Life is for each man a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors -- Eugene O'NeillFor your solitary journey on a train, plane, or bus: Five short tales. Four locales. Five protagonists on their solitary adventures through life.On his first solo trip in early 70s Paris, an eager young man has a memorable, but disillusioning encounter with a French couple at a café.A boy uprooted to Paris by the divorce of his parents learns some life lessons from a gypsy he watches through an apartment window An urbane but blasé young man's routine is upset by a journal he finds at a Berkeley coffeehouse.In the Napa Valley, a middle-aged wife and mother survives two life changing events in as many days.In Waipahu, a suburb of Honolulu, a young woman on her yearly summer visit to the Grandma who brought her up finds love in fragrant green mangoes.