Drift Reality > London, England > The Passport 2

I stood there and looked at my watch. It was 4:45 PM and I knew it was going to take at least thirty minutes for Mary to return to her flat, retrieve my passport, and return to Victoria. I had thirty minutes with nothing to do but wait.

It was then that time did a funny sort of thing and slowed down.

Like instinct and logic, time has always been an enemy to me. As I looked at my watch, I could actually see the minute hand decelerate to a crawl.

Boredom began to set in and I made the brilliant decision to wander around in the station.

Glancing around, logic began working its evil machinations once again and whispered in my ear, that it would make much more sense to wait in front of the tube exit in the station. This would be much more direct than waiting in front of the ticket counter.

Although I knew in the back of my mind, that there were about four exits from the tube stop, my instincts told me that Mary would inevitably decide to use the tube exit that lead directly into the station.

I sat in front of the tube exit and looking at my watch, realized about two minutes had passed since the last time I looked at my watch.

For a while, I stood in front of the stream of people exiting the tube station and thought about how stupid I was for leaving my passport at Mary's flat.

After looking at my watch again, I then spent some time thinking about how shameful it was that I had asked Mary to retrieve my passport while I waited in the train station.

Although I tried for several minutes, I could not think of one book or movie in which the guy was the one waiting at the train station. In every situation, it was the guy who sent the girl to wait at the train station while he went to settle the score.

"How shameful," I thought.

Then, my mood brightened a bit as I realized that at least I was being original.

I looked at my watch again and realized that only 10 seconds had passed since the last time I looked at my watch.

Things proceeded in this manner for the next hour, until about 5:45, at which point I started getting a little nervous.

Time sensed my fear and begin accelerating.

As I watched the minute hand speed up, I began to feel more nervous and did what any rational human would do in my situation - take money out of the ATM machine. No matter what was to come in the ensuing hours, I was not going to face it with an empty wallet.

After withdrawing cash and standing around for another fifteen minutes, I decided that something had gone fundamentally wrong and began scanning the station frantically. It was then that my eyes alit on a sign at the far end of the station that read, "Coach Station."

Again, logic outraced emotion and I began contemplating how much time we had left. It was 6:00 PM and the bus was supposed to take about thirty minutes, which left us with a good hour of leeway.

I darted in the direction of the sign and passed through a series of hallways that lead me in the opposite direction from where I had originally thought the coach station existed.

Continuing to follow the signs, I soon found myself outside the Victoria train station and found that the coach station signs had completely vanished.

Turning to a man selling newspapers nearby, I asked, "Do you have any idea where the Victoria coach station is?"

Nodding his head, he pointed down the street and said, "Two blocks down, on the left."

Grabbing the suitcase under my arm, I began sprinting in the direction he had pointed me. At the end of the first block, I decided to ask another newspaper vendor for confirmation.

The man muttered something unintelligible and pointed in a direction that was somewhere in between the street the original vendor had pointed down, and the street perpendicular to it.

"I'm sorry," I responded. "What did you say?"

Opting for quantity in favor of quality, the vendor proceeded to exactly repeat his original grunt and gesture.

For some reason, I flashed back to my time spent teaching English to five-year-olds in Korea as I responded, "Is it this one?" while pointing to the first street, "Or is it this one?" I said while pointing to the second.

The man, now looking visibly perturbed, pointed at his imaginary route once again and grunted louder.

I shook my head in disgust and made the brilliant decision to do the opposite of what my instincts were telling me, and headed off in the direction that the first vendor had pointed, lugging my suitcase as if it were a disobedient, obese child.

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