They left at seven fifteen exactly, sliding out so smoothly that it wasn’t until they began clicking over the points in the yard that Ben looked up to see they were moving. Past sidetracked box cars, then clotheslines and coal sheds and scrap metal yards, the backside of the city, until finally the open country of the prairie. Another day before they saw mountains. Los Angeles Monday morning, half a continent in under forty hours. He opened his bag to change. People dressed up for dinner on the Chief. A wash, a drink in the club car. He looked out again at the late summer’s light on the unbroken fields, a pale gold. Farther away from the newsreel with every mile. And then, not paying attention, he nicked his finger on his razor and watched, dismayed, as blood welled out of the cut. Had there been blood? She hadn’t said. A pool spreading under his head? Where had he fallen? But there must have been blood. There always was.

They were three deep at the bar in the club car, talking over each other, a party roar of indistinct voices and ice tinkling against glass. Just a few uniforms, officers with their own money. One of the starlets he’d seen on the platform, lipstick refreshed, was taking a light from a man she’d obviously just met, all eyes and what-are-my-odds. The way every trip should begin, Ben thought, the air bubbling like the tonic in his drink.

“So what happened to you?”

Ben turned to the finger poking at his shoulder.

“I thought you were coming up. Talk some more.”

Lasner had changed suits but seemed to have kept the same cigar, now just a stub between his fingers. He was with a young man whose eyes darted around the car, a quick sweep, before they settled on Ben. He stuck out his hand.