Land of Dreams: A Novel by Kate Kerrigan

full and there were reservations for the next hour at least. By this time I was famished with hunger and desperate to eat. His manner implied incredulity that I expected to get a meal on a train without prior reservation, and I could see behind him that every seat was taken, so there was no sense in arguing or pleading with him.
    He took my name and told me he would do his very best to accommodate me, if I would like to wait in the lounge car.
    I made a beeline for the one free seat left in the lounge. Next to it was a small table with a bowl of nuts and a folded newspaper on it. I picked up the paper and opened it, grateful for the distraction, and began hungrily popping the nuts into my mouth.
    “Ahem.”
    I looked up from the paper and there was an elegant, older man standing in front of me. He looked foreign, with olive skin and a distinguished silvery beard that stood out against it, and he was wearing a casually cut linen suit that seemed expensive.
    “Do you mind?” he asked.
    I thought, there being no seats left, that he intended to perch himself on the table in front of me. The cheek!
    “Yes, actually, I do,” I said. It was clearly dog-eat-dog, getting seats and meals on trains these days, and it was his hard luck for not coming down sooner.
    Before he could object any further, a steward came over and addressed him: “Mr. Lilius, your table in the dining car is ready.”
    I looked at him haughtily—mad that he was getting his dinner and I wasn’t—then moved the paper up over my face again. As I did so, the bearded gentleman asked, “Would you mind if I take my paper? You see, I do hate eating alone.”
    Oh God, I was in the poor man’s seat! I jumped up, mortified.
    “Unless, of course, you’d care to join me?”
    Stanislaw (“Stan”) Lilius was a successful composer in his native Poland, and he had come here at the beginning of the war three years ago.
    “I knew Hitler would get around to us,” he said, “and I didn’t want to be there when he did.”
    As far as I could gather, Stan had no family back in Poland and had come to America out of a mixture of curiosity and greed. “Why does anyone come here from Europe?”
    “For a new start?” I said.
    “Is that why you came?” he asked. “From Ireland, yes?”
    He obviously didn’t want to talk about what was happening in Poland. European refugees, and even ordinary immigrants who had come to America before Hitler’s reign, were sensitive about the war. I understood that—the guilt of leaving people you loved and would never see again, of walking away from your history. It was easier to focus on “the land of opportunity” than face what you had left behind.
    “Is my accent that obvious?” I asked.
    “I am a musician—I listen to voices, sounds. And Ellie is Eileen, yes? What were you running away from? War as well, perhaps? I know the Irish love to fight with the English . . .”
    “And with each other,” I said, “when we’ve taken a few drinks.”
    He laughed and I felt ridiculously pleased with myself for having made a joke.
    I smiled and then, despite myself, raised my eyebrows at him playfully and took another mouthful of steak to indicate that I didn’t intend to answer any more questions about myself. I didn’t feel like talking, just listening.
    “A mystery . . . okay . . . okay.”
    Stan didn’t push me, but just talked about himself while I ate. He was traveling back to his home in Hollywood after a one-month teaching stint at the prestigious Manhattan School of Music. He lived alone in a house in the hills above Hollywood—and he lived well, as far as I could gather.
    “The movie industry has been very good to me,” he said.
    “Would I have seen any of the movies you have written scores for?” I asked.
    “Almost certainly you have,” he said, “but they are all rubbish, and my scores for them are contrived—ridiculous! The directors say, ‘This woman is falling in love—I want it to sound as if she