(no subject)
That morning, at Penn Station, Sammy had said goodbye to Tracy Bacon, in the compartment that had been reserved for them both aboard the Broadway Limited.
"I don't understand," Bacon said. They were awkward and clumsy with each other, in the closeness of the first-class compartment, a couple of men, one so intent on not touching the other, the second devoting each movement and gesture to not being touched, that their careful maintenance of a charged and shifting distance between them had itself been a kind of break contact. "You didn't even get arrested. Jimmy's lawyers are going to make the whole thing go away."
Sammy shook his head. They were sitting opposite each other on the twin upholstered banquettes, which they would have, somewhere around Fostoria that night, unfolded into a pair of beds.
"I just can't do it anymore, Bake," Sammy said. "It's just -- I don't want to be like this."
"You don't have a choice."
"I think I do."
Bacon had gotten up, then, and crossed the three feet of space between them, and sat down on the banquette beside Sammy.
"I don't believe that," he said, reaching for Sammy's hand. "Something like you and me is not a question of choosing or not choosing. There's nothing you can do about it."
Sammy jerked his hand away. Regardless of what he felt for Bacon, it was not worth the danger, the shame, the risk of arrest and opprobium. Sammy felt, that morning, with his ribs bruised and a wan flavor of chlorine at the back of his mouth, that he would rather not love at all than be punished for loving. He had no idea of how long his life would one day seem to have gone on; how daily present the absence of love would come to feel.
"Just watch me," he said.
He turned before Bacon had a chance to answer, jerked the compartment door open and was in the corridor before the tears actually appeared in his eyes. In a small, deep-down place inside him, he was proud of that, that he hadn't shown Bake how close he was to breaking down. He didn't want to be remembered that way.
The air in the corridor was suddenly stifling, and in his haste to get out, he collided with an ancient, ivory-haired woman who was making her way slowly down towards her compartment. "I'm so sorry," Sammy said, feeling the cut on his forehead break open and start bleeding anew, trickling towards one eyebrow. "God, I'm sorry," he choked, and then he was out of the train, out into the blinding brightness of the station.
It wasn't right. He knew that immediately; since when had Penn Station been filled with salt air, bright sunlight, the distant chattering of birds? For one crazy second he was convinced that he'd been on the train longer than it had felt like, that the train had taken off without his noticing and stopped at some seaside station on the Jersey Coast - never mind that the Broadway Limited hadn't even been pointed that way. But a second later, as he registered the unmistakeably tropical heat in the air - heat that had no place anywhere near New York in December - it became clear that he was somewhere much, much further from home than either Jersey or LA.
It was like something out of one of his books, he realized then. The Escapist, having just escaped from a train car stuffed with T4 and padlocked shut by the sinister agents of the Iron Chain, finds himself impossibly marooned on some distant, deserted island. Somehow, young Tom Mayflower must find his way back to civilization before the dastardly forces of chaos destroy all that he holds near and dear. It was good, he thought absently, and would have to be saved for some later issue. Once, that is, he'd figured out his present dilemma. He'd always had the vague idea that he'd crack, someday; he just wouldn't have guessed it would be so young.
Sammy turned around, ready to begin what would likely be a long trek towards sanity, and immediately crashed into someone else who had, apparently, found themselves similarly stranded. "Sorry-" he gasped as he crashed to the ground, his already tender ribcage erupting in fresh pain as he hit. "I didn't see you there," he finished weakly.
[Meet Sam Clay, newly arrived on the island, hailing from New York in December of 1941. First tag gets the explanation and can find him anywhere outdoors; subsequent tags can find him anywhere in the compound that they would like. Text behind the cut taken from Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.]