Having finished her food, she placed the utensils on the edge of her plate and shifted it away from her across the small, round table. Cosima Niehaus had made a decision. She felt certain at this point that the taciturn, yet alluring, blonde was indeed going her way, and though she had struggled for days pondering about how (or if) to proceed, she flagged down the waiter and ordered coffee for two.

They had first made eye contact back in Boston, on the platform.

The steam from the out-bound locomotives made the moisture in the muggy Mid Atlantic air even thicker, more visible. A thin sheen of water clung to the walls, the benches, the baggage, and every inch of exposed flesh in the station. Shiny-faced men stood around, hats in hands, fanning themselves, ties loosened just enough to not be considered indecent for travel. The women, most of whom had pill-box hats still pinned to their meticulously coiffed hairdos, made due with makeshift fans, troubling the heavy air into personal breezes with folded train schedules and repurposed newspapers.

Perched on a glossy,wooden bench reminiscent of pew, Cosima struggled to notice anything except the intense discomfort of the overwhelming heat. In an effort to give respite to her sweltering body, she had attempted to adjust her posture and the lay of her limbs at the exact same moment as the woman on the opposite side of the bench. Their hands brushed over each other briefly before each jerked her hand back closer to her own chest.

"I'm so sorry." Cosima offered, a little too loudly, while simultaneously a hurried "Désolé" fell from the lips of the blonde woman on her periphery.

Having spent the last four years studying neuro-biology at Radcliffe, it was the Latin derivation of the word that caught her attention first, but once her eyes found those of the other woman, ancient tongues were the last kind on her mind.

In the lab, she measured the speed of electrical impulses in the brain in milliseconds, the fractional units of time during which the conscious mind could not exert control or censor the basic impulses of physiology. And it took mere milliseconds for her eyes to lock on the blonde's, quickly bounce away, find vague focus in the opposite direction and send a signal to her brain so potent that the rest of her body vibrated with a flood of warmth.

That had been three days ago, and to Cosima's great delight (or was it bemusement?) she continued to see the tall, slight woman both morning and evening in the dining car of the westbound train. They seemed to take breakfast at about the same time and much earlier than most of the other passengers. Even though they both entered from the caboose side of the car, they seemed instinctively drawn to opposite sides of the shuttle, choosing to settle into richly upholstered chairs whose backs faced the windows and consequently provided each woman a clear view to the opposite side. This meant Cosima was able to practice keeping her breath and blood at bay when she heard the French woman's coffee order slide between her lips, or when their eyes inevitably met and darted away from each other across the expanse of other staged yet empty tables.

Though Cosima guessed initially, from her obvious linguistic heritage, that the blonde would disembark in Sault Ste. Marie and continue on into Canada, she had surprisingly continued her travels around the Great Lakes and, now that they were pulling out of Chicago, it seemed certain that her destination must be on the West Coast. No Mormon woman looked quite like this.

Cosima, accustomed to this journey, had become a bit of an expert at picking out the women who were en route to The Colony. Some were too obvious; the ones who freely allowed tears to streak through their eye make-up, transferring it to the soaked handkerchiefs wrapped around fingers, dabbing the perpetual wetness away. These women were the ones whose husbands had compelled them to get on the train, whose beds and homes were already being taken over by the nannies or secretaries for whom they had been forsaken.

These were the women who either broke or blew up in The City of Broken Vows. Some of them would never recover; their sorrow would over-steep into bitterness and mask, indefinitely, the sweetness of their youth. Others would experience a gestalt; a sudden realization that they deserved better than what had been done to them. These women became bold, lively and ran head long into the recklessness of youth that they had abandoned for the fabled "safety" of marriage. In either case, these husbands got exactly what they paid for: six weeks of physical distance that invariably led to a lifetime of silence.

Other women, harder to spot, made propriety their religion. They kept routines, and dressed impeccably, and they wore masks of kind concern and earnest gratitude when interacting with waiters and porters, hanging on to the last vestiges of normalcy and respectability before becoming sullied by legal decree. In truth, it was often very difficult to tell them from women bound for San Francisco or Los Angeles, except that they all played the same torturous game with themselves.

Cosima would watch them, sitting alone, in between courses or right at the end of their meals. They would worry at the rings on their left hands, eventually slipping them off and setting them on the linen-covered table top, entertaining, for only a millisecond, the life in front of them before snatching the rings back up and sliding them on, anchored again to what lay behind. At least for a few more weeks.

