IT'S HER RED SCARF that first traps my eye. She’s half naked, legs exposed under a black skirt that drops mid-thigh; arms and chest clad in a black buckled jacket. She’s standing on the platform at the Oxford Circus transfer point waiting, with the rest of us.

I shove my hands deep in the pockets of my overcoat, leaning against the vending machine in an improvised state of aloofness.

She walks over, a cigarette propped behind her ear and a duffel hanging from her shoulders. I can smell her approach. A dizzying elixir smothers me, a licorice-like essence perspiring from her glazed skin.

I watch her fingers emerge from the tight fist they’re clenched in, revealing a handful of coins. She slips them into the coin slot of the vending machine, letting each one make its full descent before proceeding with the next. Her hands float like feathers over the buttons as she decides between a Mars Bar or a Toblerone.

She licks her lips as she claims her prize, seducing the triangular bar with the touch of her fingers. The slight furrow of her eyebrows pokes through her bangs, as she debates between the joys of instant gratification or those offered by delayed satisfaction. Her impatience makes my own elevate ten fold, peeling back the gold foil with fingers that make me quiver. An impulse to pry my lips open and sputter out some kind of nonsense is outweighed by my self induced paralysis. She detects some sort of movement I am ignorant to, a finger curling into a tight ball inside my pocket, my weight shifting from the left to the right foot, a timid nudge inside my khakis. I dodge her glance with a sophisticated straightening of my tie. I still feel her eyes looking me up and down, taunting me to intersect her gaze.

The ends of her black hair are damp, coming together into daggered points that follow her jaw line. I wonder where she’s come from, if we’ve ever passed above ground. Maybe I’ve seen her at the Phoenix in Soho, swaying those hips between tables while balancing a tray full of martinis. Perhaps I’ve given her a few quid while lusting after her from a table in the corner, littered with empty Scotch glasses and half smoked cigarettes.

I would’ve remembered those eyes though. Those dark eyes with the intoxicating glare that floats out from underneath a web of lashes. Lashes that wait for you to come closer. Closer still until you lose yourself completely. Lose yourself to those eyes, to whatever they desire. That is the poison that comes with eyes like that.

But she’s subdued and benign now, in the light that floods down from the tracks overhead. Above ground, all is dark and wet and musty. Here, a sanctuary from the damp cold, heat flows generously through tunnels, its gentle breeze somewhat comforting. It makes one forget the ailments they arrived here with. It’s a world of its own down here, where anybody could be somebody else, hovering only in a vacuum of suspended time and space, where nobody knows anybody’s yesterday or tomorrow. This is what preserves its shallow artificiality. A time portal, where strangers cuddle against strangers in crowded compartments that whisk them underneath the streets of this city, passing through the cellar of a mysterious grid of lights. Nothing remains but the empty darkness flickering past until the next pause in motion.

She’s almost done with her Toblerone, placing the last triangle on her tongue in a delicate maneuver, sucking the stains of chocolate from her fingertips with puckered red lips. She licks the remaining chocolate from the corners of her mouth, sliding her tongue along the creases in one fluid rehearsed movement.

She pushes her long bangs out of her eyes, interrogating my fixation with a curious look in my direction. I look away embarrassed. I can’t bring myself to cower into the darkness, nor can I coax the muscles behind my eyes to return her gaze Maybe she’ll walk away now, lose interest in the guy in the suit and tie with the blank stare. The guy whose stubble is at most a decoy from stunted maturity. Maybe she likes cool guys who carry guitars and wear steel-toed boots. Or, maybe she prefers women with tongue studs who know what to do more than any guy ever would. But maybe she’d find his naivete intriguing. Maybe, once she realized he was no barricaded native, but rather an unapologetic Midwestern kid in grown up clothes, maybe then she’d allow him to stare just a little longer.

Time floats between us in a pulsated digital display.

Central line: 5 min.

I defend my post by the vending machine as if it were my high school locker, my stomach fluttering as I wait for the inevitable bell to ring.

I rehearse my proposal, written in ballpoint on sweaty palms. How about Homecoming? Or perhaps, dinner and a movie? Fine, maybe just a walk home? The bell releases a shrill clamor, summoning bodies out of doors burst open with the flood of excitement only a fourteen year old knows. From Ms. Relich’s English class, a small frame appears in the doorway, pushing between bodies twice her size. Strands of hair are stuck in the crevice between her backpack and her sweatshirt, the rest falling over her paltry shoulders. She tiptoes down the hall, circumnavigating my post, until she’s almost close enough to be contaminated with the adolescent squeak that’s released from my mouth.

