Storymania - Metrolink608: Number One Engineer by Shelley J Alongi

Metrolink608: Number One Engineer (2)
Shelley J Alongi

“Oh,” breathes my engineer, responding to my pronouncement.

“I wondered if I could get your number.”

My left hand clutches the notebook against my necklace of bells, my right hand clings to the stylus for dear life. The engine purrs sweetly, the silence like a thick, furry blanket.

“Are you ready?” Glen I swear is looking right at me, if I could look right into those eyes they’d be invading my personal visual space.

I signal that I’m ready. Carefully he articulates the number, I repeat the digits, writing them down, thankful that someone long ago mentioned that I should use a slate and stylus. Maybe it was someone at my first NAB convention, I don’t know. All I know is here’s a locomotive engineer leaning out of his window, waiting for a high ball out of Fullerton, articulating his phone number. As usual, while executing the act of writing down those prized ten digits, I am deadly, peacefully calm. There’s no frantic attempt to follow his words. I am saved perhaps by my Toastmasters training and a working stylus. I put the stylus away and turn the page, there it is, big as life, perfectly readable. I don’t say anything.

“4 is on its way,” Glen says, and then he’s off. I don’t even remember if I wave at the train. I think I do, and that sweet bell goes off toward the subdivision which will lead my sweet engineer and his trusting passengers out to Ocean Side.
“I got it!” I squeal to the empty railroad tracks in triumph. “I got it. I got it!”
Number One Engineer

Thursday December 31, New Year’s Eve! It’s a full eight hour shift at work today, or maybe a seven hour shift when one takes away an hour for lunch. Chris has determined after first saying no, that he’s going to the station with me tonight. It is a quiet night, no regulars dot the platform though the Santa Fe café does a fair amount of business. We take Frances and head over to the train. We’ve decided through many emails and comments that Frances is an engineer stealer. He has committed a most unacceptable act by stealing the heart of my engineer. It shows that Glen has a heart to steal and I don’t’ think we deny either dog or man the honor.

“We brought your friend,” I say, after the obligatory greeting.

“Yeah,” says Glen and starts immediately talking to the dog. “Is it a she or a he? What’s his name?”

Once during the conversation Frances looks up at the engine and Glen responds. He clicks his tongue in affectionate greeting.

“Do you like dogs, Glen?” That’s a silly question Miss Star Struck Engineer Chasing Railfans, of course he does.

“Love them,” he says, it’s the same response he gives when I ask if he likes trains.

We stand exchanging New Years greetings.

“Are you going to celebrate tonight?” Chris says.

“A little bit.”

“Take a few drinks and some smokes,” says Chris who maintains that Glen has a smoker’s voice. Sometimes it seems so and sometimes not at all, especially when he falls into that signal calling voice.

“Well,” Glen admits, “maybe back in the old days. Now they have to be Mar borrows.” He stops his conversation then Glen pulls that engine down into the gentlest idle of all.

“We’re waiting for the 707,” he says. Train 707 arrives normally at 6:36 on track 1 going to Los Angeles, its starting point Riverside. There are probably some people on that train who don’t want to miss their connections.

Now, with some extra minutes, I walk up to the train, caressing it.

“I’m going to touch this train for the last time,” I say. “Next week I have sixty hours.”

“866,” he says, telling Chris that the number is below him.

“It’s on this side,” I say.

“Is it going to be a busy day tomorrow?” Glen asks.

We explain that we don’t work in the park that we work about a mile from it and so yes in the park it will probably be a zoo but where we are, no.

“I can get you in,” I say. “I can sign you and two other people in so if you ever want to go just let me know.”

“We’ll have to do that some time,” he says. “Haven’t been there in several years.”

Now he knows he can get in, we’ll see how it goes. This is one of the things I’ve been wanting to tell him for a while. Now he knows.

We have some time it seems to explore Glen’s history and day and it is Chris who asks the questions.

“What do you do in L.A.? he asks.

Glen explains that he gets up at 3:20 in the morning, gets to L.A. and then goes to Burbank where he sleeps four hours.

