joint. “Always willing to share a smoke with a fellow American.”

  “No thanks,” I say quickly. “Listen—it’s a long story, bu
t I need to get to the next train station, like—right away. It’s in . . .”

  “Courmayeur, Italy,” the guy says, narrowing his eyes to take another drag. “I ski there all the time. Bummer about the tunnel being closed. You can normally bus there in about twenty minutes.”

  “Listen, if you can get me up to the top, I’ll hire one of those paragliders to fly me down.”

  The guy stares at me for a long moment before he starts to laugh. It is a quintessential stoner laugh too, one that goes on for about twice as long as it should. By the end, he’s doubled over, the teeny burning remainder of the spliff clenched between his fingertips, hands on his knees, gasping.

  “I’m not joking,” I say, trying not to sound huffy. “And I’m really, really in a hurry. Will you take me for a hundred bucks—er—euro?”

  Still chuckling, Stoner Guy stands upright at last, drops the end of his joint, and steps on it before reaching out a hand.

  “Eric Neville,” he says. “Born Terrytown, New Orleans. At your service.”

  “Romy Keene,” I say, shaking back. “New York City born and bred; currently desperate to catch a train.”

  He grins. “Well, it just so happens I’m about to send up the first supply car of the morning. And, much as I admire your moxie, I think I can save you the whole kite trip. Follow me.”

  * * *

  —

  I trail after him through the entranceway, but my mouth dries up as the next cable car jostles to a stop. Close up, the car seems bigger, and has a kind of futuristic sleekness. All the same, it’s still dangling from what looks like a few pulleys and a bit of overstretched wire.

  “It—it doesn’t seem very safe,” I mutter.

  “You never been on a chair lift?” Eric asks incredulously. “This thing’s safer than one of those, for sure.”

  “How—how often . . . ?” I start, and then I have to stop and swallow hard to quell the voice of Old Romy in my head. “Have there ever been any accidents? I mean—do those things ever fall off?”

  He holds out a hand. “Not this one,” he says, flicking his fingers at me impatiently. “But I’d save Googling it until after you’re back down, hear?”

  I manage a nod, and he leans a shoulder against the wall.

  “So, here’s the deal. Much as the idea of your dramatic flight down into Italy appeals to me, it’s not going to happen. Instead, you’re gonna take this cable car to the top of Midi. Then, there’s a bit of a walk over to a gondola that crosses the glacier at the top to Pointe Helbronner. After that, it’s a quick trip down on the other cable car into Italy. Piece of cake, right?”

  The relief at the lack of paragliding alone is enough to have me opening my wallet.

  “Atta girl,” Eric says approvingly.

  I take the ticket he hands me and follow him into his Lego block of doom.

  * * *

  —

  The view? Is breathtaking.

  Literally. As the car surges upwards, the town of Chamonix shrinks to the size of a toy village almost immediately. In an effort to keep Old Romy from screaming, I turn away from the incredible shrinking village and gaze at the face of the mountain itself as we race by. This doesn’t help. The shiny black cliff face is suddenly much closer, and we whiz past icicles that drip into the sheer, plummeting drop below.

  Only yesterday, I left Old Romy’s fears behind as I crawled through the claustrophobic darkness of that tunnel entrance. Clutching the rail that encircles the interior of the gondola, I tell myself that New Romy can survive this too.

  The interior of the cable car is empty, apart from Eric, pushing buttons inside a tiny control booth, and two tiny Asian ladies who whipped aboard before he closed the doors. So, the only positive thing about the panic attack I have inside this dangling pod of death is that I’m not alone with my fear. Both women are dressed in identical red trousers and puffy jackets. Both are wearing daypacks similar to the one I’ve left on the train, emblazoned with a tour group logo, and each has a name tag neatly pinned to her collar. Neither says a word.

  As the car rockets over the first support pillar, it swings wildly back and forth. My hands squeeze convulsively on the railing, and the lady closest to me—name tag: “Yang Jin”—squeaks like a frightened mouse and skitters across the car. The second lady—“Li Yun”—wears a pink surgical face mask, so I can’t really read her expression, beyond the flash of pure terror in her eyes. Instead of following her friend, she sidles over beside me and clings tightly to the handrail.

  “No worries!” hollers Eric, stepping out for a moment from his opaque plastic booth. “It’s completely safe, I promise you. The car’s meant to hold at least fifty people, so since we’re almost empty she’ll sway a bit.” He shakes an admonishing finger at the two ladies, and adds, “This is what comes from getting the jump on your tour group, right?” Then he vanishes unhelpfully back into his little booth again.

