Midnight Train To Chicago Read online

  Midnight Train To Chicago

  by

  Marsha Jardine

  SMASHWORDS EDITION

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Marsha Jardine on Smashwords

  Copyright © 2011 by Marsha Jardine

  Please note: Adult Content.

  This story is intended for persons over the age of 17.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Places referred to are either real or fictitious - for example there is no such place as "Stowerleigh" in Birmingham England. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

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  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  Midnight Train To Chicago

  Contents

  Chapter 1 The Price Of So Called Success.

  Chapter 2 Midnight Aboard The Texas Eagle.

  Chapter 3 A Shock For Bill.

  Chapter 4 New York.

  Chapter 5 Reunited At Last.

  Chapter 6 All Is Explained And A Future Begins.

  Chapter 1

  The Price Of So Called Success.

  Before we embark on this incredible story of love and fate, we need to set the stage and bring you up to speed on the life of a man named Bill Douglas.

  The year is two thousand and something. Bill Douglas, born and bred in the USA, is forty, athletic, tall and handsome with a thick crop of neatly trimmed near black hair. Apart from his good looks, Bill is highly successful in his chosen career. He works in Dallas Texas as a senior computer programmer and development engineer for a company called Apricot Computers. In fact Bill's position is that of director of product development.

  Apricot was in direct competition with Apple Computers and had developed a highly successful alternative to Apple's ipad. It was entirely due to Bill's cleverness and knowledge; as well as his leadership skills and a team of fifty to support him; that Bill himself brought about the arrival of the new device. Within a year of its inception, twenty million were sold worldwide.

  I suppose as far as creative abilities were concerned, Bill Douglas could be likened to Steve Jobs of Apple or even Bill Gates of Microsoft for that matter. On this basis Bill Douglas was a valued employee of Apricot and was paid (with bonuses) close to a million per year. This wasn't too bad a figure considering the average salary figure for the likes of Apple and Microsoft employees was in general, less than a hundred grand.

  Even though Bill was a valued employee of Apricot Computers it needs to be clarified that the business was cutthroat and ruthless. There was no such thing as sentiment and employees came and went frequently at the whim of management. Employees were just numbers and "things" to be manipulated. It was a culture that Bill would have dearly liked to change. However with the culture of greed that had manifested itself in the USA, it just wasn't to be. People were way down in the list of priorities; money was number one.

  It was also Bill Douglas's initiative to name the successful alternative to the ipad as the "jpad". This was because "j" was the next letter after "i" in the alphabet - in other words one better!

  Thanks to Bill's ingenuity and expertise in his field, the jpad was in fact superior to the ipad in many respects. To name a few, the jpad could respond to complex voice commands; it had a laser light projection keyboard that could be operated on any adjacent flat surface. It also had a superconductor battery that never needed charging; then to top it all off there was a 5.2 GHz microprocessor, 6GB of memory and 320GB of storage. Not that it is necessary to know these technical details; it just demonstrates that what Bill had come up with was absolutely brilliant and the world needed it and wanted it - much to the delight of the shareholders of Apricot.

  Apricot was a public company listed on the stock exchange. This meant that there were certain demands placed on management to perform and provide the necessary return on investment - hence the lack of any feeling of compassion by the administration for staff and their jobs. As far as employees were concerned, if you didn't perform - you were a "gone-burger".

  What Bill and his team had developed wasn't just the jpad. As Apple had done, there was a jphone and a jpod. Yes Bill had made Apricot Computers one "hell of a lot" of money - hence they paid him a "reasonable" amount to keep him.

  To an outsider, Bill appeared to be the epitome of success. For starters he had a beautiful wife - a blond, ex-model, named Felicity to whom he had been married to for nineteen years. He also had two children - a boy (Brady) of seventeen and a girl (Bianca) of sixteen.

  The children attended the very best of schools nearby to where the Douglas family now lived. This was in Highland Park in Dallas - right amongst the wealthy. They had moved to this upmarket location a couple of years earlier at the insistence of Felicity when Bill had made his mark at Apricot. At the time, Bill had received a $500,000 bonus which the pair had used as a deposit on the house that they moved to.

  As a point of interest, Felicity had wealthy parents who had resented Felicity marrying Bill. This was because back at the time the pair married, Bill lived on the "bones of his arse" in rental accommodation as a struggling computer programmer. In addition to make matters worse, back at that time, he was looking for work.

  Felicity's parents still resented Bill, because now that he had "made it"; they had been proved wrong in originally calling him a "waster". Poor Bill, he couldn't bloody well win.

  To put you in the picture as to what it was like where Bill and his family lived; Highland Park was a suburb of Dallas characterised by tree-lined streets and quiet dignity. A high standard of living was characterised by the quality of the magnificent homes of the area. The obvious opulence was further enhanced with the abundance of tree studded parks with lakes to make a truly picturesque setting.