“I get the rest of my four hours sleep there,” he says. By the time he gets home after running the 608 it is 10:00. he’s in bed by 11:00 and up at 3:20 to start it all again.

“What train do you run before the 608?” I ask. Andy has told me that he runs a train in the afternoon but sometimes I think Andy gets things mixed up, especially when Glen tells me earlier that he sleeps four hours during the morning. So now I think I know why he’s reluctant to meet me in L.A.

“I’m the number one engineer,” he says. “I have the best job.”

He explains that he went to Amtrak after running freight for the Santa Fe and that he liked it because he could get on a regular schedule.

“I was working for Santa fee before there was an Amtrak,” he says.

“A year before,” I say. Amtrak was officially called Amtrak in 1971. Glen was hired in 1970 with the Santa Fe.

“I liked running freight trains,” he said. “But sometimes you have to wait forty years for those jobs.”

“How long have you been with Metrolink/” Chris asks. I know he’s been with metrolink since the beginning.

“I don’t actually work for Metrolink,” Glen says, and this is technically true. “I work for an outfit called Conex.” Outfit might be the perfect word to describe Connex after chatsworth. “Rules violations and a bad wreck out of Chatsworth,” Glen says, blissfully, sweetly unaware of the hell that I’ve been in since that dreadful September day. I know now that Glen is perfect. He is so detached from my personal drama, this is the engineer I had to meet.

“Chatsworth is what got me here,” I say. “It’s how I became a railfan. We’ll have to have a talk about that someday.”

Glen says nothing in response. Instead he pulls his engine obediently into its more energetic throbbing, commanding it to pull its load on home so he can start his three day holiday. NO, Glen isn’t working this Saturday.

“I have three days,” he says. “It’s nice.”

“See you guys,” he says. “Next week.”

This is the sad part for me. I wont’ get down at all next week to see him unless call volume slows and we don’t work over time. Disney is hoping we’ll work over time.

“I have to work,” I tease my engineer, “not like you!”

Finally, gloriously, after three months of shyly waving and establishing contact, Glen laughs. You can hear him in that cab laughing, not just chuckling, but genuinely laughing. He pulls that train away and leaves me in tears because despite all my efforts to make it be okay, I know I’m going to miss him. Even if I have his number, this has been such a rewarding three months that the idea of two weeks without him is almost paralyzing.

“You better go get your ice-cream,” Chris says, snapping me out of my blue mood only briefly. I don’t apologize for knowing I’m going to miss him, it’s just the way it is.

“Well, I must dry my tears and move on,” I say later to the railfans who write down the locomotive numbers. “Oh the drama,” I now say, much better now. I’m still going to miss him.
Living on a Kiss

“Gone with the wind” is my favorite movie of all time. In one of the scenes Ashley seems to want to kiss Scarlet who begs him to do this; this is her unrequited love.

“I’ll live on it the rest of my life,” she says. Ashley ever the southern gentleman conscious of his honor refuses, setting the rest of the movie up for its final conflict. You may or may not remember the scene. Friday is quite a day in that department, at least on the living part. There are no kisses, except maybe the easing of an overwrought mind by a hair of the dog that bit me, the train engineer who, I’m sure, knows nothing. There is no physical kiss, only the quiet voice of one who calls the signals, not calling signals today, but halting my own mind’s flight into complete melancholy.

By the time I arrive at the station on this quiet New Year’s day, I am ready for anything. I have booked a significant amount of revenue for Disney, I’ve done my part. It is now time to relax and see what there is to see. No Metrolink trains run tonight, only Amtrak and a few freights go through the station. There’s not much to see tonight.

The café is open but I don’ want to eat there. I do pay for an ice-cream but don’t eat it. Instead, I sit there and drink hot tea again, looking at my phone. I want to call Glen. I’m trying to talk myself out of it but I want to know how he’s doing today. I’ve wished everyone a happy new year and now I sit there looking through my contacts. Janice calls just as I scroll down to her name. The conversation is interesting. She wants to know if anyone is there, bob and she are sitting around the place just relaxing, and Norm, the other engineer, becomes a subject of conversation.

