"You did not," Ray agreed.
"And now I'm here, and she looks at me—the little one—like I'm something. Like I'm a—like I'm worth meeting a train for. And I'm not. Ray, I'm not. I'm a guy who let his brother's phone call go to voicemail because he was drunk in a boat toilet."
"Yep," said Ray. "That's who you were. On August second of last year. Who are you tonight?"
Tom didn't answer.
"I'll tell you who you are tonight," Ray said. "You're a guy with an unopened bottle on a train platform, who called his sponsor instead of opening it. That's who you are. That's a different guy. That guy's got two hundred and ninety-eight days. Pick up the bag, Thomas."
Tom picked it up.
"There a trash can there?"
"Yeah."
"Walk to it."
He walked to it. It was twelve steps.
"Now you gonna put it in, or you gonna pour it on the tracks and make some kind of a big dramatic gesture like in a movie? Because I'll tell you, that second one's for amateurs, and also you'll get fined."
Tom laughed. It came out of him like something breaking. He was crying, he discovered. He stood at the trash can at the north end of the Marlow Landing platform with the river black beside him and the lights of Newburgh across the water and he cried, holding the bag, while a thousand miles away an old man from Thibodaux listened and didn't say anything at all.
Then he put the bottle in the trash, bag and all, and pushed it down under a newspaper and a Dunkin' cup, and took his hand away.
"Done," he said.
"Good," said Ray. "Now go home. And call me in the morning. And Tommy—"
"Yeah."
"That woman. Nora. She see you with it?"
"Yeah."