  Most of the properties had large immaculately manicured lawns and mature trees. Then there were the wide cobblestone driveways that swept up to the front of what in many cases could only be described as mansions with multi-car garages. The multi-car garages were in all cases clearly visible from the road; this was so that whatever vehicles were owned by the occupants, they were on display as part of the culture of "keeping up with the Jones's".

  To any of the lowly hoi-polloi visiting the area, there would be immediate thoughts of "Desperate Housewives" - and maybe they would be right to think that way, as we shall see when we learn more. As it is in life, things are often not as rosy as they seem - so called beauty is only skin deep.

  As far as the Douglas household was concerned, they were certainly "well off" in the material sense. For one thing they had four cars. The "children" each had new sporty soft-top Mazda MX5's. Bill and Felicity shared (depending on Felicity's need to impress others) the use of a new black Hummer H2 Limited Edition, and a new Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder.

  The house was something else - a "nice" little piece of real estate that was probably wo
rth in the order of eight million or more. It had two stories and was elegantly built in white rock and split stone. Contrasting beautifully with the rock and stone work was discretely placed cedar panelling and cedar louvered window shutters. A pitched grey-slate roof covered what was really a "shallow U" shaped mansion. A real-estate agent would possibly describe the property as being. "A stunning, clean line, formal, French Regency styled home; built with great attention to detail", which I suppose is what it was.

  The house had six bedrooms, ten bathrooms, two drawing rooms, two dining rooms, four car attached garaging - well it had everything any self respecting "millionaire" such as Bill (and Felicity) could want. If the house happened to be on the market (which it wasn't) one would perhaps see in the sales blurb under "interior features", things such as: wet bar, fireplace in master, walk-in closets, exercise room, extra storage rooms, library and study, music room, solarium and sunroom, extensive wine cellar, stone floors, breakfast room - and much more. Certainly more than could be said in one breath!

  Apart from the house, there was a tennis court and a near "Olympic-sized" swimming pool to the rear of the half acre of land. Dotted about the property were Maple and Oak trees - it truly was a beautiful setting.

  To further add to the appearance of wealth; parked to the right of the garage under an open sided shelter, was a thirty foot, flying bridge, power cruiser on a massive trailer. The boat wouldn't have been near the water in a year, but it "looked good". The hours Bill had to put into his job at Apricot saw to it that the boat remained unused.

  Well one would think that with what Bill and Felicity owned that here was the recipe for bliss and happiness. However it was not the case, purely because material things never brought about lasting happiness. Not that Bill and Felicity (Felicity in particular) were really cognisant of the fact that they were "unhappy"; how and where they lived was just par for the course in being "well off", and really they knew no different. It was typical of how the wealthy lived.

  There were times of superficial happiness when on the many occasions that the Douglas's entertained; they (Felicity in particular) could talk to their peers about their latest acquisitions. It was rare for instance that the vehicles they owned were ever more than a few months old. Not that the vehicles needed replacing it was just that to keep up appearances, the Douglas's (again Felicity in particular) had to have the latest to "impress" their peers.

  Felicity seemed to be quite content living in the land of "material things". For Bill however there was a hidden unrelenting feeling of insecurity. It was a feeling of insecurity that occasionally manifested itself as nightmares when he would dream of having lost his position with Apricot.

  The feelings of insecurity Bill had weren't unfounded. For one thing Felicity was a socialite and didn't work. The two teenage children were "expensive to run" with their demands for material things and to have the latest to keep up with their peers. There was also a large outstanding mortgage on the house. Then there was a full time maid as well as a part time gardener to be paid for. In effect the Douglas's were barely living within their means on Bill's salary. The financial situation really did scare the crap out of Bill at times if he cared to dwell on it. Deep down Bill was literally terrified of ever losing his job or coming down with some long term illness.

  Outwardly in appearance; with the nice home, wife, children and material possessions; Bill was by all accounts a successful millionaire. And let's face it what he (and Felicity) "owned" in the way of assets was possibly in the order of ten million dollars. However to sustain the lifestyle that Felicity and the teenage children demanded, the house had recently been remortgaged and the Douglas's net worth was basically zilch. Hence the dread Bill had of ever losing his job, lurked in the depths of his subconscious, ready to surface at any time like a predatory shark from the depths of a troubled sea of debt.

  Deep down Bill was a sensitive person with a kind and empathetic nature. He didn't really belong in an environment where material things were foremost. His parents had been killed in a plane crash when he was in his late teens and in part this loss had driven him to be so called "successful" in his chosen career. Even though his parents were dead, there was a feeling Bill had of wanting to be successful to make them proud of him.

  In some ways Bill's marriage to Felicity was an unfortunate mismatch. Lust I suppose had brought them together. There were some good times for the first year or so until the children arrived. It was then that Bill and Felicity drifted apart in the sense that loving sex between the pair became non existent.

