Enemies(6)

“What am I supposed to do now?” I asked. “It’s—” I looked at the clock hanging high above us from a wall, “—it’s not even noon here yet.”

He looked unworried as he began to roll his bag away, toward a sign that indicated taxi service. “Take the London Underground to the Russell Station stop.” He indicated the wad of bills he’d handed me. “There are directions to your hotel on a paper note with the bills. Go on a sightseeing tour, see a film at the cinema, whatever you want.” He shrugged. “You are here visiting, and thus in charge of your own time. Enjoy it.” With that, he turned and began to walk away again.

I watched him go, feeling only the slightest edge, some irritation, but beneath it was the real driver of my present emotion. I looked to either side of me. There were crowds of people jockeying along the baggage carousels, while others breezed past me, bringing their own intoxicating mixture of smells and sight, their clothing ranging from the bright to the dim. The sound was loud, the chatter of a thousand voices. I watched Janus leave and felt the little tether between us that I hadn’t even been aware of dissolve.

I was alone again—but this time in a land I knew nearly nothing about.





Chapter 4




I found the entrance to the London Underground without much difficulty. Signs were clearly posted, and helpful employees seemed to be stationed at the sticky points to help me through. I managed to procure a ticket for Russell Square’s tube station from a finicky machine that didn’t immediately want to accept the first note I fed into it. After it finally acceded and spat out a ticket, I made my way through the gates and waited in a big, open, tiled space that was like a cylinder laid on its side. Within the cylinder was another, this one cut into the ground in front of me and stretching off to my right and left, tracks running down the bottom of the channel. As I was looking from the edge of the platform, I felt a stir of air begin to blow from my right, out of the blackness that I knew would eventually spit out the train I was waiting for. I caught a whiff of that same filtered air that was so prevalent on the plane, but this was cooler somehow, less dry. It sent a tingle over my flesh as I took a step back from the edge of the platform.

A few seconds later, lights appeared in the dark and a train of red and silver burst forth, sliding at high speed along the tracks to come to rest in front of us. I lost count of how many cars were hooked end to end on it. A few people came out when the doors opened, more entering with me as I hesitantly walked inside. I carried my small duffel bag over my shoulder, my right hand clamped tightly on the strap.

It was hard not to feel out of place as I sat down on one of the vacant, padded, dark blue cloth-covered seats. The air was a little musty, and I heard a high-pitched whine as the train began to move. I looked around the car and saw that it was mostly couples traveling together on the train with me. A few serious looking passengers in business attire were sprinkled in as well, suitcases on rollers trailing behind them. I reached into my bag and popped a piece of mint chewing gum into my mouth to counteract the taste of bad breath I’d acquired after a nine-hour flight that included two in-flight meals.

Brightly colored ads were crammed above the windows, fighting for my attention with the flickering blackness outside that was broken whenever we passed a light. Part of me wanted to count the stops; another didn’t care. I looked at the map across from me; I didn’t even know how many stops on this line there were between me and Russell Square, but I knew it was a lot.

After just one more stop, the world opened up outside the windows as we came out into the light and the train began to run along a surface track. It was a sunny day in London. I recalled reading as a child that sunshine wasn’t the most common state of weather in London, especially not in November. I knew from the weather warning upon landing that it wasn’t terribly cold, either; in fact, it was somewhat unseasonably warm. I looked out the window and saw a sky tinged with scattered clouds, but a gorgeous blue was visible beyond them with the sun shining overhead.

After another stop, I stood, leaving my comfy padded blue seat behind and taking up position next to one of the overhead hanging rails near a door. I couldn’t stand sitting anymore, not after the long flight, and based on the slow progress through the first few stations, I estimated it would take over an hour to get me to my station. When we reached the next stop, the doors opened and the stale train air was replaced with a smooth breeze from outside, with just a hint of warmth from the sun under the bite of the wind.

I looked out over the suburban cityscape. Houses with red-tiled roofs covered the land as far as I could see, broken only by the trees and occasional commercial buildings that filled these towns. I wondered how far off London itself was, how long it would be before the London Underground truly took me back under the ground, into the dark, and far away from the beauty of this moment that seemed frozen in time.