Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Maybe that’s why whoever is behind all this put us on this train. Maybe their goal was to try to make us comfortable. Soft. Lazy. Get us all gushy and relaxed so we’ll not be ready to strike back. Strike out. Respond.
Or maybe they’re just like Alec and enjoy having really nice shit.
“Excuse me? Sorry to bother.” Nigel has poked his head in the door. I guess I left it open. Which makes me think that perhaps the whole “make us soft and inattentive” thing may be working.
“No bother, man. What is it?” Alec says.
“We will be pulling into Wien Hauptbahnhof, Vienna Central Station, shortly. May we provide you with any other services prior to completing our journey?”
There is a collective sigh in the room. It all feels so confusingly polite.
“No, Nige, I think we’re good,” Danny says. “Unless you feel like telling us exactly what’s waiting for us when we get there,” he adds.
There’s a beat before Nigel smiles and says, “So, nothing else then. Very good, sirs and madams. In that case, we again wish to thank you for joining us on the Venice-Simplon Orient Express and hope that if your needs call for carriage travel in the future, you will consider us once more.”
The deadpan stares he gets back from us might be funny if the whole thing weren’t so tragically fucked up.
“I am sorry,” he is quick to follow up. “Habit.”
He starts to head off when Danny calls after him, “Nigel…”
Nigel returns to the doorway. “Yes, Mr. Fortnight?”
“What’s your name? Your actual name. Your name. What is it?”
Nigel takes a long pause before responding. “Why do you wish to know, sir?”
“Because I’m a curious guy. What’s your name?”
Another long pause. Then, “I don’t wish to be rude, Mr. Fortnight, and so I do hope you will take this in the spirit in which it is intended. Which is to serve as both genuine counsel and an honest reminder…” He lets that hang in the air as if he wants to make sure he has our attention. And then, finally… “It would be to your great benefit not to burden your thoughts with details which do not matter.”
He smiles a genuine smile.
And closes the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The four of us remain clustered by the exit as the train pulls into its final resting place at Vienna Central Station. Although I reckon it’s not the train’s final resting place. The train will turn and head off some other where to pick up some other someones. I suppose it’s more apt to think that Vienna might be our final resting place. Best not to ruminate over that too much now.
The hiss and chunk of the mighty, arcane vessel pulling to a stop signals that our time has arrived. The door slides open and the afternoon’s Viennese sun bouncing off the metallic, remodeled, decidedly twenty-first-century architecture pulls me from whatever fantastical Orient Express-induced reverie I might have been enjoying back into reality. Although any fantasy I allowed my brain to toy with was not that great or, indeed, effective. No amount of gold-flecked bedding or just-drawn-from-a-glacier spring water could wipe away the foreboding unknowns of our situation.
What are Danny and Christine keeping from me?
The thought enters the Chunnels of my brain as swiftly and unexpectedly as this whole adventure unfolded before us. What are they not saying? It’s possible they have forgotten that it is impossible for us to keep secrets from each other. Whatever secrets we have all attempted to keep have never remained secret for long.
Watching them sleep, sprawled across one another, their entangled limbs forming a kind of seductive geometry, I noticed that it felt different than it has in the past. Less erotic, perhaps? Maybe somehow more eternal? More enduring. More… infinite. I don’t know the precise right word, but I don’t need to assign it a definition to know what I experienced.
There is something. A pact maybe. Some decision they have made between them, unifying their bond and assuring that whatever happens, they will care for one another first? They will forfeit the three in favor of the two?
Preposterous. I very nearly slap myself across the face for entertaining something so absurd. I don’t—slap myself—because given how taut the moment is, the last thing everyone needs to think is that I’ve turned into some kind of nutter, but I somewhat more internally give myself the slap I deserve. It must manifest physically to a minimal degree because Eliza asks, “You all right?”
“Aces. Why?”
“You jumped.”
“I… jumped?”
“Started. A bit.”
I look to Christine and Danny, who nod in tacit confirmation that I did, indeed, “start a bit.” It is wholly unlike me to do anything of which I am not consciously and acutely aware. But there seem to be any number of changes finding their way into my reality of late, so perhaps this is some other new thing to which I shall have to become accustomed. Inadvertent “starting” when notions of slapping myself across the face enter my thinking. Fok de kak, man.