  To gain a slight appreciation as to what it was like for Bill; generally the only sex between Bill and Felicity evolved at times when they would entertain and Felicity would have too much to drink. Often when the guests had departed, Felicity would in the crudest of fashions, strip off in front of Bill and then "slur" something along the line of "I want you to fuck me Bill". This was I suppose a typical characteristic of a female in the times of declining morals in the 21st century; and Bill absolutely hated it. The word "slut" would flash through Bill's mind at times with Felicity's behaviour.

  Bill and Felicity normally got on well enough and tolerated each other for the sake of the children and their education. They also stuck together to keep up appearances for their peers as well as the in-laws. The "children" that Bill and Felicity had stayed together for, were another story, they were in essence spoilt, money consuming, teenage brats.

  Because of Bill's deep involvement in his work, and the long hours he spent at Apricot Computers, he didn't really dwell to much on his marriage and the "crap" that surrounded him in his so called successful life.

  Speaking of the "crap" that surrounded Bill in his life, there were several other things that disturbed him deeply. Apart from a zero net worth, lack of love from his wife and the spoilt undisciplined brats of teenagers, the main issue that disturbed Bill was how in recent years when entertaining others at their home, drugs such as methamphetamines, cocaine and ecstasy had become "par for the course". It was just something the "rich" did because they had the money to do so. If one didn't "do drugs" there was a risk of being ostracised. It was an ugly situation where with the wealthy, there was no true freedom; life was dictated to by one's peers

  The drug aspect was something that Bill hated. It went against the principles his beloved parents had instilled in him. Bill never touched drugs but he would have alcohol. On occasions Bill had alcohol to excess to mask the worries of what was going on around him. Apart from drugs; the entertainment scene for the elite, at times involved wife-swapping and drug-and-alcohol fuelled orgies. Bill felt trapped - especially at times when he knew his wife was having sex with others. It hurt him "real bad".

  So with what was going on in Bill's life, it really worried him as to what would happen if he ever lost his job. If he did lose his job; then with zero net worth there was nothing to fall back on - and it was all mainly due to the exorbitant spending habits of his wife. Additionally, and to make matters worse, Bill realised only to well that Apricot "owned" the ideas he had developed. If he didn't keep performing then they could replace him and he would have nothing. With the USA being in a time of financial crisis, it would be difficult for him to ever find a similar position. Bill had visions at times of being destitute, living in a tent and cleaning toilets for a living. Not that it would ever happen with someone of Bill's ability, but unfortunately the human mind takes delight in playing out the worst case scenario.

  Now that you have some idea of what life was like for Bill Douglas, we will move to one morning in February of Bill's fortieth year. It happened to be February the 14th - Valentine's Day. One might have thought it would be a romantic day for Bill, but it wasn't - well not initially anyway.

  It is a Monday and the time is 6.00am. Bill groans as the phone rings with a prearranged wakeup call from Apricot's answering service. Bill takes the call and reluctantly concedes that it is time to get moving for an important day he has ahead of him.

  This
particular day Bill is catching a mid morning flight to Chicago to take part in a two day promotional conference where a team of twelve Russians are scheduled to be in attendance. Apricot Computers; due to some so called smart marketing, and behind the scenes "bullshit", had brought about an opportunity to launch the jpad in Russia. Potentially it meant millions of dollars worth of sales to the company. Bill as the designer-creator of the jpad was required to attend this conference at the insistence of the CEO. Besides it was part of Bill's employment contract that he did so.

  The CEO of Apricot was a man in his fifties by the name of Alfonso Estrada. "Alf" as he was generally known, was of Italian descent and could be described as being loud, arrogant and grossly obese; his face was almost red enough to warm one's hands on. The florid face was possibly the result of the large number of Martinis he consumed along with inordinate amounts of an Italian alcoholic's delight - Grappa!

  Alf was certainly no oil painting, in fact in meeting him for the first time one would just about want to "throw up" at the sight of his fat jowly face - he was as ugly as sin itself. To maybe add further to the ugliness his face portrayed, there would be occasions when his great fat gut would burst through the front of his shirt! Alf was the epitome of money and greed.

  Strangely enough, as it often was with men of Alf's ilk, Alf thought he was "God's gift" to women. He had come close to "trouble" on numerous occasions with sexual advances to female employees who worked at Apricot. It disgusted Bill that Alf got away with what he did because of the power of his position. If any of the women Alf molested dared to complain, they would soon find themselves working elsewhere.

  Alf had not one iota of technical ability when it came to the complexities of the jpad. He left that up to people like Bill to whom he reluctantly had to pay megabucks for their knowledge. I suppose in a way Alf was a necessary evil. He was a necessary evil for Apricot to succeed in the ruthless competitive environment of the computer world.