There were, of course, other types of future divorcees on board, but they were starlets, or the very wealthy, sequestered in private luxury cars. These were the women who embraced their "Reno-vation" from the get-go; who longed already to be ensconced at the famous dude ranches, like the Flying ME, and have torrid affairs with willing cowboys while they patiently waited for their freedom.

Cosima, over the years, had learned it was best not to start chatting with the women who would take up temporary residence in her hometown; they tended toward the melodramatic or the ironic and in either case, Cosima had grown bored with each disposition in its turn. The blonde, however, didn't fit either type of run of the mill divorcee, and though her attire implied wealth enough, she had chosen to travel coach class, which on such a long journey would have been unusual for a woman of any significant means. All of this, plus the absence of a ring on her left hand, had led Cosima to believe that Reno wasn't her final destination.

On this fourth day of their mutual travel, Cosima had managed to get control of her more primitive impulses enough that she thought she might strike up a conversation with the woman and not succumb to idiocy. No reason she shouldn't delight her own senses and sensibilities while traveling across the expanse of the Great Plains. Dressed in burgundy slacks and a black silk shirt, she asked the waiter to deliver a small pot of coffee and an extra cup to the table occupied by the ivory-skinned beauty reading Life magazine by lamplight, who sat draped in a white blouse and black slacks, hair pinned into a neat bun at the nape of her neck.

Before she made her way across the car, Cosima took a moment to notice how the warm light danced in her eyes and accentuated the jut of collarbone visible at the top of the white blouse, whose first two buttons lay open; the view was partially obscured by the woman's right hand as it lazily swayed the charm on her necklace from side to side. If Cosima made her peace with it now, she might not make it awkward by staring at the woman's chest when she sat down.

She sauntered over to the blonde's table. Swaying her hips in benign but delicious flirtation that only she perceived, she was certain. "Would you mind of I joined you?"

Cosima's words confused the blonde at first. She looked around for some other recipient of the brunette's inquiry before replying, a thickly accented, "I'm sorry; are you talking to me?"

"I am. Yes." Cosima clarified. "Oui, je me permets?" she added, pulling out one of the only French pleasantries she could recall.

The seated woman's eyes smiled at the familiar words. "Est-ce j'ai l'air de me sentir seule?" the blonde inquired innocently, holding eye contact with a suddenly flustered Cosima, who some how failed to reckon that speaking French might give the impression that she could actually hold a conversation in the language.

Her mouth fell agape and after several false starts, she finally chuckled at herself and shook her head defeated, a warm blush creeping up her cheeks. "I'm sorry. I have sort of exhausted all of the French I know; except for hello and goodbye…. I guess I skipped hello, didn't I? ummmm, bonjour. " She noticed the woman's face break into a barely perceptible smirk as she gave a slight chuckle. "So, I'm guessing you either speak English or are terribly amused by people who can completely change color on cue." Her fingers twisted small tornadoes each around the others as she tried to save face.

"I do speak Engish, oui, and I asked you if I looked lonely." This caught Cosima off guard; she hadn't meant her request to insult the woman and it horrified her to think that maybe she had, but then the blonde's subtle smirk grew even wider and Cosima felt more at ease.

"You? Lonely? No way. That was all me. I'm the lonely one…." Cosima settled one arm onto the back of the blonde's chair and leaned into it. "But, you did look alone and have for several days, and since you are alone and I am alone, and maybe a little lonely, I thought we might be alone together, y'know, in the same space." She gestured, pointing between the two of them and then to the mostly empty table. "I asked the waiter to bring some coffee over, so you kind of have to say yes."

"Oui, je comprends." The blonde's smile continued to stretch across her face. Then she leaned forward toward Cosima, a somber countenance falling over her features and a whisper cascading from her lips, "But there are many other passengers here who are alone, non? Would they not like to be alone with us too? Vraiment, some of them I have noticed look very, very lonely." And even though she was describing the compliment of people lingering in the dining car over coffee, her eyes never left Cosima's, who lowered herself into the chair opposite her new companion as she spoke.

