Better Late

Lionel dressed in a hurry, which he often did when he wanted to get somewhere on time. He would put his tie on once he arrived at his destination, or get someone to help him with it at the church. It had been a long time since he had put one on, and he felt that he did not have the time to stumble through it now.

He rushed out the door, and ran to the bus stop. Once there he kept tapping his feet while he waited.  His car was in the garage, so he had to take alternative means to travel the 90 miles to his destination. The bus took him to the train station, his arriving at least 20 minutes before it was to leave the station. Still, he felt rushed. So he quickly purchased his ticket and walked at a brisk pace to the nearest train door.

He sat down, still breathing hard from his speed and his worry. He wouldn’t have done this at all if it weren’t for the fact that the wedding he was going to was of his only sister Ethel. He was being matched up with her new best friend Freda (whom he had never seen or met before), as best man and maid of honour. In a non-traditional change to the usual ceremony (typical of his sister), the two would walk down the aisle as a couple behind the future husband and wife. Lionel did not want to hold her hand. He did not know her.

There weren’t many people on the car he was in, just a few couples, a pair of loud teenagers, and a woman dressed in some elegance, a little too fancy for a train, was his first thought. Some people just had to show off, he reckoned.

The Train Stops

The train was rambling along at a good pace across miles of farmers’ fields. Then suddenly, as it approached a forest that covered both sides of the track with green, the braking device, whatever it was, squealed. Then Lionel heard a bang. They had hit something, and hit it hard. It bothered him that he could not see what it was. The railcar was far back on the train, so looking out the permanently closed window did not help him in his quest.

           After about ten minutes, and announcement was heard over a speaker. “We have hit a large tree, and it disabled the locomotive. We will have to wait until another locomotive comes to tow it away to a side track a few miles from here, and then come back to drive us to our destination. It should take about an hour and a half. Maybe a little more.”

Lionel Tries to Wait

Lionel tried to wait patiently. This was something that he had never been any good at. As a kid he had a recurring case of ‘ants in your pants’, as his parents often said to him, particularly when he wanted them to take him someplace, and they had to ‘get ready first’. In his French class in elementary school, he early learned the phrase “des fourmis dans ton pantalon,” as his exasperated young female French teacher would often say when he started to fidget near the end of the class. This time his fidgeting grew like he was a leaf in an ever-increasing wind. Almost everyone around him looked to be relatively calm, sitting almost motionless, talking on their cell phones, one even catching a show on his large and fancy android. Clearly, Lionel thought, they have nowhere special to go to, or the lateness of their arrival really did not matter in their situation.  And he wondered whether the guy with the large device could actually put it in his pocket. He’d have to wear farmer’s pants to even try, he reckoned.

But he had a place he had to be at a particular time..   He had a wedding to get to. Obviously, they could start without him, but his sister would be very disappointed. He thought, ‘Perhaps I should call her so that she will not be angry with me. I do not want her to blame me.’

Lionel is Not Alone

As he stood up, so that he could get his cell phone out of his pocket, Lionel looked around at his fellow passengers. For the first time he noticed that he was not the only one who was not quietly, patiently ‘waiting it out’. The young woman whose clothes he had thought were ‘a little too fancy for a train’ was fussing with every item of her outfit, even her bra.. No real changes were taking place in her apparel that he could see, but he wasn’t an expert on the subject. Ex-girlfriends had often commented that ‘You have said nothing about what I am wearing.’ That was one of a number of reasons that they were ‘exes’. 

This woman was in constant motion. Lionel felt that he knew the type of feeling that was animating her. So, partly to divert his attention from his anxiety, and partly to be helpful, he walked over to her and said, “Doesn’t being forced to wait like this make you want to scream?”

She stopped her fussing, and said, with spaces between her words, ‘You…couldn’t…be…more…right.’. Then with little to no spaces between words, she surprised him with what she said. “I’ve got a wedding to go to. I am part of the bridal party, and I am supposed to walk down the aisle behind the bride and groom, alongside the bride’s brother, whom I’ve never met.”

He was stunned, almost without words. But after about 15 seconds he asked her a question, “Is your name Freda?”

She answered the question with a question, “Is your name Lionel?”

Both said “yes” at the same time, as if it were something they had rehearsed.

Before they could say anything more, another message came over the intercom, “Help is slow in coming. We will have to wait an additional hour for assistance.”

They both wanted to kick something, or punch someone, but instead, both of them reached out a hand to the other. At that moment, the guy with the fancy android, who, unknown to them, had been watching and listening to them, took a picture, the light flashing in their faces.

Rather than making him angry, the man gave Lionel an idea. He presented it both to Freda and the picture-taker at the same time. It was so well-articulated, you could have believed that he had been thinking about it for a while, which he hadn’t been. The picture-taker would record Lionel and Freda walking down the aisle (of the train) and post it on You-Tube, and send it to his brother George, who had a similar device, and always carried it with him.

George told their sister, who, having now an even more unconventional aspect to her ceremony, was happy to go along with the plan. She had delayed the ceremony for almost half an hour, hoping that Lionel and Freda would finally arrive, and had just been told by the minister that they could wait no longer. She was open-minded, though, and would have something amusing to add to her sermon on Sunday.  So, as Ethel and her about-to-become-husband walked down the aisle, George walked behind them, displaying the physically absent pair doing likewise on You-Tube.

Before she began her often-repeated words of the ceremony, the officiating minister, being something of a light-weight humorist, said ‘Better late than never,” It was also true of the two like-minded people in their late-thirties, who had just begun a significant relationship.