Twelve Hours on the Coast Starlight Train

I’ll be in Los Angeles this weekend for the LA Times Festival of Books. If you’re in town and want to say hello, come by the USC campus this Sunday at 12:00 for a panel I’m on (tickets are $6.60). This is the last stop on the Women’s Hotel book tour until the Women’s Hotel sequel book tour starts up again in the fall, so it’s your last chance to hear me talk about old menu archives and the domestic fiction of Rachel Ferguson five whole months.

I’m taking a twelve-hour journey on the Coast Starlight train to get there, and I’m writing to you from the modest luxury of a Superliner roomette (That’s the mini-room where the bed folds up into the ceiling over the chairs). You never know when you book your ticket whether you’re going to get a seat on the ocean-facing side of the train, but today everything’s going my way, and the Pacific Ocean will be my travelling companion.

While we were waiting in the lounge, I did my usual pre-boarding routine and looked around to see if there were any older women who had a lot of carry-on bags. I adore receiving praise from older women, and am absolutely shameless about soliciting them in public. I found a likely candidate carrying six or seven tote bags and a suitcase, wearing a denim baseball cap covered with rhinestones — exactly the kind my second-favorite grandmother might have worn — and was rewarded with immediate acceptance.

It’s a favorite pastime of mine, along with ostentatiously giving up my seat on the subway, because it requires very little effort but generates an immediate and outsized amount of goodwill that irradiates the next few hours with a sense of buoyancy and welcome usefulness.

The train pulled slowly into the station. We saw a little baby looking solemnly out of a bedroom window in the sleeping car, as his mother held him up to examine the situation. A fellow a few spots further ahead in line, dressed for a backpacking trip, recognized a group of his friends already on board and waving at him, and he broke into smiles and waved back.

As my new friend and I boarded together, she asked the station agent whether she could get a seat on the first floor, rather than the second, and when this proved successful she asked if she could have a window seat on the ocean side:

“You want a seat downstairs? And facing the ocean? Ma’am, this train started last night out of Seattle — everybody wants to sit on the ocean side. You’re asking me for a lot.”

“I know,” she said, smiling, “I just thought I would ask.”

“All right,” said the agent, “you’re lucky you talked to me today. I’ve got one for you. You’re lucky,” and they vanished, happily and begrudgingly both at once, into the next car.