I caught the red-eye out of Lincoln to Denver a little after midnight feeling like I had blood on my hands, hot and sticky and dirty. Lincoln in August is like a steam bath scene in a Film Noir movie – towel-wrapped fat guys smoking stogies with sweat dripping off their chins, raggedy-haired Olgas and Helgas waiting to beat the stiffness out of them on a massage table.

            There’d be no massage table for me. Just a long, cool shower once we got underway.

            I’d gotten bumped to a Superliner Bedroom Suite at the last minute. Calling in to check my reservation, the gal on the other end had one of those sweet, sing-songy voices that reminded me of the girls in high school, and we got to chatting, innocent phone-flirting. About train travel mostly. Where I’d been and where she’d like to go. She moved me up to the bigger suite. It was sweet of her.

            This isn’t how I imagined my life, but a four-person train cabin to myself isn’t a bad way to deal with life’s disappointments.

            I’d started out to work for people in need, free-clinic law and all that. Fight for the little guy against landlords and rip-off artists and cops. But six-figure law school debt on top of nearly $40,000 for college changed my plans pretty damn quickly.

            I ended up in corporate law, where losers and takers coexist in a strange amalgam that’s like Ralph Wolf trying to pull one over on Sam Sheepdog in a Looney Tunes cartoon. Only the stakes are higher, and I never have been one to play the sheep.

            I work for raiders, mostly. Tough, smart guys taking what they think they deserve. Don’t know what they deserve, or not, and don’t care. My job is to convince the poor schmucks who get upside-down that the latest offer is one they should take. While it’s still an offer. Sometimes convincing takes extra effort, and I’m known for putting a lot of effort into my job

            I cleaned up and went down to the dining car and ordered the Atlantic Salmon with lobster sauce and red quinoa, when a nice-looking woman was seated across from me and ordered the same. She was mid-30s or so, about my older daughter’s age.

            “Contracts?” I asked, nodding toward her Korchmar Workhorse, the 18-inch briefcase favored by contract attorneys and pilots.

            “Giveaway, huh?”

            “Dead giveaway.”

            She stifled a laugh, almost a giggle, then licked lobster sauce off her fork. “You?”

            “Corporate. Contracts here and there. Only when I have to.”

            We split a white chocolate blueberry cobbler cheesecake that wasn’t worth all the syllables in its name and went back to my Superliner Bedroom Suite for a nightcap with the Macallan Double Cask in my suitcase. We drank it fast, and in the morning the clean-up crews found her folded over in the closet as the Zephyr was pulling into Winter Park.