The Drazen World: The California Limited (Kindle Worlds Novella) Read Free

asked as he turned a page.
    “I am now,” she said.
    “Yes or Kansas City, which would be a shame.” 
    “Why would that be a shame?”
    “Because I’m bound for LA.”  They read for some minutes when he spoke again.  “Are you on business or pleasure?”
    She cocked her head as if considering.  “Business.  And you?”
    “Both.  I’m moving there.”
    “Are you?” she asked, still holding her book but no longer turning any pages.  “I suppose you could say the same of me.”
    “Oh?  And what brings you?”
    Her eyes scanned the page more earnestly as if she were reading again.  After a few moments, she closed it abruptly and put it on her lap, turning to look out the window.  “I’m not sure.” 
    He lowered his paper and turned to her, poised to speak.
    “And you?” she asked, still staring out the window.  “What brings you there?”
    “A position at Columbia.”
    “Making movies?”  She finally turned to him, directing her full and steady gaze on him.
    He lowered his paper and regarded her with a half-smile.  Of course she was a wannabe starlet.  “A production assistant to start.  From there, who knows?  I haven’t the faintest idea if I will like it.  But I think so and am eager to try.  Anything so long as it’s not what my father does.”
    A look of commiseration flit across her face.  “Is he a criminal?  That’s all the rage now.”
    “Worse.  He’s successful at everything he does and too large a shadow for me to come out from under.  I always had this sinking feeling as I grew up that if I stayed and worked with him, married a girl like my mother, lived in the same parish, that I’d never see the light of day.  If it’s possible to admire and resent the same man…well.”
    She nodded and went back to her book and he went back to his paper.
    Why had he said all that?  And to a complete stranger besides.  There was something about her that opened him.
    After some time, he gave up the pretense of reading and turned to study her.  “Where are you from?”
    “A town in Wisconsin.  You wouldn’t know it.”
    “How do you know?  Perhaps I’m from Wisconsin.”
    She gave him an amused smile, then shook her head.  “You left your r’s back in Boston,” she said, affecting an exaggerated Boston accent.
    “That obvious?” he asked.
    She nodded and turned back to her book.  “Will you pick up your paper?”
    He shook his head.  “No.  I’ve read it front to back.  Twice.  Even the funnies.  I can’t pretend to find it interesting any more.  Not when I find you infinitely more so.”
    A short time later a porter entered the car and began turning the first couches into a sleeping compartment and the woman looked at Jack.
    “I should go,” he said, buttoning his coat and collecting his paper.
     
    That night Jack lay in his bed, the smooth clack of the rails lulling him to sleep, but his mind was too attuned to her.  Her.   He didn’t even know her name.  How had he forgotten that?  He would rectify it first thing in the morning.
    Then he wondered, not for the first time, what it was about her, exactly.  Yes, she was beautiful and he wanted to fuck her, but there was more.  About his father he told her more than he had ever realized he felt, as if she made him know himself.
    Cora, his sweetheart from Brookline, he thought a kindred soul.  The oldest of six, the weight of her parents’ expectations making her both good and responsible, a sort of keeper for her siblings goodness and responsibility, she knew him just as he recognized her.  But that was not the same and, it turned out, not at all what he was looking for.  His canary seemed to be both trapped and free.  He couldn’t say why he knew this of her, but he did.  And that he recognized, too.
     
    49 hrs. to Los Angeles
    The next morning he found her in a dining car, her eggplant dress bold against the bright, white tablecloth, a hand pulling a cup to her mouth.  When she