“Looks like you just set in motion the plot to a romantic comedy,” I said, not quite scowling but unmistakably irritated for no good reason. “What are you, a Cupid-type?”
“Well, it normally doesn’t work quite like that,” Breandan said with a frown of his own. He studied the woman whose heel he had contributed to breaking, and his eyes lingered just a little too long on her lengthy legs, so I snapped my fingers in front of his face and he broke off and turned back to me. “Shoulda kept that bit of luck for myself, honestly. Anyway, normally it’d do something like … someone would drop a wallet as they went by, or if I hit ’em with it as they’re buying a lottery ticket, they’d win the little prize, you know? Actually, I do that for myself sometimes,” he said without an ounce of contrition. He looked back at the blond woman, who was gently running her hand across the man’s wet shirt in a way that suggested that he was indeed going to get lucky, and frowned again. “Bugger.” He glanced back at me. “Anyway, no, I’m not a Cupid, and I doubt that’s love so much as lust.” He lowered his voice to an almost unhearable level. “I’m a … leprechaun.”
I looked up at him; he was almost six feet tall. “You’re not as short as I would have pictured you.” I gave him the once-over. “Also, you should wear more green.”
“If you make a Lucky Charms joke, I’m leaving you right here on the platform.” He laughed, and I stared at him while he did it. Not coldly, just … uncertain. The voices in my head were quiet, surprisingly, as I watched Breandan. The train came through with a screeching of the tracks, and I waited there, eyes flitting between it and him. He was someone I’d only met once, in passing, while he was stealing from me. Now I was going to go with him? I was going to trust him? My head buzzed as a riot of conversation suddenly swept through it, six voices in argument.
One I heard louder than the others, though, and for once it was Aleksandr Gavrikov, quiet, reserved, and yet at the forefront: Why not? It’s not like you have anything to lose other than your life.
“When you put it that way …” I said, out loud.
Breandan cocked his head at me, eyes squinted. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You coming along?” he asked, waiting for my reply.
“Yeah,” I said, and we stepped onto the train. I watched it pull out of the station, and wondered where it would take me. After a moment’s thought, I realized that at this stage in my life, did it really matter where it went? It’s not like I knew where I was going.
Chapter 18
When we got off the train and back above ground, it took me a few minutes to realize I was not in the best of neighborhoods. The brick on the buildings around us was crumbling from disrepair, and the streets didn’t look like they were in particularly good condition, either. Cars were banged up, older models, and seemed to match the general state of the neighborhood. Tall apartment buildings were peppered around us, and I wondered what sort of digs I had gotten myself into by asking Breandan for help.
“This way,” he said casually as he opened the door for me into a multi-story apartment block. It was a boxy looking building, with something on the order of a courtyard in the middle of it. “We can talk for a few and I’ll see what I can find in terms of empty apartments here.”
“Here?” I asked, looking around the faded walls.
“Don’t care for the area?” he asked with wry humor. “I thought you were fine with whatever you could get.”
“It’ll do,” I said, feeling the tiredness creep in again. It wasn’t even four in the afternoon, and I’d slept half the day away. But I was already ready for bed, though—if I could find one.
We rode up in a small elevator that reeked of body odor. Breandan gave me an apologetic look. “It’s cheap, though.”
“What?”
“The place is cheap,” he said, gesturing to the inside of the box. “It smells, it’s tiny, cramped rooms, but it’s cheap. You know, if you need to scrape by on the margins, unnoticed for a bit.”
I shrugged. “I should probably just go home. I don’t think there’s much reason to stay here. Maybe wait a few days until the heat is off, buy a ticket out of Gatwick or Heathrow, and clear the hell out.”
“That’s the spirit,” he said. “One place is as good as another, so long as it’s temporary.”
“It’s all temporary,” I replied as the doors opened and we stepped out into a long, narrow, windowless hallway. Besides, it’s not like it could ever be worse than the box.