Excerpt from The Paragon Hotel by Lyndsay Faye, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Portland, Oregon, is as far as I can think of from New York, New York. Still. It might not be far enough. If I can get to Portland, he can track me there. In 1921, you can get practically anywhere with a little jack jingling in your pocket.

I identify a faint, floating nausea not confined to just my belly. My skin is actually queasy. Tiny ripples pass along it as if my body is a river. That's new. I don't much care for new things just now.

Rat-a-tat-tat.

Terror gushes, but I choke out a "Come in?"

The paneled door slides, and I exhale. It isn't my forced companion-she must still be gossiping in the dining car. She retires around one a.m., is up with the dawn. It's only Max, our Pullman porter. Real warmth seeps into my skin again.

Max. He's not the blackest of the lot, he's a sweet rum color, but plenty black enough to play this godforsaken gig. His eyes are wide set, an amber tone below philosophical brows, and he has large hands I figure ought to be playing music someplace daylight never visits. Maybe thirty years old. He sells phonograph records on the side to the travelers, and I bought one. "Crazy Blues" by Mamie Smith and her Jazz Hounds. Max was tickled to pieces-hell, he'd have put on a parade if I'd admitted I'd seen Mamie play live. But the purchase was enough. Small things like that make people cotton to you.

"Miss James?"

I'm tempted to say, Call me Alice, but they don't do that sort of thing on Pullman trains. In fact, I'm meant to call him George, after George Pullman, because George Pullman is the type so steeped in Christian humility that he orders all the Negroes on his trains renamed George. Bet he could charm the skin off a tomato in person.

"Hullo, Max. Here for the trapeze act?"

Then I wink at him. It feels a bit less like dying on a train car.

Anyway, Max is safe. He has a purebred Brooklyn accent, and we picked him up in Chicago at the transfer, which is how I figure he's so musical. Hell of a sideline record stock he displayed for a fellow who fluffs pillows. I like the version of Nobody I can be with Max. She claims to be an easygoing flapper on the run from a dreadfully cruel gentleman caller, Yonkers born, midlevel typist, interested in jazz but doesn't know much yet. Likes the Greenwich speakeasies that look like tearooms. Terribly droll those, likes to chew the fat about the latest plays over Darjeeling spiked with bootleg rum. Likes cats. That sort.

"'Scuse me for saying so, but you're looking real poorly, Miss James." Max glances behind himself.

"Well, I'm in Oregon, you see."

He exposes the glint of a flask in his pocket.

"Oh God," I gasp. The pain flares up again, rich and real. "Name your price."

"Take it easy," he says quietly. "Settle down and have a snort on the house."

Angels sing faint arias. I don't dawdle over finding out what it is before I guzzle the stuff. Good corn liquor, not the best but not cheap hooch either, small-batch operation. Pure Midwestern moonshine. The drink cuts a rug through my veins.

"Beg pardon, but this louse hurt you real bad, didn't he, Miss James?" Max's genuine frown sticks me right in the chest.

Well, yes, Nicolo Benenati shot a small-caliber bullet that grazed my torso like a neat little sewing stitch, out the other side, so it was more of a lark than it could have been, and I got the wound to stop bleeding a few hours afterward, happy day.

Hissing, I force my eyes shut until I'm less set on weeping all over Max, because it simply will not do. I like him. I like him awfully. I like his smooth brown lips and his wise-guy jabs and the way his eyelashes fan. I like his quiet magnetism. I like how he reminds me of someone.

Your nickname is Nobody, remember. Nobody at all.

"The trapeze act isn't very cheery tonight," I admit.

"Aw, look, there's a doctor over in car three, and we can-"

"No doctor."

Excerpted from The Paragon Hotel by Lyndsay Faye. Copyright © 2019 by Lyndsay Faye. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.