Chapter 1: My Kind of Town

October 3rd, 1995, 3:25 PM, Union Station, Chicago, IL

In the time they had been together, Jill had come to know Chicago Union station very well. They passed through it frequently, as it was Amtrak’s man hub- to get from L.A. to many other places, it was entirely necessary to pass through Chicago. Since George and his parents were very close, and enjoyed seeing each other fairly frequently, there had been several round trips already, and she suspected there would be many more; the only thing George liked more than trains was traveling itself.

There were only two ways to get from George’s parents’ home that did not involve going through Chicago; she had been on one but not the other. She had taken the Sunset Limited to New Orleans, the Crescent to New York and the Empire State Express to Rochester. The other route involved going through Canada and hadn’t been taken due to both time and expense.

In any case, they had just gotten off the Lake Shore Limited and were heading to Giordano’s for lunch. She suspected there was some truth to George’s joking that he took trains through Chicago just so that they could eat in Giordano’s Pizza. The pizza at Giordano’s really was that good. Also, he stuck her as the type who would have fancies like that. He was more than a little strange, and had a few obsessive tendencies, but overall he was a very nice guy, with a big heart; a lot bigger than he let on to most people.

After lunch, they were going to do the one Chicago-Los Angeles option she had not yet been on; the Texas Eagle. It was a slow, meandering method of getting there, to be sure. It was like going from Chicago to Los Angeles by way of Dallas, Texas. Mostly because that was exactly what it was.

The Texas Eagle left Chicago at 5:45 in the evening. Its next major stop was in St. Louis at 11:30 at night. The next morning it would stop in Little Rock, Arkansas at 7:23, and then it would stop in Dallas, Texas at 2:24 that afternoon. A small section of the train- a lounge and coach or two- would then go on to Houston. The rest of the train would then continue on to San Antonio just 20 minutes before midnight. There it would wait for the Sunset Limited, which was scheduled to pull into San Antonio at 2:25 in the morning. At this time, a sleeper and coach, already cut out of the Texas Eagle’s consist, would be switched on to the back of the Sunset Limited, which would then on through California, arriving in Los Angeles at 6:15 in the morning.

But this was all just in theory. The reality was quite different. The Southern Pacific tended to mishandle the train, especially if it departed New Orleans substantially late, which was frequently the case. The train could be days later than the advertised scheduled time, which was already quite long. While Jill was not entirely enthralled beyond all belief on train travel the way the rail-freak George was, she did see advantages.

It gave them several nights alone on the train, onboard the impressively generous beds present in the Superliner Deluxe Bedroom. George’s dad had insisted that they use Deluxe Bedrooms now that they were a couple. She, for one, had no objection whatsoever to this concept. What she particularly liked about train travel was having sex while moving. It added an entirely new dimension to the experience, and she enjoyed it immensely.

After his initial reluctance to get into bed with Jill, George had turned out to have quite a ravenous sexual appetite, and an interest in varied positions and techniques. She herself had found that once she was having caring sex, and for the right reasons, with the right person, her enjoyment of it was even stronger than she thought it would be. They spent a lot of time in bed together, even when they were supposed to be doing other things.

George was a very bright guy, but his dedication to schooling was lackadaisical at best, although both she and his father had pushed him to promise to take next semester more seriously. Admittedly, much of his time and energy had been dedicated to helping her with her home schooling program. Jill was also very intelligent, and between their strange relationship, and her wanting to catch up to George as fast as possible, it was decided that she would be homeschooled, largely by herself, with George’s help.

Back in New York, her considerable intelligence had always placed her well ahead of her fellow students. This was the case even in the prestigious public school her Aunt and Uncle’s exclusive address netted her. Despite the school being considered one of the best in the city, academically she was consistently in the front of her class. She often found herself pounding on ahead of the other students, and waiting impatiently for them to catch up.

As a result of this experience, she didn’t particularly have much interest in the so-called benefits of a school-based education, herself. With the home schooling program she could learn at her own pace. And that pace was a scorcher. She had this desire to catch up with George as quickly as possible in the knowledge department. Despite the age difference, she was well on her way to accomplishing this goal. She wasn’t particularly interested in college; she always had this idea that she wanted to start a retail business, actually.

