Hotel Ambrose

Chapter 17.6

The carriage smelled like damp socks. The windows were foggy. I wiped the fog off my window and watched the blurry yellow headlights and blurry red level crossing lights flashing by. Even the level crossing bells sounded waterlogged. The carriage was full of steaming people. Umbrellas opened and closed like weird jellyfish. There was a woman with two little wet dogs, and one of them was licking the water off the other one's face. Jesus, I thought, imagine being a dog and getting off on something like that.

As I watched the stations go by I thought back to the time me and Sophie had escaped Crapper on the train. About the woman with the dead baby who had given Fred a drink. But that memory hurt too much and I stopped thinking about it.

At first I wasn't sure if I'd got off at the right station. All train stations look pretty much the same at night. But the name of this one sounded familiar. And the level crossing and the shopping strip looked familiar too. The rain had stopped at least. I set off down the road.

When I reached the highway I realised that I'd guessed right. I could see the fried chicken place that had always been there, two doors down from Crapper, and next to it the big red brick building where they had done things with gas or something, except now it was dark and abandoned, with broken windows everywhere, and out the front the grass was almost as tall as I was. On the other side of Crapper there had been a vacant lot, but now there were a bunch of units there. What amazed me most was how small everything looked. When you're a kid everything seems huge.

As for Crapper itself, it was just a dark space between the abandoned building and the units. Strange. I crossed the highway at the lights and made my way along the footpath until I was standing outside Crapper. Or at least what had been Crapper. Because it was gone.

In its place was a park. I looked around for something I recognised. There was nothing. Even the old fences had been pulled up and replaced. I walked through the parkand  the noise from the highway faded away, and suddenly I could hear things moving around in there: birds rustling about, and a chick-chick-chick sound coming from up in a tree – I think that one was a possum. Near the back of the park, where it faced onto a quiet street, I found a playground. I could see monkey bars and a see-saw and a big round fibreglass thing with steering wheels inside that kids could spin around, and a big half-buried pipe lying on the ground. Everything was covered with graffiti.

It started to rain again.

I considered going back to the station. I'd be soaked by the time I got there. Then the train ride back to the city – to what? I crawled into the pipe to think about my next move. It was noisy inside with the rain falling on it, but at least it was dry. The floor was woodchips. I pulled some clothes out of my bag and laid them out on the woodchips and lay down on them on my back. I got the bag of chips out of my bag and finished them off. Now that I was in the pipe I didn't want to get out again. Besides, the rain was getting heavier. It thrummed away on the roof. It was a soothing sound, and it was warm in the pipe, and after a while I must have I fallen asleep.