What do I say? Hi, hey, what’s up?  Her waif-like figure turns slightly towards me, her head cockeyed, dissecting the visual my fourteen year old body affronts her with: the winter jacket I haven’t grown into yet, that I didn’t want to begin with, but Mom made me wear because she says, Wisconsin winters can kill you; the five years passed down hitops encrusted in dirt stains with the frayed laces that never stay tied; and the stain washed jeans covering my bony legs, tied around my anemic waste with a clearance rack nylon belt.

I half attempt a smile, but can’t manage to pry my hands open to deliver the deciphered scribbles I proclaimed to be poetry the night before. The corners of her lips pull up slightly by an invisible string, resulting in a pale smile.

But then, nothing. She zigzags her way down the hall, dissapearing into the mass of bodies until I see her emerge on the other side, impenetrable now within the company of her friends. I turn and walk the other way, a sick feeling glowing in my stomach. 

Central line: Approaching.

The cavern of the underground begins to vibrate as the faint holler of the train floats in from the black tunnel. People begin to adjust themselves, fold up their newspapers, pick up their briefcases, and slowly gravitate towards the edge of the trench where the train will collect them.

She is among them, walking to the end of the platform, and then dangling the tip of her knee high boot along the edge. She crosses her arms in front of her and looks up when she hears the familiar rushing of an approaching train. Looking over her shoulder, she seems to wink, but I can’t tell. More and more bodies begin to swarm away from the walls, towards the yellow line at the end of the platform.

“Mind the gap.” Everyone does. We wait, a mass of tired impatient bodies. We stand together waiting until the cars empty of those getting off. We shove and elbow and trip over each other as we struggle through the automatic doors.

There’s one seat in the back of the car next to a cluster of university students. I squeeze between their drunken slurs and position myself as close to the window as possible.

“Hey mate, check out that one up there. I think I saw her last night at Toucan. We were getting it on in the toilet.”

“You’re lying! Not a chance in hell you could get with a bird like that.”

“Oh yeah? Hey you! In the scarf, weren’t you at Toucan last night?” She doesn’t flinch. The Toblerone wrapper is clenched into a tight ball in her fist. “Oi, I’m talking to you!”

“Ah, leave her alone mate, it’s not fucking her.”

“No whatever, it is. Oi! Don’t you remember me? We shagged in the fucking lo!” The silence stifles the whole car. I watch as she crosses her legs, then uncrosses them, those big black boots anxious with anticipation. She pulls one strand of black hair out of her eyes, slowly pivoting her head, a hawk detecting its prey. Her chin swoops down to the floor and then cocks up and to the right, her eyes glaring and intent. A half smirk forms on her lips, a contortion I can’t recognize as being endearing or frightening. The weight of the air swamps through the entire car, bodies swaying motionless with the inertia of being pulled further along through the darkness.

“Bond Street.” The doors squeak open and bodies lift themselves from seats, fleeing the stagnant car as quickly as possible.

“Come on you wanker, this is our stop.” The intoxicated students stumble from their seats, and strut out onto the platform. Their voices trailing down the corridor navigate their way back into the car.

“I told you it wasn’t her.”

“No, I swear it was. She’s just a fucking cunt, that’s all.”

The doors snap closed and the car pulls forward, leaving Bond Street and the university boys behind. I try not to look up at her, but the intrigue is nauseating. Her hands are clenched around the foil ball that used to conceal her Toblerone, the chocolate that is now only a thin coating on the insides of her mouth. I can almost taste how sweet it is. Rich layers that would melt on my tongue, seduce the back of my mouth, tickle my insides. This preoccupation becomes an ailment completely foreign to me.

She molds the gold foil to fit between her palms, flattening it across her hands, imprinting her fingers into its texture.

Lancaster Gate. She folds the corners in on each other to make a square. Then folds the foil over itself again. A smaller square, slightly queer in shape. She smiles at the imperfection.

Queensway. Using both hands she reshapes the foil in her clenched fists. A solid ball emerges from her opened hands, a makeshift toy she sets free on the running track of the car. It rolls the length of the car, scoring a goal between my shiny black Ballys.

Notting Hill Gate. The car slows. She stands up, straightens the folds of her skirt, and picks up the bag that’s nestled against her feet. She walks down the aisle, following her lost creation’s recent path, stopping a few feet short. I reach down and scoop it off the rubber matted floor, offering it to her in the palm of my hands. She fetches it with her white fingers, dusts it off , and rubs it between her palms. She lets it fall gently back into my outstretched hands, the warmth of the foil sweating into my skin. She half smiles, half winks, half touches my toe with her boot, and turns to leave me alone with her gift.

