TRAIN 6 PARTY MIX IBD

Sinopsis

Silkie Lovecraft was looking forward to accompanying Ruth, her twenty-four-year-old niece, on a trip from Reno to Chicago aboard Amtrak?s California Zephyr. They were bound for the Lollapalooza music festival while Ruth?s mother, Ester, was away at a religious retreat. This was an unexpected opportunity for Silkie to spend time with her young niece. Silkie envisioned introducing Ruth to the outside world, or at least helping her to discover the worldly pleasures that came naturally to people who had not been brought up to shun them. Ruth?s mother meanwhile considered Chicago a den of iniquity and worried Silkie might allow her only daughter to become all too aware of those pleasures.Ruth knew of her mother?s caution about Aunt Silkie, and this made her especially excited for the trip. And a little frightened. Ruth was quite aware that her mother and aunt had very different ideas about what was proper behavior for a young woman, or anyone else for that matter, and she was both anxious and cautious to hear what Silkie would say about some personal secrets that she hoped to find the nerve to discuss with her aunt! Secrets that she could NEVER tell her mother!In the dining car that evening, Silkie and Ruth sat with a young couple, Walden Wilson and Bonnie Hunter, whose curious nickname was 'Bounty.' Walden and Bounty were students at Berkeley and had boarded the train early that morning. Bounty casually mentioned she was going to Chicago to visit her girlfriend, whom she hadn?t seen for a year. Bounty hinted at the intimacy of their relationship, which explained why she had found last summer?s visit so much fun and made Ruth and Silkie aware that Bounty and Walden were not romantically linked as they had assumed at first.Walden, a shy math student delivered an incomprehensible explanation of the mathematics responsible for the inner workings of computers.Ruth gave a brief overview of her life in Reno where she was a clerk in a bookstore, a job to which she gave mediocre reviews.Silkie, four decades older than the others, gave a very abbreviated autobiography, leaving out her pleasurable experiences on the naughty side of the ledger. She then graciously answered questions while omitting any unseemly details.Each of them imagined the adventures the next two days might bring. Walden, for instance, noticed a young woman facing him a few tables away. Their eyes met briefly, and Walden quickly looked away in embarrassment as he imagined stepping over her cast-off clothing on the floor of a small room somewhere and tumbling into bed with her. Of course, Walden imagined the same thing about every young woman he saw. Bounty sensed something intriguing about Ruth that might draw them together before the trip was over. At the same time, Ruth wondered whether she might be writing something exciting in her journal about Bounty, who she found fascinating for some reason she couldn?t figure out, or Walden, who seemed as virginal as she. Silkie had a vague but hope