Jack sits reflecting on Fabiola’s words. “You’re correct. Maybe I need to employ you to council me and the people I work with.” Jack laughs at how Fabiola is such a simple person, yet she is so spot-on. And he realizes it at that moment. But all this—his situation, his meltdown, the dream—is still hard to accept. “Regardless, you have to know that for me, in my world, this is a lot of crazy talk. I come from a world where things have to be concrete. I need facts. If I can’t see it or touch it, if I can’t hold the product, I can’t quantify it.”

“What more do you need than the here and the now?” Fabiola lets those words sit with Jack, then says, “What if I told you that the night before I saw you, I dreamed of a man? A tortured soul. Crazed and dancing to his own lunacy in the streets of San Pedro? Would you say I am crazy?”

ANNE

ANNE

Clang and rattle of steel on steel. Wheels clatter over rail joints, Anne and Trot feeling every bump, sway, and vibration. Elbowing Trot and directing his attention to the round opening at her left, to the scuffed Doc Martens worn by someone in the opposite compartment. Anne spreads her feet and bends into a squat, and a second later she is looking into the eyes of a young black girl. She seems too young to be riding a freight train on her own. Her head is covered by a military olive-drab bandanna. She is holding a rolled-up blue sleeping bag against her stomach. Behind the sleeping bag, she wears a Jack Daniel’s T-shirt that once was black, now faded a dingy gray. Her full lips break into a smile, and she comes forward, stepping and working her way through the opening until she is standing before Anne and Trot. Putting out her hand, she almost shouts, “Name’s Cinnamon.”

Oh, what the hell, Anne thinks. She’s making herself at home, might as well meet her halfway. She reaches out and shakes the hand. It is as soft and warm as the girl’s features. And she tells Cinnamon, “I’m Anne. He’s Trot.”

Cinnamon shakes hands with Trot and asks, “How long you-all been catching out?”

Anne’s head tilts sideways. “Catching out?”

Cinnamon laughs. Her teeth are Tic Tac white. “Train hopping. You must be a greenhorn.”

Anne tells her, “My first train. Yeah, a greenhorn. Situation at home was a total shit show.”

Out here, she realizes, they have their own language, their own “speak.” And Cinnamon tells her, “Hear you loud and clear, girl.” Shakes her head up and down. “What about you, thin man? What’s your history?”