The 6:41 to Paris

Cécile, a stylish 47-year-old, has spent the weekend visiting her parents in a provincial town southeast of Paris. By early Monday morning, she's exhausted. These trips back home are always stressful, and she settles into a train compartment with an empty seat beside her. But it's soon occupied by a man she instantly recognizes: Philippe Leduc, with whom she had a passionate affair that ended in her brutal humiliation 30 years ago.

In the fraught hour and a half that ensues, their express train hurtles toward the French capital. Cécile and Philippe undertake their own face-to-face journey - in silence? What could they possibly say to one another? - with the listener gaining entrée to the most private of thoughts.

©2015 Jean-Phillippe Blondel (P)2020 Dreamscape Media, LLC