Potting II

The joy! The buttery ham and butterier croissant-like material slid down my hungry gullet like fine-grained leaf litter down a sluiceway in a flash flood, coating the moist walls with sticky juice along the way. Mercy. They used real butter for this stuff here, probably the lowest grade of the low but still measurably better than that empty hydro-oil that reigns stateside. It occurred to me that I should thank the powers that be here for whatever generous subsidies they must extend their noble domestic dairymen so that beef might continue to populate the pocket pastures along the densely-populated tourist-travel lines. Of a piece with the soybeanmen's subsidies in America, I supposed, if not for precisely the same reason, and this flicker of wisdom directed a stomach-sad shiver of a particular confident intensity on a wending course from my ego through to my bowels. I felt heavier already, stronger, and a bit out of place with this brightening aura and no one to share it with or even show it to. The last morsels plopped down and I closed my eyes, leaned back into the void-railing, pushed the cold unfeeling of the unadorned steel away with only moderate difficulty and let the buzz wash over me once more. The spot!
This was the dead spot between the last and first trains now so I took some laps around the McDonald's level, past a lately-stirring Starbucks in fact, and back up to the transport levels where in my sharper state I was able to find one of those spaghetti maps blown up, backlit and available for study. S7 or S5, either one, looked to head out to the airport, but there was some by-the-way kind of fine print whose meaning I couldn't begin to guess at next to the S5 line as it neared the airport. That and its faint grayness, in contrast to the S7's robust magenta, put it out of my mind as an option; I'd been stuck on the outskirts of unfamiliar big cities before on account of my misreading transit maps and at this point in the game that kind of miscue would have cost me my flight and my next day. Looked like I was an S7 man this morning, and as if on cue the little dotscreen above the escalator--running now--leading up to the top level where the aboveground express trains stopped flashed "S7 - 04.48" and then a word that I took to mean "AIRPORT". The shivers of excitement had subsided by now as my stomach continued the work of breaking the meatwich down into the gloop from whence it came. I felt alert, even caffeinated, a weird short excitement building in my chest and radiating out to my extremities like a fever as I rode up through the void. The sour feeling was back too, better-defined and centered on the lower gut like I'd gulped down the rest of the cup and looked to pour more. It wasn't unpleasant, not exactly, but I missed the stomach sadness and I'd been standing for long enough that I craved a warm cushioned seat on one of the long trains heading south even if it meant waving goodbye to it for the foreseeable future. I needed to watch my sack, not worry about the vicissitudes of my weary body. The escalator was cresting. Ahead, great parallel slabs of concrete curved into the middle distance. Immediately to my right, one string of a dozen or more cars followed it out beyond the rim of the station roof. "S7 - 04.48" shone in soft yellow from digitized displays in its windows, two to a car; a more permanent "S7" designation, painted and backlit, overhung the track to eliminate any confusion. This was me. I approached an open door, warm satiny air beckoning me in. Left, right: the car was empty. Phone check: 04.45. Sack down, feet up; three seats to a man. The joy was gone. So was the sourness. So was the caffeinated nervousness I'd welcomed earlier. Little remained. I sat, waited. A voice in the distance announced something in bored tones; a gruff voice cursed in sharp tones nearby announced the presence of people outside the car. My eyes must have closed at some point because I saw no shadows to corroborate this. But it didn't matter anyhow for presently there was a whoosh as the doors shut, the ambiance muffled in on itself and the lights beyond my eyelids dimmed to useless levels. Then there was the imperceptible slide backward and we were (I was?) off.