"Very true." She added, her body language mirroring the blonde's. "They do look lonely, but I make it my habit to avoid the 'dudes' heading West. They are much more fun traveling back East at the end of the summer, after it's all said and done… you know." Cosima intimated, but the blonde had not followed her.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand…. 'dude'?" a crease formed between the blonde's eyes, and Cosima thought about continuing to speak in slang and vaguery just to keep it adorably in place, but instead made to clarify.

"Oh sorry, yeah, see I'm from Reno, yeee-haw, and every summer I ride back home from Boston to work on my stepmother's guest ranch. 'Dudes' is slang . It's what we locals call the folks who move into town for the summer while they are establishing residency, so they can…" She mimed removing a ring from her left ring finger and tossing it away.

"Oh yes, I see." The blonde nodded. "It is hard, I imagine. Perhaps, they don't have much to feel good about right now."

"Yeah, it's pretty heavy for sure, and I totally understand that it's helpful to talk about this stuff when you are going through it, but after seven summers, my empathy well is sort of tapped dry. The stories are all so sad, and they all end the same way." Cosima had leaned even farther forward, not wanting to be heard by the entire dining car. "That's why I came over here to visit with you. I noticed you back in Boston, and since I am sort of an expert, I guessed you weren't heading for Splitsville. I also noticed you were reading LIFE. The photo essays are my favorite. I'm Cosima, by the way."

Unconsciously, the blonde had mirrored her body language, so that they were both now completely leaning over their crossed arms toward the center of the table. She looked like she was going to say something, having inhaled deeply and letting her mouth hang open as her brow twisted slightly. But then her mouth closed and her countenance relaxed. She exhaled smoothly and offered, almost as a whisper, "Delphine." "Enchantée." She added with a slight nod.

"Enchantée," Cosima responded.

"So, if we are not going to share ourselves with the 'dudes,' Cosima, what should we talk about?" It took her a moment to answer. She was distracted, savoring the sound of her name on the woman's lips, and brought back to reality when the waiter placed the coffee pot, cups and creamer at the edge of the table and she heard Delphine speak again, "Merci."

"Well, ummmmm, what took you to Boston? I thought you were on your way up to Canada." Cosima hoped she wasn't prying.

"I do not live in Boston anymore, though my lawyer still does. I had business with him before heading West. I have been in Amherst for the last four years at University."

"Beauty and brains, huh? Very impressive. What are you studying? I'm at Radcliffe, neuro-biology." Cosima added at the end.

"That, too, is very impressive. I am studying genetics." A smile erupted across Cosima's face. "There are fascinating developments on the horizon." Delphine offered. "You've heard of Watson and Crick, non? They have given us a physical model of the very stuff that makes us possible, DNA. It is very exciting." Delphine had suddenly become very animated. She had begun to speak with her hands, fingers splayed out and wrapping in lazy circles at the wrist. Cosima wanted to reach out and grab one! Instead, she laced her own fingers together and tapped her thumbs together too quickly.

"Yeah, absolutely, I've heard of them; their work is helping us understand the structure of the human brain. It's heavy man, and totally complex." Delphine smiled broadly.

"Yes, it is, complex" She stretched last syllable playfully, appreciating Cosima's choice of word. "Since we are talking about complex things, may I ask you a question, Cosima?"

"Feel free." Dephine's eyes closed slightly as her head cocked sideways, she was clearly confused and Cosima realized she would need to limit her use of colloquial expressions, "Yes, please do. Ask anything you want."

"Ok, merci. Since you are….like me…a woman in the sciences, how do you find it?"

"Oh, umm… well I guess I must find it engaging and stimulating otherwise I wouldn't study it." She grinned at the blonde, impressed with her own wit.

"That is not what I meant; I'm sorry English is not always my…" Delphine made to explain, but Cosima interrupted her.

"No, don't apologize, your English was in the groove, that means right on by the way, and I think I knew what you were asking; I was just being...

"Cheeky"

"Yeah, cheeky… On purpose. Sorry" Cosima noticed that their hands lay close enough together on the table that she could reach a finger out and stroke the back of Delphine's hand. Her eyes lingered a little too long and Delphine wondered aloud.

"So, what did you think I was asking?"

"Right, I guessed that you were asking how it feels having to compete with men all the time?"

"Oui,mais, perhaps not competing but having to prove yourself to your peers. That you are more than their secretary or assistant. I am the only woman in my program, so I do not have a confidant, per se. I am curious what your experiences have been."

