A Train To Chicago

Liz

I don't like it when my mother calls me Elizabeth.
I'd much rather be called Liz.
Albeit my mother has been dead for thirteen years and I haven't endeavoured in a decent conversation in at least seven months where an elderly and quite drunk man called Eric told me his whole life story; about how he met his wife after he returned from war, travelled the world with her before she died during childbirth and he hadn't travelled ever since.
Tales like these make me not want to live long. He has lived seventy years without his wife- I'm merely a thirty-two year old child, with no sense of romance or nostalgia.
I've got lung cancer, and with that, I've got six months left to live.
All I want to do is live.
Though clinically I'm sure that that I'm depressed, it's not because of my diagnosis. I guess I'm just a sad person altogether.
I was offered treatment and chemotherapy but I declined profusely. Save your medication for a child, or a mother, save it for a future.
I grew up in several different places dotted around Europe- London, Manchester, Dublin then I stayed in Paris for a while before I turned eleven where mum got a new French boyfriend- I liked him a lot, he was friendly to me even when I was in a mood, but sure enough, when I was nineteen both of them died in a car accident when I was in university.

Naturally, I wanted to move as far as possible from Paris where it happened. I got the next plane to San Francisco and used the money I had inherited to rent houses along the west coast and to buy drugs to for once bring me into that artistic world that I called home.
I can only paint when I'm smoking now, the room must smell of tobacco and I must have something between my lips or the paintbrush will simply not move.
The doctors consistently beg me to stop- I nod, I tell them that I'll try. But I never do. Because I don't want to.
Smoking for me is not a rebellious act, nor an act to do with addiction, it's simply a method of punishing myself for letting my only family slide away without ever saying that I loved them.

Today is their thirteenth anniversary.
Just as I arrived at Los Angeles train station with all my baggage, I stop to wonder why I've wasted such a life I've been given.
I see a lady with two young identical blonde twin toddlers sitting opposite me.
I see two men holding hands, one blonde wearing a shirt and tie, the other tanned and wearing a tight-fitted pink t-shirt. Love. Something I've never experienced in my life, and never will.
I see another man on his own seated adjacent to me, his hair is dark and he dresses sensibly in a shirt and jeans, his feet resting on his two suitcases that lie on the ground and his hands are connected to a delicate white-gold ring with the most precise and shimmering diamond I've ever seen.
The time is ten minutes to three.
Could this be another Eric?

"Who's the lucky girl?" I say, assuming it's a girl he's proposing to.
He laughs and closes the ring in his hands as he looks up at me, I take a seat.
"Her name is Sophie." He tells me, his voice is surprisingly Northern Irish. Which leads me to ask about his background.
"I'm moving back to Northern Ireland for Christmas.. just need a break from L.A." He told me,
"How long have you been living here?" I asked him, running one hand through my short blonde hair.
"God... about seven years now. What about you? How long have you been living here?" He asked me, I was surprised when he questioned me- I'm not usually at the interviewee side of a conversation, although I suppose this is just an introduction..
"Around thirteen years now, I suppose." I told him.
"Jeez- and where are you going?" He asked, appearing to be genuinely interested as the train came in.
"I-I don't really know..." I tell him before instantly regretting it, "I mean... I think I'll go to New York."
"You alright?" He asked, laughing awkwardly and patting my shoulder in a friendly manner.
"I travel a lot- spontaneously, most of the time. I don't know where I'll be in a weeks time but I don't really care." I admit to him, smiling and standing up to board the train.
"I think I'd like to be like you." He says, narrowing his eyes slightly and smiling.
"Oh I don't think you would." I laugh in response, stepping on board the train and placing my bags in the designated area.
I take a seat on the main carriage, bringing out my A4 sketchbook and turning to another blank page.
I never flick through my sketchbook, I don't like to see old drawings, old projects. I have to live in the present. Not the past or the future.
"Mind if I sit here?" Asked the same man I was speaking to earlier as the train sets off.
"Sure." I reply, hoping that he would sit there. I was fond of his company.
He sat down opposite me, taking out his notebook and pen.
"Are you an artist?" He asked me, releasing a polite smile.
"Meh... I don't suppose I really have an occupation." I replied, taking a glance out the window at the long western plains of California.
"You're not a poet are you?" I scoffed, taking a glance at his notebook full of scribbles and smudges.
"Worse. An author." He laughed, "well... supposedly.."
"You ever been published?" I asked him, biting my lip.
"Eh.. no." He replied, biting the end of his pen.
"You're lying." I deduced, grinning at him, "I'll find out by the end of this trip." I scrunched my lips.
"What's your name?" He asked me, putting down the pen and smiling at me as the sun gleamed down on him from the window.
"Liz." I told him, holding out my hand, "yours?"
"Harry." He replied, shaking my hand.
At that, he settled to trying to begin wiring a story while I pulled out a book I was half way through reading.
"The Distance" by Harry Arnoll.