I don’t know how many magnetic trains there were zooming around. Maybe just the one. This cramped engine compartment certainly could have been the same I had previously shared with Nora.

“Someone said these trains are powered by nuclear energy,” Saligia said in the darkness. “I’m blaming you if all of my hair falls out.” I heard her shift around, trying to find a comfortable position. “I’m guessing you didn’t bring along a flashlight.”

Me without a flashlight? Not likely. But I didn’t bother pulling it from my pocket. There was enough light for me to see by.

“Your eyes will adjust,” I told her.

“Adjust? To what?”

“Give it a minute.”

“You mean the glow coming from behind this panel? Is that where they keep the plutonium?”

“No idea,” I said. “But if I were you, I wouldn’t monkey around with anything.”

“The thought hadn’t crossed my mind.”

There was a time when such mild yet barbed banter would have shifted into a protracted session of bickering between us. But now, Saligia just sounded defeated.

After we rode in silence for a bit, she asked, “What’s that smell?”

“Smell?” Then I realized what she meant. “Almost forgot. I picked up some food for the road as I passed the Alamo. Falafel à al Charlemagne.”

I removed the parcel wrapped in waxed paper from my rucksack and we shared the falafel sandwich.

I’d been having trouble dislodging from my mind a sense of guilt involving Saligia. Not the big things—I would probably have to unpack that stuff at some point. Saligia and I had been a couple for almost a year, so we had accumulated a fair amount of baggage. But it hadn’t been just us, we also shared the same house with my previous romantic partner. An odd time in all our lives. Sy, Saligia, and myself living in that wonderful crumbling and rambling adobe mansion in the Chihuahua Desert—what Sy called Casita Ménage à Trois.

And then there was the time I never returned home. That weird and terrible day on the ranch with the dinosaur.

I knew Saligia felt abandoned whenever Sy and I would head out of town to shoot segments for Wonders Unfolding. And I can’t even begin to imagine what she went through when word reached her about the accident, or whatever it was, that caused the production truck to explode. Had she thought I died? And how the hell did Sy survive? I still hadn’t gotten a clear answer about that.

I would prefer to ask Sy instead of Saligia, except Sy wasn’t available. He was…where? LA? Really? Was that really where the resurrected Dead go?

And did I honestly think we’d see him again?

Well, stranger things have happened. Indeed they had.

The guilt I was thinking of at that moment there in the dim engine compartment was something seemingly so small and inconsequential that I’d laugh if I heard someone else trying to work his way through it. It was the guilt I felt for not recognizing Saligia when I saw her on the TV screen in that bar. Somehow, that felt unforgivable.

I tried, best I could, to play back in my memory that moment in La Condesa Cantina and Sports Bar. That was, my god, just last week! It felt years in the past. I’d not given the woman up there on the TV screen a second glance. True, I was barely paying attention. What was it about people who went to a bar to watch television? If it was that important to them, why not just stay at home where there were no distractions? Of course, I’d never understood the appeal of the shared experience, be it watching television shows with others or attending spectator sports. I found it alienating every time I’d stumble into a bar and realized I was surrounded by the vacuous expressions of a roomful of obsessed faces, all collectively staring at a screen on the wall. They would occasionally come to life to scream in elation when their team was winning, or groan in collective commiseration if the other side moved ahead. They were focused, intent. Just the way the people in La Condesa bar were focused on Serpientes y Escaleras, and the intense hostess of the show.

I certainly had not shared their fascination.

And if I had, would I have snapped to attention the second I saw her face? Rising up from my stool at the unexpected sight of a woman whose bed I had shared so often?

True, I had been preoccupied. No one could argue that. A journey across the wilderness. My first time in a city in years. The taste of alcohol after a long period of abstinence.

Also, I should point out that Saligia possessed a chameleon quality—a quality much valued in performers. So maybe I could be excused for not spotting her outright. She had been playing a role.

The problem with that line of reasoning was that her persona on Serpientes y Escaleras matched her aloof and sardonic behavior in real life. Her makeup choice, also, was the same, just a touch more severe.