“Why don’t you call him,” she says. “You have his number. Ask how he’s doing.”

“Well I do have to call him anyway.”

“We’ll see you tomorrow night,” she says, they are planning to come down and see Simon who works 4.

I do call Norm, he is going to the doctor for a follow-up on a growth on his neck, he is really busy and can’t get into Disneyland. He wishes everyone a happy New Year and he’ll be here on Sunday.

Disconnecting the call I suddenly know I’m going to call Glen. If I can call one engineer why can’t I call the other one?

I scroll to my contact list. I choose his name and push send. The phone rings. My heart is in my mouth or wherever it goes in cases like this. Why am I so nervous? Every ring of that phone seems to last forever. The phone clicks. Oh dear it’s not going to voicemail, now I can’t hang up. It’s too late, I’m here for what it’s worth.

“Hello,” says the voice on the other end of the line. It’s sleepy.

“Glen?”

“Yeah.”

It’s quiet, it’s Glen.

“It’s Shelley from Fullerton.”

Silence.

“Hey. What’s up?”

It’s Glen, it’s just quieter than the signal calling voice.

“Were you sleeping?”

“Just kicking back. Relaxing,” he says. There’s a quality here that reminds me of my father and a quality that reminds me of Glen, it’s Glen’s cadence, my father’s quietness.

“He might be shy,” Curt tells me. Maybe. But not for long and perhaps not if he’s been sleeping. I think he’s been sleeping.

“Do you have five minutes?”

“Yeah,” he says. It’s definitely him.

“I just called to say hi,” I explain, “before I get caught up in the madness. I’m a magazine editor and we’re under deadline and then I have eight days scheduled in a row starting Monday. I just wanted to say hello to you.”

Maybe Glen’s not the only one who is shy. He runs the train. He’s friendly why am I on pins and needles? I’m shy, too, just a little. If I’m going to meet engineers why shouldn’t I meet them? At least I give it a shot, right? He didn’t have to give me his number. He wont regret it, I promise. Tonight, New year’s night, sitting in the Santa Fe Café, alone, no one teasing me, I have him on the phone. This is a far cry from the girl standing shyly by the bridge not able to get his attention. I feel like I’m in the same place. All the other engineers talk to me, why did I pick this one? I didn’t pick this one. September 11 on the way back from Chatsworth picked him. Whoever picked him, here he is, on my phone.

“You’re in Fullerton, huh?” he says.

“Yeah. There’s not much going on here. I’m going to go eat and then go see the railfans sitting here, decorating the place with lights.”

My mouth is dry. Am I saying words?

“What are you doing this weekend?” I ask. It’s an oral history interview question. It doesn’t require a yes or a no. It requires an answer.

“I have some cleaning up to do around my place,” he says. “What doesn’t get done will be waiting for me next month.”

“Remodeling?”

“No not remodeling just cleaning things up here.”

I don’t ask him what they are. I’m barely coherent Miss Division Governor I can give public speeches at Toastmasters clubs. Get me on the phone with a metrolink engineer whose skill set I admire and who has taken time to communicate with me out of that cab and I’m almost painfully shy. Maybe it doesn’t look like it on paper but I am.

I sit there for a minute suddenly wanting to ask him my question about the bell but deciding that today is his day off and I’m going to sound like a pest, if only in my own head. I really just wanted to say hello.

“Well I think my room mate will appreciate it if I clear out the cat box,” I say, just for something to say I guess.

“Ok well I’m going to let you go,” I say. “You take care.”

“Happy new year,” he says.

I don’t remember much after that. I remember sitting there holding my phone ad suddenly feeling very calm, as if that five minute conversation did more than two weeks of conversations did. It eased me. I’ll live on it, like Scarlet told Ashley, “for the rest of my life, and if not that long then at least til I can get back there to track 3 and say hello to my number one engineer.

Everyone seems to think I’ll be back to see my number one engineer even if I do have sixty hour work weeks. If I have a busy job, he has the best job. He is the number one engineer. I knew that.

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