A Freckle with a Map

I was lost.

My hostel was on Sutherland Street, near Victoria Station, but the sparsely detailed tube map vaguely indicated that I was headed towards Wimbledon. Smart phone-less and aching, my eyes refused to make sense of the map's many lines and dots.

A district line train pulled in, headed back to Zone 1. With nothing left to lose, and a keen desire to sit down and take off my overstuffed backpack, I jumped on just as the doors snapped shut, sealing me into my fate.

I stared at the directions printed out before my journey and crumpled their lies, angrily stuffing them in my pocket.

“We next alight on West Brompton...mind the gap.”

I tuned in to the conversation beside me: two men discussing how to get to Victoria Station. The older man, sturdy with his long trench coat, bushy mustache and a pipe, unlit, caressed between a yellowed thumb and forefinger, promised the ‘lad’ that he should get off at Earl’s Court and get on for the train headed to Upminster. The other man, unshaven and bleary eyed, seemed doubtful.

“I need to get to Victoria, too,” I said. The lost man nodded, giving me a kind checkerboard smile of blackened and browning teeth.

“...Earl’s Court...mind the gap.”

After quite a turn around, when we jumped between three different platforms before getting back to the platform we first ‘alighted’ on, we scurried on to the new district line train.

The man and I sat together, both a bit weary. The man briefly dug something out from his pockets, and I glanced to see a small box, much nicer and cleaner than anything else on him. I turned away.

“You should get off on Westminster,” the man said. I looked at him doubtfully, but nodded. “It’s closer to Sutherland, I think.”

“South Kensington...mind the gap.”

“So,” he said, “you like London, then?”

My heart ached, a moment, for the Jersey Shore: beaches that stretched for miles, boardwalks that splintered bare feet, and funnel cake stands churning the aroma of sugar and grease. Yet, in a moment my eyes snapped back to the train car buzzing with many different languages. I watched the tired men and women fiddling with their Iphones.
“...Mind the gap."

I said, “It’s the best city in the world.”

He laughed. “You need to get around more,” he said as he again fiddled with the small box in his pocket. The laughter echoed in my ears as I climbed the stairs of the wrong tube station, and stared at Big Ben, looming golden under London’s cloudy mist.

I smiled, but I was still lost.