  Across the car, Mrs. Yang giggles nervously and pulls a camera out of her daypack, which she is wearing back to front. Either she’s taken heart from Eric’s words, or is determined not to show her fear. The lady beside me—Mrs. Li—hiccups loudly, and then looks up at me, her eyes imploring above her mask.

  “It’s okay.” New Romy speaks up somehow, using my voice. “Just maybe don’t look at the view.”

  Mrs. Li hiccups again, and then, on the exhale, emits a rolling, thunderous burp. With her travel partner all the way across the car, she redirects her grip onto my wrist, and above the mask, her eyes squeeze shut. For the rest of the trip up, she clings to me, hiccupping on every inhale, and loudly, fragrantly, burping on each exhale.

  I’ve always thought nothing could be worse than my own racing heart and inability to breathe during a panic attack.

  I was wrong.

  Convinced my new best friend is about to be sick all over me, I try sliding my hand gently out from beneath her own. As if in response, the car rocks again, this time with a little side-to-side shimmy for good measure. We’re crossing a second support tower, and Mrs. Li’s grip tightens on my wrist. In seconds, I’ve lost all feeling in the fingers of that hand, and I’m consumed with a desperate need to disentangle myself from this visibly terrified woman. I open my mouth to suggest she stand with her friend, when I realize there are silent tears leaking from her tightly closed eyes and down into her mask.

  Outside the window, the icicles have coalesced into frozen mounds, clinging precipitously to the cliff. Mrs. Li’s burping does not change in volume, or regularity, but has at least not resulted in anything worse. Mrs. Yang maintains a careful distance from both of us. She has regained her initial composure, and, having ventured to the outward-facing side of the cable car, is taking in the view through her camera lens. Her diligence is rewarded when the dense grey fog enveloping the car is abruptly replaced with a brilliant glow, as if a thousand klieg lights had suddenly slammed on above us.

  Squinting my eyes against the glare, I find we have emerged from the low layer of cloud, and the entire earth has unfolded beneath our feet. I’ve only been in an airplane once, but it’s hard to not feel like we are soaring through this incredible landscape. The crystal blue of the sky above delineates sharply against the black rocks and the brilliant white of the snow and ice beneath us. The sight is incredible enough to make New Romy want to join Mrs. Yang in her photography, but Old Romy is not completely unhappy about being pinned to the rail near the rear of the car. Over Mrs. Li’s still-convulsing head, I watch the endless, serrated-topped spectacle of the Alps stretching away to the horizon.

  We bump over another support tower, and as the car swings wildly, something catches my eye through the window on the mountain side. I turn my head in time to see an enormous chunk of ice dislodge from the tower beside us. I can’t hear the ice fall, but within a second or two, a wave of sound envelops us—a low rumble, deeper than thunder.

  Eric leaps out of
his booth at the noise, and the four of us stare down the side of the mountain in shocked silence, punctuated only by the mournful burping of Mrs. Li.

  * * *

  —

  Before he can say a word, Mrs. Yang strides across the car.

  “What the fuck was that?” she blurts, in what I’m embarrassed to hear is an Amercian accent.

  Mrs. Li’s hiccups are sounding increasingly urgent, but Eric ignores all of us, craning to look down the mountain.

  The cable car itself doesn’t falter, but continues to sweep upward, before dipping suddenly. Without answering, Eric leaps back into his compartment. The car makes a final stomach-dropping swoop, and then slows. On the mountain side, a structure looms closer—a twin to the one at the base. We’ve reached the top at last. The snowy ground is now only a few feet below the base of the car, and in the lee of the building, the swinging settles almost immediately. On the platform, a young woman with pink hair, skin the color of nutmeg, and a puffy coat, steps over to meet us. We rumble into the enclosure, and before the car has completely stilled, the doors hiss open.

  My traveling companions both beat me outside.

  This turns out to be a good thing. Mrs. Li pushes past the young woman and out onto the large viewing platform. She clutches the rail with both hands, and standing on her tiptoes, vomits copiously over the side. Ignoring her friend’s plight, Mrs. Yang throws herself into the girl’s arms.

  Eric, who has emerged from his little enclosure, steps out of the car to stand beside me. “Sorry,” he says, and reaches up to pull what looks like a walkie-talkie off a clip on the wall. “Minor glitch.”

  “Minor glitch, my ass,” says Mrs. Yang, releasing the girl with the pink hair at last.

  The girl, looking not at all perturbed by Mrs. Yang’s hug, holds up a cell phone.