Still, I was oblivious as I absently sipped my beer at La Condesa.

Was that me all the time? Shallow and noncommittal? So lacking in nostalgia that I could walk away from one life in search of the next, never to look back or even reflect in fond recollection? Not even pause, my mug of beer halfway to my lips: “Where have I heard that voice before?”

I guess all that was me.

I had moved on. Allowed Saligia to leave my mind.

But now, now she was back. I stole a glance across the compartment to see if I could detect some expression on her face that might suggest she was listening in. But I couldn’t tell. I never could tell. Whether or not she was in my mind, it certainly did appear she was back in my life, and I, in hers. Fair enough, but what were we to one another, now? Were we a we?

The faint light spilling from the engine console struck her obliquely, giving a soft warmth to the strong lines of her face, the clean jaw and high cheekbones, the widow’s peak made more prominent from her hair being tied back. She still wore her lipstick and mascara from the show. I recalled all those years ago when she would come home from hosting her psychic dating show, and how she rarely removed her makeup until the next day, when she’d wake up, with everything smeared and slightly fuzzy as though her face was out of focus. Early in the morning, when she was still half-connected to that world of dreams which she never shared with me, that was when she’d smile the most. Right after waking.

I’ve always been an idiot with relationships.

Thankfully, things between me and Sy had been fluid. Neither of us were suited to longterm commitments. Nothing much changed, really, when our relationship shifted back to us just being friends.

Saligia, well, once the the initial excitement began to wane, I realized I had no idea how seriously she took such matters. Both of us lacked the basic skills to speak openly about our feelings.

Probably I was relieved when I found myself driving away from the smoldering ruins of that production truck on the outskirts of San Angelo.

Who was I kidding? Of course I was relieved. And add to that I felt virtuous. I struck off into a life of self-imposed exile to protect a woman. A woman I loved. That was my narrative.

The demise of the us which was Morris Fisher and Saligia Jones happened because of extraordinary events beyond my control.

Strange, in a way, another event beyond my control had brought us back together. The demise of San Antonio, or whatever was happening as I slammed shut that hatch.

Maybe things back there will settle down, or even return to normal. But from the way Ida and the rest of those Network employees were rushing about to get on the train, I feared the worse.

So, all those slamming of Doors Number One and Number Two had caused the destruction of an entire city? That was starting to sound like the insanity of the Changes. Had they returned? The Changes?

Her nervousness aside, Ida had taken the whole thing pretty much in stride. Did such things happen often? Other cities blinking out? Maybe that was how the Network went about cancelling shows.

Though that seemed extreme.

Admittedly, I didn’t have much invested in San Antonio. But I had met some interesting people. Good people. Like Fran, and all his passionate associates from the All Seeing Eye Society, with their spirited exchanges each week in that drafty basement meeting hall. Also, the unfortunate production staff Ida had left behind. Raul, Myra, and the others whose names I never learned. The whole of La Vida Tower—Sy’s penthouse. Hell, the Alamo! Just gone. And Charlemagne DeWinter, as well as his falafel stand.

All gone?

I sat there in the dim glow of that cramped space watching the way Saligia ate her falafel sandwich. It made me think of an otter or a raccoon, probably because she had the sleeves of her thin sweater pulled down so only her fingertips were exposed. She wore her nails short and painted black, like a sensitive teenager.

Once she had finished, she began to tear open an individually wrapped moist towelette Charlemagne had kindly provided.

“Are you thinking what I am?” she asked, peering at me in the dimness.

Well, here it comes. The great Saligia Jones was in my head, savoring my guilt as a sort of, what, post falafel dessert? I guess it was time to roll up my sleeves and prepare myself for the onslaught of Saligia’s critique of years of my irresponsibility and general bad behavior, culminating, of course, on the day I abandoned her. It wasn’t that I didn’t have it coming.

“Well,” I began with a sigh. “I guess it’s been a long and convoluted road which brought me—”

“Oh, don’t. Just don’t.” Saligia wiped her fingers and lips. “I’m talking about the lack of a toilet in our cramped quarters.”