'What train?'

What follows is an excerpt of "The Natural" by Bernard Malamud (It's a conversation between Iris and Roy on page 142 of the Avon paperback):

Roy felt like crying, yet he told her -- the first one he ever had. "I was just a kid and I got shot by this batty dame on the night before my tryout, and after that I just couldn't get started again. I lost my confidence and everything I did flopped."

He said this was the shame of his life, that his fate, somehow, had always been the same (on the train going nowhere) -- defeat in sight of his goal.

"Always?"

"Always the same."

"Always with a woman?"

He laughed harshly. "I sure met some honeys in my time. They burned me good."

"Why do you pick that type?"

"It's like I say -- they picked me. It's the breaks."

"You could say no, couldn't you?"

"Not to the type dame I always fell for -- they weren't like you."

She smiled.