The First Train on Friday

They were supposed to be the lucky ones: young, alive in Chicago during the swinging sixties, with apartments in government buildings, jobs at the national newspaper, and futures stretching out like open tracks. Zek wanted to write novels. Vero dreamed of something softer, something she couldn't name. Randall dreamed of celebrity in Manhattan and the next fix at home. Patricia? Patricia belonged to no one and everyone. Their first year together was all bubbles, midnight knocks, birthday records, and secrets whispered over breakfast porridge in the pale January light. Then the fractures began. Pills multiplied, Patricia vanished and reappeared with new faces and old wounds. Vero's heart pulled in two directions at once. Years later, the memories come flooding back, of the train that carried one of them away on a Friday morning, never to return. A lyrical tale of four friends whose lives converged, fractured, and scattered across the map.