“Oh, not at all. I go where the wind blows me.” He pauses to consider that. “Maybe there’s a good reason I play Sebastian.”
“So where is the wind blowing you?” I ask, hoping he’s staying in London.
“From London, I catch another train back to Holland. Last night was the end of the season for me.”
I deflate. “Oh.”
“You haven’t eaten your sandwich. Be warned, they put butter on the cheese sandwiches here. The fake kind, I think.”
“I know.” I pull off the sad wilted tomatoes and smear off some of the excess butter/margarine with my napkin.
“It would be better with mayonnaise,” Willem tells me.
“Only if there was turkey on it.”
“No, cheese and mayonnaise is very good.”
“That sounds foul.”
“Only if you’ve never had the proper sort of mayonnaise. I’ve heard the kind they have in America is not the proper sort.”
I laugh so hard that tea comes spurting out my nose.
“What?” Willem asks. “What?”
“The proper sort of mayonnaise,” I say in between gasps of laughter. “It makes me think that there’s, like, a bad-girl mayonnaise who’s slutty and steals, and a good-girl mayonnaise, who is proper and crosses her legs, and my problem is that I’ve never been introduced to the right one.”
“That is exactly correct,” he says. And then he starts laughing too.
We are both cracking up when Melanie trudges into the café car, carrying her stuff, plus my sweater. “I couldn’t find you,” she says sullenly.
“You said to wake you in London.” I look out the window then. The pretty English countryside has given way to the ugly gray outskirts of the city.
Melanie looks over at Willem, and her eyes widen. “You’re not shipwrecked after all,” she says to him.
“No,” he says, but he’s looking at me. “Don’t be mad at Lulu. It’s my fault. I kept her here.”
“Lulu?”
“Yes, short for Louise. It’s my new alter ego, Mel.” I look at her, my eyes imploring her not to give me away. I’m liking being Lulu. I’m not ready to give her up just yet.
Melanie rubs her eyes, like maybe she’s still sleeping. Then she shrugs and slumps into the seat next to Willem. “Fine. Be whoever you want. I’d like to be someone with a new head.”
“She’s new to this hangover thing,” I tell Willem.
“Shut up,” Melanie snaps.
“What, you want me say that ‘it’s old hat for you’?”
“Aren’t you Miss Sassy-pants this morning.”
“Here.” Willem reaches into his backpack for a small white container and shakes out a few white balls into Melanie’s hand. “Put these under your tongue to dissolve. You’ll feel better soon.”
“What is this?” she asks suspiciously.
“It’s herbal.”
“Are you sure it’s not some date-rape drug?”
“Right. Because he wants you to pass out in the middle of the train,” I say.
Willem shows the label to Melanie. “My mother is a naturopathic doctor. She uses these for headaches. I don’t think to rape me.”
“Hey, my father is a doctor too,” I say. Though the opposite of naturopathic. He’s a pulmonologist, Western medicine all the way.
Melanie eyes the pills for a second before finally popping them under her tongue. By the time the train chugs into the station ten minutes later, her headache is better.
By some unspoken agreement, the three of us disembark together: Melanie and I with our overstuffed roller bags, Willem with his compact backpack. We push out onto the platform into the already-hot summer sun and then into the relative cool of Marylebone Station.
“Veronica texted that she’s running late,” Melanie says. “She says to meet her by the WHSmith. Whatever that is.”
“It’s a bookstore,” Willem says, pointing across the interior of the station.
The inside of the station is pretty and redbricked, but I’m disappointed that it’s not one of those grand stations with the clattering destination boards I was hoping for. Instead, there’s just a TV departure monitor. I go over to look at it. The destinations are nowhere that exotic: places like High Wycombe and Banbury, which might be very nice for all I know. It’s silly, really. I’ve just finished up a tour of big European cities—Rome, Florence, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Berlin, Edinburgh, and now I’m in London again—and for most of it, I was counting the days until we went home. I don’t know why now all of a sudden I should be struck with wanderlust.
“What’s wrong?” Melanie asks me.
“Oh, I was just hoping for one of those big departure boards, like they had at some of the airports.”
“Amsterdam’s Centraal Station has one of those,” Willem says. “I always like to stand in front of it and just imagine I can pick any place and go.”
“Right? Exactly!”
“What’s the matter?” Melanie asks, looking at the TV monitors. “Don’t like the idea of Bicester North?”
“It’s not quite as exciting as Paris,” I say.
“Oh, come on. You’re not still moping about that?” Melanie turns to Willem. “We were supposed to go to Paris after Rome, but the air traffic controllers went on strike and all the flights got canceled, and it was too far to go on the bus. She’s still bummed out about it.”
“They’re always on strike for something in France,” Willem says, nodding his head.
“They subbed Budapest in for Paris,” I say. “And I liked Budapest, but I can’t believe I’m this close to Paris and not going.”
Willem looks at me intently. He twists the tie on his backpack around his finger. “So go,” he says.
“Go where?”
“To Paris.”
“I can’t. It got canceled.”
“So go now.”
“The tour’s over. And anyhow, they’re probably still striking.”
“You can go by train. It takes two hours from London to Paris.” He looks at the big clock on the wall. “You could be in Paris by lunchtime. Much better sandwiches over there, by the way.”