Joyce Ann Brown has been a librarian, a landlady, a story teller, and now a writer. She loves her family, her cats, and her walking trails. And she writes about cats and landladies, so she knows what she’s talking about.  But today, it’s cell phones that get her attention, not the cats. Leave a comment and be entered in a drawing for a copy of Joyce’s latest cat and the landlady mystery.  They are fun.

Do you sometimes resent the amount of time you give to messages and social media on your cell phone? As a writer, I need to spend time staying in touch with my readers, which I love, but with that comes scrolling through personal Facebook posts from folks I hardly know (friends of friends?), Twitter posts from every site I ever followed, group e-mail messages meant for other people in my writing groups, posts to update my author blog, and so on. Whew. There’s hardly time to write by the time I finish.

Recently, my husband and I took a trip to Mexico and paid to have cell phone coverage while we visited. It made us think of a near disaster that happened years ago before cell phones were a choice. Here’s what happened:

Evian—No Gas: A Cautionary Tale

 Only four people stood on the platform outside my train window, and none of them was my husband. I set aside my paperback and glanced at my watch—10:22 a.m. The train would leave at 10:24 a.m. It was well known German trains ran on schedule, to the minute. I scooted to the aisle seat and leaned out to look from one end of the passenger car to the other, studied my watch one more time, and then shrugged.

Meanwhile, as he related later, Matthew was boarding. He held a bottle of Evian spring water ahead of him, like an offering, ready to transfer it into my grateful hand. He knew I’d take it with a casual thank you, but he smiled to himself as he planned how he’d tell me during our trip from Munich to Salzburg how he had to go to the farthest refreshment stand to find “Evian—no gas” per my request. Like there’s even such a thing as Sparkling Evian. It turned out that the Germans stocked more carbonated than un-carbonated water in their train stations. Nevertheless, he had found the Evian at last and made it back to the train with two minutes to spare.

Matt passed the conductor on his way into the train, and the uniformed man climbed in behind him. That felt odd. The train jerked into motion as he opened the door to the coach. He looked again at his watch. Leaving two minutes early?!

Bubbles of doubt popped into his head. He stopped and stared. He had entered a storage coach. Bicycles hung on each side of the aisle. We hadn’t walked through storage on our train. Seconds clicked by as he passed through to the next car. More storage. He started to panic. Was this the wrong train?

Matt bent to find a view between two bicycles and waited until the train passed a track marker. More seconds ticked by. Track 4!? He needed track 6.

Thoughts gushed into his head. Jump off the moving train? No. Find the conductor? He looked from one end of the car to the other and bent to look through the window again. The train station was receding into the distance.

While this was happening, I slid back into the window seat and opened my paperback. Another glance through the glass told me Matt hadn’t appeared on the Track Six platform. Oh, well, I thought, maybe he got on the wrong coach and is making his way through the train right now. Matt knows enough to leave a long queue at a food stand if the time gets short. He’ll be here.

My attention returned to my book, Salt: A World History. I fell into deep concentration on the interpretation of historical concepts the book presented. Salt. It made me feel—thirsty.

Meanwhile, Matt considered only one option—he had to get off that train and back to ours. Red cords hanging beside the windows caught his eye. Emergency cords. He reached between the two bicycles closest to the exit and pulled the cord. Breaking wheels screeched, and the train shuddered as friction brought it toward a stop. But the exit doors were still closed.

Matt stood stymied for a couple more seconds before he spotted the red button. He pushed it. Whoosh. Matt bolted through the exit with the train still in motion, jumped off the top step, ran across the tracks, and sprinted back toward the station platforms without looking back. Panting, he zipped up the steps he found at the end of Platform Six. One second more and he found a gaping coach entrance with a conductor ready to close the doors.

Matt cast his eyes skyward—I made it! A jerk and a tremble told him the train was pulling out while he made his way from car to car, grabbing the backs of seats.

As my husband walked down the aisle, my thought-provoking volume vibrated, and I turned to the window with a start. Our train was pulling away from the station.

Mat approached me from behind. When he plopped into his own seat, I spun toward him. He held out the bottle of water, still in his hand.

“Here’s your Evian—no gas.”

“Thanks.” I popped open the top and took a swig. “I almost started thinking you weren’t going to make it back in time,” I said, and offered him a drink of the Evian.

Matt drank and then wriggled into a comfortable position in his seat. He took his time telling his story. In fact, he’s still telling it years later.

Back then, we would have had no way to contact each other had we ended up in different European cities. Now, we carry cell phones that work where we’re visiting. We still both take a book or two, of course.

Aside from all those Twitter chirps, I think cell phones serve us well. In the newest addition to my Psycho Cat and the Landlady Mystery series, Nine Lifelines, phone calls and video chats are important part of the plot. I will give a copy of the book to one person who comments on this blog post.

JIM:  It’s another murder mystery and the cat does influence the sleuthing landlady.  You’ll enjoy it.