10. JACK

Despite opting for the sofa bed in the living room, I agreed with Paul that I could hang my things in the dressing room that ran off the main bedroom. Beyond it was the bathroom.

The dressing room was huge. When I had stayed in these apartments before, my clothes had looked a little lonely, barely filling a tenth of the four walls of hangers and shelves.

Now that there were going to be two of us, the space felt less mocking of my aloneness. There was something intimate about sharing the space and filling it with both of our things. It reminded me of when I used to travel with Emma.

It was me who started unpacking my shirts and underwear and sweaters first. As I laid them down, one piece after another, I wondered if I was using the space effectively.

I called him in to the dressing room to look at what I had done.

“I hope I’m not taking up too much space,” I said.

Paul’s response was light and casual.

“No, it’s completely cool. I don’t have that much stuff, and honestly, Jack, I would hardly notice if I left it in my bag most of the time.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle at Paul’s carefree response. It was a very charming quality of his.

“I guess we are going back and forth to work around the same time,” I said, “so we won’t disturb each other’s sleep schedule.”

As we continued to unpack, the silence of the apartment enveloped us. Tottenham Street, despite having a tube station named after it, is actually a quiet little side street, closed off at one end. It was quite silent, four stories up, away from any traffic over on Tottenham Court Road.

When I was unpacked, I zipped up my suitcase and put it away. Everything was neat. Paul came in to the dressing room and unpacked in about two minutes flat, shoving tops onto shelves and kicking shoes into a row on the floor.

I went back into the living room for a few minutes to check my emails on my cell phone, and seeing a slew from people asking if I was coming in to work “straight from the plane” and if I could just look at this or that, I decided what I had to do.

I looked into the bedroom and could not see Paul, so walked back into the dressing room. He was not there, either.

I found him standing in the bathroom beyond. The door was open, and I could see him reflected in the mirror from outside in the dressing room. There was another WC in the apartment, but this was where we would both have to shower and shave. He was setting out his toothbrush and a few bits of toiletries.

Maybe he sensed me entering behind him because he turned around with a little bit of a jump.

“I was thinking I might head into the office,” I said. “Do you wanna come and meet the team? No pressure if you need a breather.”

He looked up at me and smiled.

“Sure, great. Just give me five minutes.”

“Cool,” I said. “No huge rush.”

He turned back toward the mirror but smiled at me in the reflection.

***

As we stepped out of the apartment onto Tottenham Street, Fitzrovia was a quiet pool of calm and cool right into the heart of the city. Streets were lined with smart little restaurants and chic stores, but there was no huge traffic of people.

The narrow streets did not get too busy until we started to head nearer Oxford Street. The great beast of European shopping then showed its face: vast armies of shoppers, of every possible type of person, moving like enormous shoals of fish in the ocean along its wide sidewalks, past the vast clothes stores and department stores that lined it.

I know London well, but this is one of its great surprises, how you can be somewhere so quiet, then suddenly, radically, everything changes, and you are part of its singular, thumping heartbeat. You can get a bit of that in New York, say, walking from Eighth Avenue to Ninth in Manhattan, but this was like night and day.

I turned to look at Paul, who was seeing it all for the first time, and his eyes were wide.

“Does it remind you of New York”? I asked.

“Sure,” he said, “but it’s different, too.”

“In what way?”

“I mean, the stores are the same, people are doing the same things, but it’s different too. It’s…” He paused for the word. “…older.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But sometimes it’s kind of newer too.”

He looked at me, not quite catching what I meant. It didn’t matter.

We crossed the road and proceeded down a little side road toward Soho Square. With the roar of Oxford Street still easily within earshot, the green expanse of the square was a sudden, tranquil oasis.

On its manicured lawns and under its leafy trees sat every kind of Londoner: cool girls with hot jobs in media or fashion, people who worked in the clothes stores we’d just passed, office workers sitting alone, eating a sandwich and staring at a smartphone, literary and artistic types, students, tourists.

“This is so cool,” Paul said as we both gazed out over the sight. “I can’t believe we are not even a minute from all the madness on Oxford Street.”

“London is full of places like this. We haven’t even seen Soho, and there are, like, endless different areas you can go out in.” With a wink and a grin, I turned to Paul, my excitement bubbling over. “We’re going to have so much fun,” I declared.

His eyes sparkled with excitement. Suddenly, the sun came out and bathed the whole area in warm golden light. It was a beautiful, unexpected moment.

“Let’s sit down for a moment,” I said, pointing to a bench.

“Cool,” he said.

Nearby, there were outdoor table tennis tables cast in concrete. People were queuing to play. We watched the players bat the ball back and forth, some hopeless, some really talented. But it didn’t seem to matter. Everyone was having fun in the sunshine.

As we sat there, Paul asked me about past good times in London.

“You know, Paul, the Brits really know how to enjoy themselves. We think of them as being, like, these really uptight sticklers for behavior, and they kind of can be, but they have this really fun side to them.”

“Really?” he asked.

I nodded.

“In fact, I think perhaps the truth is that because they are actually quite reserved, when they have a night out, they go a bit wild.”

Paul laughed a bit uneasily.

“Man, I am not that much of a drinker. I am a bit of a lightweight.”

I shook my head playfully.

“Don’t try to keep up with them, even the women! Don’t even try!” Paul chuckled. “You’ll see. The London office will want to have-“ I paused dramatically “-a good time.”

“That sounds like a threat.”

I laughed to myself.

“Just you wait and see.”