"Well, your thoughts are safe with me for sure, but I'm not sure how much I can commiserate yet… I sort of cheat." Cosima's favorite crease made its appearance in the center of her companion's brow… "Radcliffe is a women's college still. Pesky private school rules and all. Harvard just isn't ready for estrogen yet."

"I see" Delphine pondered the implications of gender segregation for a moment, before continuing. "Well that must be refreshing."

"I suppose it must be, but it is my normal so I'm kind of used to it. You should come visit sometime; we are practically neighbors. That way you could feel it out for yourself. I could be your own private tour guide."

"Merci, I'm certain it would be different."

"It would have to be I guess."

"C'est vrai." A silence fell over them, but not necessarily an awkward one. Delphine, who was looking into Cosima's eyes, tucked her lip under her teeth, a nervous habit Cosima had observed several times over the last few days. Cosima was about to make a move toward the coffee pot just to break the silence, when Delphine broke their mutual gaze and released her lip from its prison to speak. "So you work on a ranch for the summer. That must be interesting; do you work with the animals? Wrangle cattle… I think they say, non?" Delphine inquired.

"Yes, that is what they say… but it's not exactly what I do." Cosima hesitated briefly, wondering if she should have just run with the assumption and let it lie. Offerred one of the thousands of anecdotes about Shioban's cowhand's she held in reserve for dinner conversation and to alleviate ennui and claimed it as her own personal narrative. Rather she offered the truth, "Actually, I do wrangle, just not cattle. I am what they call a dude wrangler."

"But didn't you say…" Delphine puzzled.

"I did, I did say that. I help the folks who live at the ranch stay busy and manage their affairs while they are in town. It really can be confusing and scary, so we try to help in any way we can. So you see, I'm not really that cold-hearted. I just know I have an entire summer of hand holding ahead of me; I don't really want to start on the train."

Delphine nodded along. "I suppose that is understandable. Well, I promise, I will not require you to hold my hand while we converse." She grinned at the brunette simply. Cosima's stomach flipped over; the blood retreating from her face in disappointment.

"Right," Cosima droned, nodding. "Great, good, obviously. So, Delphine, what brings you out West? What is your final destination?"

"Oh, no….I would not wish to burden you. I understand your empathy well is tapped dry, non?" Delphine said slyly, a smirk pulling at the corner of her lips.

"Hey, only for the sad sacks heading to the Bridge of Sighs; for you, I am all ears! Where are you heading?" Cosima goaded.

"I love the way you talk, mon dieu. What is this Bridge of Sighs?" She released a breathy chuckle and quirked her head sideways.

"Right down the street from the Reno courthouse, one block south is a bridge over the Truckee River. It's called the Bridge of Sighs because it is the spot where the forsaken women of the west stop to remove their wedding rings and fling them into the river! It can be terribly sad, liberating, empowering, romantic, therapeutic… it all depends on the timing and the individual. My step-brother jokes about wading into the river at midnight and panning for broken dreams to go pawn; he'd probably never have to work again!"

"Really? The women do this? As a symbol or gesture?" Delphine marveled, a slight melancholy infecting her previously playful tone.

"Yeah, I've been with quite a few of them when they do it."

"More hand holding, non?" she offered dryly.

"Yeah I guess so, but not in a bad way.

Delphine sat up straight, suddenly increasing the distance between them for the first time since they began talking. She stared down at the table, hands nervously picking at the edge of the table cloth, then reaching back to the center to gently squeeze the hand of her companion. "I'm disembarking in Reno in two days, Cosima. I'll be staying at the Riverside for the next six weeks; perhaps we will see each other… perhaps even on the Bridge of Sighs."

Cosima closed her eyes, letting the full weight of her supposition and stupidity wash over her. "Shit, Delphine. I'm so sorry."

"It's OK. Good night Cosima. Thank you for the coffee" And she stood up and walked out of the dining car without once looking back into the eyes of the woman whose gaze was glued to her back, their untouched pot of coffee cooling on the table's edge.

AN: obviously, I would very much like to know what you think, so please feel free to let me know by review or PM. And a big thank you to pmonkey815, one amazing individual, for beta reading this chapter! and I would be remiss if I didn't thank zephyrchild for the the research on french phraseology!