Illinois at Two A.M.

The rail joins come every few seconds — a low, percussive thud that travels up through the bunk frame and into her spine — and she has already counted enough of them to know the interval is not quite regular. Four seconds. Sometimes three. The irregularity is the detail she finds most interesting, and she files it the way she files everything: precisely, without deciding yet what it means.

She has been in the upper berth for forty minutes. The curtain is drawn. Below her, someone is sleeping — she can tell by the quality of the silence, the absence of the small adjustments conscious people make. The thermal blanket smells of synthetic fiber and recycled air, a smell she noted on boarding and has since stopped noticing, which is itself a thing she notes. The window beside her face is dark except for the passing suggestion of flat land, a farmhouse light gone before she can hold it, the occasional amber of a grade crossing. Illinois at two in the morning is a thing that mostly isn't there.

The bullet is in her right hand. Has been for several minutes. She brought it out of her bag with the deliberateness she brings to most decisions — unhurried, already certain — and it sits in her palm now, the silicone warm from the bag's interior, roughly the temperature of her own skin. She has not turned it on. She is aware of this choice the way she is aware of the rail joins: as a rhythm she is inside of, not yet ready to interrupt.

Her left hand rests against her sternum. She can feel her own pulse there, which she did not expect, and she holds her breath for a moment to determine whether the pulse is faster than usual. It is. She exhales — longer than she intended, the air leaving her in a slow unfolding she does not catch until it is already almost done.

Her leggings are thin enough that she can feel the berth's vinyl through them where her thighs press down. The fabric has warmed to her. She is aware of the waistband's position, the elastic sitting just below her hip bones, and she is aware — without moving — of the specific weight of her own legs, the way they lie together, the pressure of one inner thigh against the other.

The train moves through something darker. No farmhouse lights. Just the rhythm: thud, space, thud, space, three seconds, four.

She notes, with the part of her that is always noting, that she has been holding the bullet for six minutes without turning it on. She notes that her thighs are pressed together with a pressure that is not accidental. She notes the exact moment — this one, now — when her right hand moves from her sternum toward the waistband's edge, not past it, just to it, resting there while the train finds another rail join and the whole bunk shudders faintly beneath her.

She will remember, she thinks, that it was the cornfield. Not the Rockies, which she had half-imagined. The cornfield, at two in the morning, with the joins coming every few seconds and the dark outside the window absolute.