The title was made up on the spot so suggestions are welcome and encouraged. I am not sure where I want this to go. I am not incredibly interested in creating another Thelma & Louise or Banger Sisters, or even Fried Green Tomatoes, but I guess if that's where it goes, that's where it goes.

Chapter 1

Noah dropped his briefcase by the front door. He had been leaving the black leather bag in that same place for years. Camille couldn't remember how many, anymore. Ten, maybe twelve.

Every night, the same series of events unfolded. Camille got home around five, changed out of her work clothes and picked up the kids from assorted practices before starting dinner. In the summer, when the kids were out of school, she had a few moments to relax after work. In another year, Beth would be in charge of driving her sister and brother around.

Noah came home at six thirty, dropped his briefcase by the heavy oak and leaded glass door, his keys on the tiny table next to the door, and found his way to the dining room table. He hadn't always expected Camille to have dinner ready when he got home but around the same time the briefcase started landing by the door, Noah started landing at the table, hungry and waiting to be fed.

The kids, Beth, Sarah and James, followed their father's lead. By six forty five, each and every weekday evening, Camille's family was seated around the dinner table, waiting for her to deliver their dinner. And she did. Every evening, Camille delivered dinner to her family. It was a perfect life, straight out of the sit-coms of the 50's and 60's.

On several occasions, Camille had passed various jewelry counters and stores, stopping briefly to consider buying herself a string of pearls.

After dinner, Beth, Sarah and James retreated to their rooms to finish their homework. All three of Camille and Noah's children kept A's and B's in their classes. Noah found his way to the living room sofa where he had left the newspaper delivered to them that morning. He never read the newspaper in the morning, always waited until the end of the day. He didn't want the news to ruin what could be an otherwise pleasant day.

Camille cleared the table, loaded plates, glasses and flatware into the dishwasher, hand washed the pots and pans, then joined Noah on the sofa. She read a book, or sometimes watched television, until nine thirty when she went upstairs, showered, masturbated two or three times a week and went to sleep.

The weekends involved the children's athletic events, music recitals and theater performances. In a family with three children, the oldest and the youngest less than four years apart in age, having both parents at one event was a rarity. Noah attended the majority of the athletic competitions while Camille participated in the academic side of her children's lives.

It was a good arrangement. Something was missing. That something came in the form of a phone call one Indian Summer day in October as Camille and Sarah were dressing for a piano recital.

'Hello?'�

'What would you say to California?'� The voice on the other end of the line was excited and slightly louder than it should have been under normal circumstances.

'Diane?'�

'Yeah, it's me. What would you say to California?'�

'What about it?'�

'I think I am going there.'�

'Why?'�

'I think I am going to run away. Want to come with me?'�

Camille decided to play along with Diane. Diane was always thinking up a crazy scheme but she never went through with any of them. It might be fun to think about what it would be like to run away from home. 'Sure. When are we leaving?'�

Diane's voice leveled out from it's excited pitch and she started sounding more like herself again. 'I don't know. Next weekend.'�

'For the weekend?'� Camille thought that might be a good idea to entertain, seriously.

'No.'�

'How long? I can't really afford to take more than a couple of days off of work.'�

Diane's end of the line went silent. Just as Camille was considering the possibility she had lost the connection to her friend, she spoke again. 'Camille, we are running away. The whole idea of running away is slipping off, unnoticed, into the night. You don't request time off from work to run away.'�

It was in that moment that Camille realized her
friend was serious and that this time her scheme may be more than idle chatter. It was in that moment that Camille Davis began to seriously consider running away from home.

* * * * *

Diane Thomas was divorced. Twice. John Mitchel was husband number three. She had married him but refused to take his name. After two previously failed marriages she decided it would be easier, on herself and on the postal service, if she just went back to her maiden name and stuck with that from now on.

John drank. Most of the time John stayed sober. But after they married, about eight months after, he started drinking more and more. And unlike most people who drink, John did not hold his liquor well. He also did not hold his temper well. Diane had learned from her previous two husbands that she had to do what made her happy and because she would likely be around longer than any husband that another woman may bend over backward to please.

John didn't like this. He liked it less when he was drunk. The drunker he was, the less he liked it. One particular Friday night he let Diane know how little he liked it as she returned home from a night out with her girlfriends.

At around midnight, an also drunk Diane stumbled up the stairs to the bedroom she shared with John to find him seated in the arm chair in the corner of the room opposite the door. The lights were off, he waited for her in the dark.

As Diane clumsily flipped the switch to turn on the lights, not caring whether her husband was awake or even home, he rose from his chair. In a motion too quick and too fluid for a drunk man, he crossed the room and knocked Diane backwards with such force that she fell down the stairs that reached their summit six feet from where the bedroom door opened into the hallway.

She lay at the bottom of the stairs, her drunken mind reeling from the fall but her body free of pain. She was sure that something had to have broken in the fall but the whisky dulled her nerves. A few moments later she thanked the bottle of wine she had consumed for her numbness and pulled herself to her feet then drove herself to the emergency room. On the way there she decided to leave John.

She'd call Camille in the morning.


Chapter 2

Camille sat with her hands folded on the white linen tablecloth. She watched her family eat their dinners while her own sat untouched on the plate. No one else noticed. Dinner in Camille and Noah Davis' home was a relatively silent affair. Not as a rule, simply as a tradition. Events of the day were not discussed, nor were politics, local news stories or social functions. Camille thought, as she watched her family sustain themselves in silence, that the conversation stopped around the same time the sex had stopped.

Maybe she should have an affair. Maybe running away with Diane was a bigger step than she could take. But an anonymous affair at the Motor Lodge, signing the register as Mr. and Mrs. Smith or Jack and Jackie Kennedy, that was something she thought she could pull off. However, it would be easier to run away than find an anonymous Mr. Smith to have an affair with. It would be easier to discover time travel. Where, she thought, her gaze now focused on the miniature trees of broccoli laying forgotten on her plate, does a working mother of three, three and a half counting her husband, find an affair?

There was that young man who worked in the mailroom. She tried desperately to bring up a picture of his nametag in her mind but it came out fuzzy and over-exposed, the letters all but disappearing in the blur. It was a short name, four or five letters, so she decided to call him Seth, because it sounded like the kind of name a Harlequin writer would apply to a character in just this situation. Seth, in the novel, would be six feet tall and change with thick black hair, tanned skin and rippling muscles. Camille wasn't exactly sure how muscles could ripple; rippling seemed, instead, to be something fat would do. Muscles, she thought, should be firm and solid. Things that are firm and solid don't ripple.

Seth, in the mail room didn't have black hair or rippling muscles. He was shy of six feet tall with red hair and freckles. Camille didn't know if she could have an affair with a kid who had red hair and freckles.

She wondered what they would do in California. Diane was serious, she really was leaving John. John had hit her, knocked her down the stairs. She needed to leave him. He drank, sometimes a lot, and it would happen again. She would come home late again and he would hit her again and next time she might break more than her arm.

Noah pushed his chair away from the table without noticing that his wife had not touched her dinner. He left the dining room to find the sofa and his newspaper waiting for him in the living room. Beth, Sarah and James followed him, going to their rooms to finish their homework, just like every other night.

Just like every other night, Camille cleaned up their dishes, and carried them to the kitchen. But unlike every other night, she left them in the sink, caked with food, her completely full plate resting on top, and picked up the cordless telephone. She dialed Diane's number and went to the back patio where she found a pack of cigarettes hidden in the window box.

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