Neverwhere

They were approaching a wooden bench, and the moment he set eyes on it, it seemed to Richard that that bench was one of the most desirable objects he had ever seen. "Can we sit down?" he asked. "Just for a minute."

She shrugged. They sat down at opposite ends of the bench. "On Friday," said Richard, "I was with one of the finest investment analyst firms in London."

"What's a investment an' a thing?"

"It was my job."

She nodded, satisfied. "Right. And . . . ?"

"Just reminding myself, really. Yesterday . . . it was like I didn't exist anymore, to anybody up here."

"That's 'cos you don't," explained Anaesthesia. A late-night couple, who had been slowly walking along the Embankment toward them, holding hands, sat down in the middle of the bench, between Richard and Anaesthesia, and commenced to kiss each other, passionately. "Excuse me," said Richard to them. The man had his hand inside the woman's sweater and was moving it around enthusiastically, a lone traveler discovering an unexplored continent. "I want my life back," Richard told the couple.

"I love you," said the man to the woman.

"But your wife—" she said, licking the side of his face.

"Fuck her," said the man.

"Don' wanna fuck her," said the woman, and she giggled, drunkenly. "Wanna fuck you . . . " She put a hand on his crotch and giggled some more.

"Come on," said Richard to Anaesthesia, feeling that the bench had started to become a less desirable neighborhood. They got up and walked away. Anaesthesia peered back, curiously, at the couple on the bench, who were gradually becoming more horizontal.

Richard said nothing. "Something wrong?" asked Anaesthesia.

"Only everything," said Richard. "Have you always lived down there?"

"Nah. I was born up here," she hesitated. "You don't want to hear about me." Richard realized, almost surprised, that he really did.

"I do. Really."

She fingered the rough quartz beads that hung in a necklace around her neck, and she swallowed. "There was me and my mother and the twins . . . " she said, and then she stopped talking. Her mouth clamped shut.

"Go on," said Richard. "It's all right. Really it is. Honest."

The girl nodded. She took a deep breath, and then she began to talk, without looking at him as she talked, her eyes fixed on the ground ahead of her. "Well, my mother had me an' my sisters, but she got a bit funny in the head. One day I got home from school, and she was crying and crying, and she didn't have any clothes on, and she was breaking stuff. Plates and stuff. But she never hurt us. She never did. The lady from the social services came and took the twins away, an' I had to go and stay with my aunt. She was living with this man. I didn't like him. And when she was out of the house . . . " The girl paused; she was quiet for so long that Richard wondered if she had finished. Then she began once more, "Anyway. He used to hurt me. Do other stuff. In the end, I told my aunt, an' she started hitting me. Said I was lying. Said she'd have the police on me. But I wasn't lying. So I run away. It was my birthday."

They had reached the Albert Bridge, a kitsch monument spanning the Thames, joining Battersea to the south with the Chelsea end of the Embankment, a bridge hung with thousands of tiny white lights.

"I didn't have anywhere to go. And it was so cold," said Anaesthesia, and she stopped again. "I slept on the streets. I'd sleep in the day, when it was a bit warmer, and walk around at night, just to keep moving. I was only eleven. Stealing bread an' milk off people's doorsteps to eat. Hated doing that so I started hanging around the street markets, taking the rotten apples an' oranges an' things people threw away. Then I got really sick. I was living under an overpass in Notting Hill. When I come to, I was in London Below. The rats had found me."

"Have you ever tried to return to all this?" he asked, gesturing. Quiet, warm, inhabited houses. Late-night cars. The real world . . . she shook her head. All fire burns, little baby. You'll learn. "You can't. It's one or the other. Nobody ever gets both."

"I'm sorry," said Door, hesitantly. Her eyes were red, and she looked as if she had been vigorously blowing her nose and scrubbing her tears from her eyes and cheeks.

The marquis had been amusing himself while he waited for her to collect herself by playing a game of knucklebones with some old coins and bones he kept in one of the many pockets of his coat. He looked up at her coldly. "Indeed?"

She bit her lower lip. "No. Not really. I'm not sorry. I've been running and hiding and running so hard that . . . this was the first chance I've really had to . . . " she stopped.

The marquis swept up the coins and the bones, and returned them to their pocket. "After you," he said. He followed her back to the wall of pictures. She put one hand on the painting of her father's study and took the marquis's large black hand with the other.

. . . reality twisted . . .