Missing In Paris

Chapter 2

Now what?

The stranger standing on the other side of the platform was staring right at Neela. The man who couldn't walk. And there, between the great divide of platforms east and west, he was expecting a conversation.

She stole a quick glance to the left and then the right. Her fellow commuters were either too self-obsessed or too unhinged to notice the beginnings of her strange interaction with the man on the other side.

"I'm pretty used to the delays!" she said abruptly, in the loud 'outside voice' that was required for this weird conversation.

"What?" he cried out, his face a knot of confusion.

"What I mean is, R-A-T-P basically stands for slow as fuck, amirite?" She laughed for a couple of seconds and then scowled, lost in the memory of the many delays she'd endured at the hands of RATP, the Parisian transportation system.

She looked across the platform now and saw him smirking. "It is not possible for the letters R-A-T-P to stand for slow as fuck," he replied with confidence.

But Neela only laughed in response. She laughed and laughed and no one could stop her.

"What is so funny?" he said.

"Sorry," she said, taking a second to catch her breath. "It's just that after all this time, I still crack up when I hear someone say 'fuck' in a French accent. It's like 'ahhh I'm mad! But I end up sounding adorable! Ahh!'" She laughed again. She was having herself a time.

"So you think I am adorable?" he asked, a flirty smile on full display.

Neela was no longer having herself a time. She looked away.

"It seems you are not a tourist then," he added, still intent on continuing this platform conversation.

"Huh?" she muttered, pretending she was losing interest. To add to her display of apathy, she stared at the platform board so she wouldn't have to stare at him.

"You could not be a tourist if you said you are used to these delays," he explained, his flirty ways getting lost in this conversation's boring left turn.

"That's true..." she said, her will to live fading out right along with the energy of this convo.

He rubbed his hands on his trousers. It was a nervous rub, like he somehow knew that his persona of 'fascinating stranger' was hanging by the thinnest thread.

"Okay..." he said, pacing back and forth now, running out of ideas. He stopped abruptly. "Oh god! Oh no!"

Neela's head snapped in his direction. "What's wrong?!" she cried.

He suddenly had her full attention. And he knew it.

"This injury is worse than I thought," he said grimacing. "I have the feeling of blood coming out."

"Oh my god are you serious?!" She moved towards him instinctively but stopped at the platform's edge.

"Yes, it is at least one liter of blood." He cracked a smile. And she instantly realized.

"You're an idiot," she said, but that didn't stop her from grinning.

"To be serious, the blood risk could be true." He glanced down at his leg. "I honestly have not checked..."

"Then take off those pants and let's see!" She put her hand over her mouth as soon as she said it. Everyone knew that if there was one unbreakable rule about the seedy underground, it was to never suggest that a strange man take off his pants. Not when unsolicited pants-dropping was already such a problem in major cities. And yet, here she was...speaking these scandalous words, and now laughing uproariously right along with this interesting man—who mercifully had not removed his pants as instructed.