Neverwhere

He started taking the Tube again, to and from work, although he soon found that he had stopped buying newspapers to read on his journey in the morning and the evening, and instead of reading he would scan the faces of the other people on the train, faces of every kind and color, and wonder if they were all from London Above, wonder what went on behind their eyes.

During the evening rush hour, a few days after his encounter with Jessica, he thought he saw Lamia across the carriage, with her back to him, her dark hair piled high on her head and her dress long and black. His heart began to pound in his chest. He pushed his way toward her through the crowded compartment. As he got closer, the train pulled into a station, the doors hissed open, and she stepped off. But it was not Lamia. Just another young London goth-girl, he realized, disappointed, off for a night on the town.

One Saturday afternoon he saw a large brown rat, sitting on top of the plastic garbage cans at the back of Newton Mansions, cleaning its whiskers and looking as if it owned the world. At Richard's approach it leapt down onto the pavement and waited in the shadow of the garbage cans, staring up at him with wary bead-black eyes.

Richard crouched down. "Hello," he said, gently. "Do we know each other?" The rat made no kind of response that Richard was able to perceive, but it did not run away. "My name is Richard Mayhew," he continued, in a low voice. "I'm not actually a rat-speaker, but I, um, know a few rats, well, I've met some, and I wondered if you were familiar with the Lady Door"

He heard a shoe scrape behind him, and he turned to see the Buchanans looking at him curiously. "Have you . . . lost something?" asked Mrs. Buchanan. Richard heard, but ignored, her husband's gruff whisper of "Just his marbles."

"No," said Richard, honestly, "I was, um, saying hello to a . . . " The rat scurried off and away.

"Was that a rat?" barked George Buchanan. "I'll complain to the council. It's a disgrace. But that's London for you, isn't it?"

Yes, agreed Richard. It was. It really was.

Richard's possessions continued to sit untouched in the wooden packing cases in the middle of the living room floor.

He had not yet turned on the television. He would come home at night, and eat, then he would stand at the window, looking out over London, at the cars and the rooftops and the lights, as the late autumn twilight turned into night, and the lights came on all over the city. He would watch, standing alone in his darkened flat, until the city's lights began to be turned off. Eventually, reluctantly, he would undress, and climb into bed, and go to sleep.

Sylvia came into his office one Friday afternoon. He was opening envelopes, using his knife—Hunter's knife—as a letter-opener. "Richard?" she said. "I was wondering. Are you getting out much, these days?" He shook his head. "Well, a bunch of us are going out this evening. Do you fancy coming along?"

"Um. Sure," he said. "Yes. I'd love it."

He hated it.

There were eight of them: Sylvia and her young man, who had something to do with vintage cars, Gary from Corporate Accounts, who had recently broken up with his girlfriend, due to what Gary persisted in describing as a slight misunderstanding (he had thought she would be rather more understanding about his sleeping with her best friend than she had in fact turned out to be), several perfectly nice people and friends of nice people, and the new girl from Computer Services.

First they saw a film on the huge screen of the Odeon, Leicester Square. The good guy won in the end, and there were plenty of explosions and flying objects on the way. Sylvia decided that Richard should sit next to the girl from Computer Services, as, she explained, she was new to the company and did not know many people.

They walked down to Old Compton Street, on the edge of Soho, where the tawdry and the chic sit side by side to the benefit of both, and they ate at La Reache, filling up on couscous and dozens of marvelous plates of exotic food, which covered their table and spilled over onto an unused table nearby, and they walked from there to a small pub Sylvia liked in nearby Berwick Street, and they had a few drinks, and they chatted.

The new girl from Computer Services smiled at Richard a lot, as the evening went on, and he had nothing at all to say to her. He bought a round of drinks for the party, and the girl from Computer Services helped him carry them from the bar back to their table. Gary went off to the men's room, and the girl from Computer Services came and sat next to Richard, taking his place. Richard's head was filled with the clink of glasses, and the blare of the jukebox, and the sharp smell of beer and spilt Bacardi and cigarette smoke. He tried to listen to the conversations going on at the table, and he found that he could no longer concentrate on what anyone was saying, and, which was worse, that he was not interested in any of what he was able to hear.

And it came to him then, as clearly and as certainly as if he had been watching it on the big screen at the Odeon, Leicester Square: the rest of his life. He would go home tonight with the girl from Computer Services, and they would make gentle love, and tomorrow, it being Saturday, they would spend the morning in bed. And then they would get up, and together they would remove his possessions from the packing cases, and put them away. In a year, or a little less, he would marry the girl from Computer Services, and get another promotion, and they would have two children, a boy and a girl, and they would move out to the suburbs, to Harrow or Croydon or Hampstead or even as far away as distant Reading.

And it would not be a bad life. He knew that, too. Sometimes there is nothing you can do.

When Gary came back from the toilet, he looked around in puzzlement. Everyone was there except . . . "Dick?" he asked "Has anyone seen Richard?"

The girl from Computer Services shrugged.

Gary went outside, to Berwick Street. The cold of the night air was like a splash of water to his face. He could taste winter in the air. He called, "Dick? Hey? Richard?"

"Over here."

Richard was leaning against a wall, in the shadows. "Just getting a breath of fresh air."

"Are you all right?" asked Gary.

"Yes," said Richard. "No. I don't know."

"Well," said Gary, "that covers your options. Do you want to talk about it?"

Richard looked at him seriously. "You'll laugh at me."

"I'll do that anyway."

Richard looked at Gary. Then Gary was relieved to see him smile, and he knew that they were still friends. Gary looked back at the pub. Then he put his hands into his coat pockets. "Come on," he said. "Let's walk. You can get it off your chest. Then I'll laugh at you."

"Bastard," said Richard, sounding a lot more like Richard than he had in recent weeks.

"It's what friends are for."

They began to amble off, under the streetlights. "Look, Gary," Richard began. "Do you ever wonder if this is all there is?"

"What?"

Richard gestured vaguely, taking in everything. "Work. Home. The pub. Meeting girls. Living in the city. Life. Is that all there is?"

"I think that sums it up, yes," said Gary.

Richard sighed. "Well," he said, "for a start, I didn't go to Majorca. I mean, I really didn't go to Majorca."

Richard talked as they walked up and down the warren of tiny Soho back streets between Regent Street and the Charing Cross Road. He talked, and talked, begi