ok, ok, I will just post half of the remaining story here and then the other half tomorrow. I am not calloused, I hear my public's cries :) BUT, it's going to be long, so don't say I didn't try and spare you the length, O Skimmers of Posts.
Eric found Kristine, no points awarded. By noon on Thursday, Eric had given up on any surprise, and instead elected to call her. He decided that the simple fact that he was in London and ready to see her should suffice for any amount of surprise element he had wanted to include in the deal. London was looking dreary as usual. He stepped out of the rain into one of the little red phone booths that were scattered across the city. As nice as it was to be out of the rain, the smell in the phone booth quickly overwhelmed his senses.
�If my luck doesn�t change soon I might be sleeping in this wretched thing,� he thought as he searched for her phone number.
As he began to dial her number, his eyes were drawn towards some of the advertisements that were tacked up in the booth.
�How despicable it is that women would do this to themselves,� he thought as he was reading about the newest adult attractions in the city. �I mean what sicko even wants to see the red dragon performed once only by Kristine Joh��.�
The face matched the name. And everything else, to Eric�s utter revulsion, matched the face. He was not feeling as amorous towards life as he was before. He wrote down the address and time of the attraction, just as someone would write down a description for a police report of how their wife was murdered. He trudged down to the tubes, minded the gap, although he really didn�t want to, and made his way to the seedier district of town. He began to notice that London really had an awful smell to it.
�Probably from all the bums and smut,� he muttered to himself as he stepped over a sleeping vagabond.
It was still raining, and it was still cold, and Eric decided that while he was in London he might as well take up their national pastime. He stopped at a side store and bought a pack of cigarettes, just to ease some of the pain. After smoking half a pack, the pain didn�t feel like it had been eased too much, and Eric had already arrived at the �club� where he could find his �girlfriend�. He paid the cover charge, glanced scornfully at the bouncer, and put his wallet back into his pocket, halfheartedly laughing to himself that if any dieting pocketbooks could only see before and after shots of his wallet, they would surely be encouraged to persevere.
It didn�t take him more than five minutes inside to see everything he needed to see to end all hopes at a reconciled relationship. It was one thing if Kristine was down and out and had to do what she had to do to pay the bills. It was another thing entirely to see what he saw. Suffice it to say that Kristine took full advantage of the less stringent ethical laws in the United Kingdom, and derived some very obvious pleasure in doing so. Eric was unquestionably the last thing on her mind.
So that was it. His trip, his money, three years of his life had been wasted. Not to mention the shame of having to tell his friends what had happened. Even if there were some explanation for the repulsiveness he had witnessed only moments ago, it was just way too much for him to handle at the moment. He had already sucked down all but three of the cigarettes, and he felt like he was about to throw up. A sudden intense feeling of loneliness came over him as he stood in the rain, a complete stranger to a strange world. A few quick phone calls in another red booth allowed Eric to arrange an earlier flight back home at some additional charge. The only problem was that the airline was telling him that the only way to get on a last-minute flight would be to take a train to Oxford, board a plane, fly to London, and then back home. It made absolutely no sense whatsoever to him, but he figured it was worth it.
�If someone else is charging things to my credit card right now, I might as well get in on it while it lasts,� he thought disdainfully as he hung up the phone.
As he left the booth, littering the floor with the incriminating fliers he had ripped from the walls, he decided that anything was worth getting out of that filthy, contaminated city.
If somebody had noticed Eric as he was walking back to his hostel that gray evening, they would have been moved either to pity or to laughter. He had already taken on the distinct European body odor smell, he was wearing the same clothes he had come in, he was running out of money, he was soaking wet, and he was nursing a cigarette that was constantly being put out by the rain. Eric decided that it was going to take more than a cigarette to get him through the evening. He stopped at the same side store he had previously been in and bought with his last remaining money the cheapest, strongest drink they had. Eric had never made a habit of drinking, but then again he didn�t make a habit of smoking or dating strippers either. Eric had never felt worse in his life.
Thursday night left him with little consolation. He sat in his hostel, drinking, looking out his window at the city around him. He could see Big Ben standing majestically a few miles away. The Thames River was snaking its way through the middle of the city, and Eric wondered how many other people had taken in the exact same view he was looking at. If he had been in lighter spirits he would have said that London has its own distinct form of beauty because after all, that is what everybody says about an ugly place that they love. Eric decided, as he was looking at all the lights in the city, that he wasn�t going to quit drinking until he saw twice as many lights as he could at the present.
�Then maybe London will look a little warmer,� he said out loud.
The fornicating couple on his left paused for a moment, stared at him, and continued.
When Eric finally fell asleep, for the first time in two days, he woke up shortly after. It was four a.m. London time, but by his clock it was the middle of the afternoon. Coupled with that fact, he had been undergoing severe emotional trauma, sleeping in wet clothes and sharing a room with the Marquis de Sad. It was time to wake up. He was still only half-drunk, but luckily for him, so was his bottle. His plane left at nine, and his nightmare would soon be over. All he had to do was walk three blocks, get on a train, hop on his plane, and say fare thee well to this loathsome place. He decided that he would leave immediately to make sure he could be there well on time. Besides, he could probably get more sleep at the train station than he could in his room. He finished his bottle, grabbed his umbrella, which was actually a week old magazine he had found in his room, and bid farewell to the dirtiest place he had ever been.
When he arrived at the train station, he was almost all alone. The station was much bigger than a subway station, but it was still partially underground and covered. It was lighted by huge halogen lamps hanging from the rafters, and when trains would come and go the vibrations made the lamps sway ever so slightly from side to side. This made every shadow also sway slightly, and the whole place had the feel of a big, high-ceiling cavern that was poorly lit. It was also very cool inside, and it smelled like a large stale pretzel. It had an ominous feel to it. There were also a number of shops and food courts and restaurants inside the giant warehouse. The trick was that once you went in the station, you didn�t want to leave and re-enter or else you would have to pay to get in again.
Of course Eric was not noticing any of this as he, after walking past it twice, found his way into the station. It was just past five in the morning, and the only people traveling were the late-night partiers and the early morning workers. They were not difficult to distinguish from one another. Eric did not resemble either of these two groups as he slouched down on a bench waiting for his 7:30 train. He decided that he was no longer feeling as badly about everything as much as he was feeling dizzy about everything. He had not developed much of a tolerance for alcohol, and it was definitely beginning to take effect. It was also very early to be drunk. He must have dozed off for a few minutes because the next thing he remembered was hearing a lot more voices around him. He also realized that he was in dire need to use the restroom.
To be concluded tomorrow......
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