Finders Keepers

Finders Keepers - Chapters 11-20

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Chapter 11
Number Nine

Paris, France - The Downtown Subway
Wednesday, August 31, 2005, 10:46 p.m.

Panic. Jason was becoming well acquainted with it. After the London bus to Folkestone and then the hovercraft across the English channel, he barely made his connecting train from Boulogne-sur-Mer to Paris. The Medley logic in full force, Jason decided it was the train to Paris, which would drop him off within feet of his connection to Rome. He would simply get off on one track, walk across the platform and board a new train on the opposite track. That his train schedule said otherwise was another matter.

            After rectifying his train blunder, Jason switched to the subway-a French teenager with long hair used a particular finger to direct him. But for reasons Jason could not quite indentify, he only took the subway as far as the Gare d' Austerlitz stop, when he needed to be at Station de Lyon. Despite its regard as one of the most efficient, easiest-to-navigate in the world, the Paris underground system simply baffled him. He finally jumped in a cab instead, and with a lack of nuance, announced to the driver where he wanted to go-and when the trip should begin.

            Jason was unimpressed with the cabbie, who tried playing it all tough and cool, smoking away on a stinky brown cigarette, like he had all the time in the world, when obviously there were important matters that needed immediate resolution. But Jason showed him what was what. A fat wad of bills put the insolent a-hole in his place, oh, yes, it sure did. Although, Jason was a bit surprised at just how quick the trip from the station where he started-to the station where he ended up-turned out to be. He tried not to consider the possibility that he had just paid ten times what the trip should have cost.

            Besides, he couldn't even understand the money. He'd had to convert American dollars to British pounds when he first arrived in Manchester, and then convert the British pounds to Euros, the currency in Europe, except, of course, in Britain, which rebuffed the Euro on principle. But how many Euros to a British pound to an American dollar, he couldn't even compute.

            And all he'd eaten by then was a heavily mayonnaised roll with what was advertised as bacon, but was in fact pure bacon fat. So he had that going for him.

But now that he was so close to finding his train to Rome, Jason only had minutes left to actually board it. Posted on an overhead message board was a row of horizontal slats. The fifth slat from the top read: 22:56: Roma: Track 9.

            Two dozen trains lay in wait beneath the cool night sky. People people people were going this way and that, with briefcases and rucksacks and suitcases, all headed somewhere.

Jason had decided that Rome would be his initial destination, and though he would come to acknowledge that he just as easily could have stayed in Paris, or gone to Amsterdam, Berlin or any other city, getting to Rome was the only acceptable outcome. Why? Because it had to be that way. That's just how he was. Hank laughed at him often for being so rigid. "Relax, Kid. Relax.     Life's more fun when you let it flow. Don't force it so much. Just let things happen."

            Let it happen? Sorry, dude. No time for that now. I gotta make it happen.