Time slows as I watch her feet slip noiselessly onto the platform, then down the tunnel leading up to Pembrige Road. The car is dim and silent, the warm air from outside  flows across my cheeks, kissing me into a delirium that makes my head queasy. Blood washes over my insides, bathing them in a pulsing nausea of split secondness. My body convulses and spits me out of my seat. I stumble onto the platform.

“Mind the gap.” Closer. Closer. Until I lose myself.

 I don’t know where she takes me but I follow her through the darkness like a puppy. My shoes trample through half frozen puddles, my lips biting at the frigid air as I trail behind her. My head is narcotic when I finally hear keys inside locks, and door knobs turning, boots being kicked off, shirts being pulled off, belts being unbuckled…

 She has a birthmark on the inside of her thigh. I become preoccupied with it, grazing over it with my lips, with my tongue. Her skin is salty and refreshing at the same time, soft and smooth and puckered a little on the back of her thighs. The tiny hairs that graze down her stomach stand on end, and her breathing becomes an effort. She pulls me closer and I become intoxicated, queasy with hunger, disgusted with excitement. Her back arches into a bridge over the hardwood floors. My body starves for her, shaking into seizures of passion. I can’t hear anything but the throbbing of her blood and the gasps for breath secreting from between her flushed lips, glistening with saliva.

 A part of me isn’t really here. A part of me didn’t get off at Lancaster Gate. A part of me sits glued to the seat by the window, wishing I’d gotten off when she did, examing the domino seconds that led up to this point, of me being here and her being there. Wondering if I’d ever leave the Underground, if I’d ever free myself of this numbing immobility.

Then there’s the part of me that follows her.

My eyes scan down her body, up her body, over her stomach, over her hard nipples, across her collar bone, down her neck. She’s watching me. Her eyes are bloodshot with fixation. Dark mannequin eyes stare out at me from behind frozen lids and creep over my skin like a strange hand I’m not sure I recognize.

A street light flickers outside the window. A glass bottle breaks against the cobblestone street. I hear everything, yet recognize nothing. A light goes on in the outside hallway. The folds of skin tighten and constrict. Footsteps down the carpeted hall. She closes her eyes, grinding her fingers into the throw rug her body is pressed against.

I can’t hear her scream but I feel her convulse into shrieks. Her body glows a pale blue under the light streaming in through the window, beads of sweat decorating her skin.

I fear disrupting her out of this coma. She exudes an aroma that warns me not to stay. She’s not to be known fully, just in full. She’s not to be had nightly, just at night. I am to trespass no longer, so I escape the way I came, in a hallucination of my own making. I leave her sprawled on the rug, a sculpted centerpiece of anonymity and beauty.

The rain is settling into a faint mist as I walk the streets retiring of people. I don’t know where I am but I somehow manage to find myself back at the entrance to the underground. I lean against the railed entrance and wait for the gates to open for the morning commuters. On the streets, the air is lifting and the dawn is creeping on. The sky glows near the east end of the city, as fog floats in between buildings, down alleys, past back doorways, through open windows, into stained apartments with red walls and throw rugs. A few birds fly overhead, targeting my shoe as a landing spot for their droppings. I can’t pretend to care about that now. Perhaps when I return home, it might infuriate me. Perhaps I will remember none of this tomorrow. Perhaps a white splotch on my shoe will be all I’ll have as proof this was no dream. But perhaps, the rain will wash it away by the time I climb the four floors up to my flat and the memory of this all will only exist within the frameworks of my imagination. Perhaps.

I am drugged by the smell of her skin at night. The texture of her hair brushes against my skin in my sleep. The weight of her breathing echoes in my ears, haunting me into restlessness. I try and coax myself into serenity, pacifying myself with cold showers and cigarette intermissions. But there she is. Every night. Behind my eyes. I can’t move. I can’t see, but I can feel her weight against me.

She has starved me into a famine I can’t escape from, tormenting me behind closed eyes. She lingers on sheets her body has never touched.

Every night, at 10:45 exactly, at the Oxford Circus transfer point, I lean against the vending machine and wait for her to reclaim her Toblerone. I haven’t seen her since, but perhaps one night I will. And she’ll turn to me, with those dark eyes. Eyes that burn into mine at night, eyes that taunt me into hysteria each day, eyes that remind me perhaps this was real.

Juli Obudzinski received her Bachelors from the University of Wisconsin - Madison. She has recently fled her Midwestern roots to take a job "fighting the good fight" in the nation's capital, working for a civil liberties non-profit. She hopes to return someday, most likely when she's ready for that white pickett fence, 2.5 kids and domesticity.