In her opinion, George was a highly intelligent man. However, despite that intelligence, he wasn’t really an academic intellectual. He liked to think, to plan, consider new ideas, and he liked to debate things perhaps a bit too much (read: he liked to argue). He didn’t like pursuing ideals of knowledge for its own sake, unless it enhanced his needs; one of the reasons he wasn’t that interested in college.

George was something of an intellectually-grounded real-worlder, while Jill was more of a realistic intellectual. The primary difference was that while George enjoyed intellectual pursuit, he saw it as an interesting pastime of limited actual value. On the other hand, Jill saw it as a valuable thing to do, as well as enjoying it for the shear fun of it.

Fortunately, they both enjoyed engaging in respectful, if lively debates. Their great respect for each other allowed for them to get off onto wildly different subjects. In truth, though, even in the six months they had been living together, their ideas on a lot of the world had started to merge. He wasn’t subsuming her, or vice versa- they were just becoming more and more alike.

For instance, George saw value in him conducting a passenger or freight train, which he saw as “real work.” He considered most management jobs to be busy work, insisting that most people who had management jobs, in the grand scheme of things, contributed little or nothing to the general good of humanity, and the jobs were often filled by many people where one would be adequate. Over the course of their debating, George had come to like the idea of starting a business, and doing the real work of building it, with Jill.

Jill understood his point; it was valid, and, based on her personal observations, entirely accurate. However, Jill felt that such jobs did have a point, and that George was somewhat overblowing the reality of the problem. Still, it was clear to her that George going to college was a waste of time and money. The only thing it would bring to him was a piece of paper that said he had gone, which he would place in a drawer because he saw no value in it, and never intend to take a job that required him to wave it in anyone’s face; he certainly wouldn’t need it if they started a business together.

This was what her mind was occupied with as they walked from the ornate station to the pizza place. When they finally got there, she was instantly glad, and also hungry. She was happy that George had the foresight to call ahead from the Metropolitan Lounge and request the pizza be cooked before they even got there. This would save a great deal of time waiting for it. Pizza at Giordano’s, a thick stuffed Chicago deep dish, could take 40 minutes to prepare.

“I get this feeling you were anxious on the train,” George said with a lopsided grin, “You know, to nap.”

She had been on the rag that last week, which was not altogether a bad thing when they were staying in Caldwell Limited, but they were both a bit on the horny side. John, his dad, did not want to know the details; he had said so quite explicitly. Gretel, however had been happy to provide Jill with birth control pills. But wisdom, sagacity, and politeness made it undesirable to be, er, active when they were at his parents’ house.

There are some men in the world who are so horny they would have sex with a menstruating woman, but George Caldwell was not among them. Which was just as well, as Jill was not among the women who had any desire to accommodate such levels of horniness, either. So for that week they had both been a little frustrated, even though after six months things had begun to calm down a little bit.

But now the wait was over, she was horny as hell, he was even hornier, and the upshot was the three day trip to Los Angeles was almost guaranteed to be an interesting one. Although George kept insisting that there was enough interesting scenery on this route to not want to remain in the room the entire trip. She doubted it; the train basically traveled down the Great Plains and down into Texas, and then through the Southwestern desert; how much could there be to see?

“Yes, very anxious to nap,” she leered, “One will need to get in much napping before one is tired enough to sleep.”

George grinned back at her “Oh, me as well. I’d be worried about sleeping myself, as something may arise.”

They soon had their fill of sexually charged (and lame) conversation, and the discussion shifted to other things. The biggest topic in the world at that point in time was the trial of football star and actor O.J. Simpson. The gigantic, theatrical circus that was the ridiculous show-trial of the famous man for the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, seemed to be winding to a close after eight long months of a trial that could be best described as a farce.

The evidence was full of holes, on one hand, as some of it seemed to be fabricated. On the other, there was tons of evidence for, and not much against. Most of the defense’s arguments were of a procedural nature. After paying limited attention to the carnival, Jill and George had both agreed to what it would turn out to be: OJ Simpson, they had decided, was physically guilty of killing his wife on one hand.