“Here, let me get you a chair!” The runner ran off and returned with another chair, a very nice one, better than the others, fashioned from leather and with wheels. Sofia smiled at him. “Thanks.” She did not sit down but walked toward the makeup truck instead.
Hot, nauseating embarrassment bubbled up through her torso. She could feel the back of her neck prickle and sweat. Maybe the brown paper bag was still somewhere around; she could blow into it. She felt so stupid, playing the lovesick girl, trying to restore her marriage on a film set. It would be all right if it worked, but Jack had paid her efforts no attention. He appeared ensconced in his job, as he should be. She reached the edge of the sound stage and ran straight into Jack, reading his pages alone beside another, smaller monitor. She cursed herself for choosing this route off the stage and tried to avoid him, but he’d already looked up. “Where are you going?” he asked.
Sofia swallowed, attempted breeziness, though she felt like crying. “Back to the truck,” she said lightly. “I prefer it there. My crib,” she joked.
Jack nodded and looked back down at his script. She swallowed and walked on.
“Sofia,” he called to her as she walked away.
She turned to him.
“You look great, by the way,” he said. He looked up from his papers; their eyes met. He gave her a smile and she recognized the look: it was the smile he used to give her when they first met, a crooked smile from the corner of his mouth, brazen and cute. He suddenly looked ten years younger, full of energy.
“Oh, thanks,” she said, as casually as she could muster. She turned away from him and walked on. She waited until she was well clear of him, then allowed herself to smile. She didn’t know if Derek usually received obscene tips from his clients, but he would do so today.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jane attempted to conquer London. She approached a giant undercroft of metal and bricks. A sign above read Underground. She held the card with Oyster printed across it in bold blue letters that Fred had given her earlier. A man in a ticket booth had taken four pounds of her remaining money and somehow added their value to the card, or so he alleged. He squinted at her when she asked him, “How long is this tube?” But then he exhaled and explained in a bureaucratic register how to use the card.
“Put the card on the circle. The gate will open,” he told her, in a slow, deliberate tone, as though talking to an invalid, which she felt horrendously grateful for. “Take the brown line and change at Oxford Circus onto the red line. Down there,” he said and pointed to a tunnel. “First time in London?” he asked with a smile.
“First time in a while,” Jane answered.
Jane walked down the tunnel and searched for the elusive circle of which he proclaimed. She felt unsure as to what size sphere she should be looking for. The size of a saucepan? The size of a pond?
She reached a row of steel fences. On one sat a yellow circle, the size of a gentleman’s palm. Jane placed the card on the circle. A gate retracted with magic between two of the fences, inviting Jane inside. Jane hurried through. The gate shut behind her with a crash and she grabbed her bottom on instinct. The gate behaved the way of a farm gate on springs, with a mind of its own, opening and closing whenever it deigned to. She exhaled with relief at not having been taken into its jaws.
More people entered through the maniacal farm gates behind her. One man fared not so lucky; the gate snapped shut before he could enter. He smashed his loins into the gate, barred, and rolled his eyes. He cursed and complained to a man wearing some sort of uniform. Jane’s fear redoubled. Even people from the twenty-first century were no match for these capricious gates. She looked up. A maze of signage hung above her. One sign announced Bakerloo Line with a brown line painted underneath. Jane recalled the ticket seller’s directive and followed the sign. As she shuddered at what might lie in store next, a river of bodies engulfed Jane in their current, and she was rushed down the tunnel, her feet barely touching the ground.
Up ahead, people walked forward then disappeared downward into thin air, though they moved too slowly to be falling. Jane approached the area with trepidation and gasped at the sight of people riding a moving staircase down to a lower level. Jane stood back and observed. People stepped onto the beastly contrivance with a concerning nonchalance. Huge steel teeth lined the edge of each step. The silver jaws glinted in the lurid yellow light of the tunnel, like the neatly aligned fangs of a metallic animal. How did people avoid the staircase eating them? She paused, held her breath, and leapt onto it. She had a stair in mind, but she misjudged the landing and ended up on the same stair as an old man in a checked suit.
“Do you mind!” he said.
“My apologies, sir,” Jane said. “I am not from these parts.” She jumped up to the next step. “These things are a danger.” The moving staircase descended for no short time. Soon, she must have stood at least thirty feet below the earth. She looked down. The staircase ended up ahead; the stairs flattened and disappeared into the ground. She feared being eaten once again. The people ahead of her stepped off without looking up. “Here we go,” Jane said to the old man. She inhaled, and the stairs levelled. She closed her eyes and stepped off and landed on solid ground. “Well done, everyone!” she said to the people in front. The old man in the suit
