seconds: You felt your own breath, were aware of the temperature and weight of the air on your own skin, heard the prickling tic-tic of the rain on the windows. The train had hitched, slowed, and hitched again. The night continued to blur past the windows, some rain splatter sprinkling against the glass, but Saunders thought there was a chance they were closing on Foxham, or whatever was next down the tracks. And if the businesswolf was talking to him, then he wasn’t attacking.
“The American fairy tale,” the wolf said. “You know the one. That we can all be like you. That we should all want to be like you. That you can wave your American Tinker Bell dust over our pathetic countries and abracadabra! A McDonald’s here and an Urban Outfitters there and England will be just like home. Your home. I am honestly humiliated to ever have believed it. You would think a bloke like me, of all people, would know it isn’t true. You can stick a Disneyland T-shirt on a wolf, but it’s still a wolf.”
The train hitched and slowed another degree. When Saunders looked out his window, he could see brick town houses flashing by, some lights on behind a few of the windows, and bare trees tossing in the wind, clawing at the sky. Even the trees were different in England. They were the same varieties you found in the States but subtly unlike American trees, more gnarled and bent, as if twisted by colder, harsher winds.
“Everyone is dead in the other car,” Saunders said, feeling curiously removed from himself, from his own voice.
The wolf grunted.
“Why not me?”
The wolf didn’t look at him, seemed to be losing interest in the conversation. “This is first class. If you can’t get civility here, where can you get it? Besides. I’m wearing a Gieves & Hawkes. This suit set me back five hundred quid. Wouldn’t do to stain it. And what’s the point of riding first class if you have to chase down your own grub? They bring a trolley through for us.” He leafed to the next page of his Times. “At least they’re supposed to. They’re taking their fucking time about it, aren’t they?” He paused, then added, “Please pardon my language. The thing about civility—it’s hard to maintain when you’re barking mad with hunger.”
The conductor said something in a choked, wolfish voice on the intercom, but Saunders couldn’t hear him over what his own wolf was saying to him and above the roar of blood in his ears. But he didn’t need to hear the conductor anyway, because Saunders knew what he was saying. They had arrived at the station at last. The train was slamming ungently to rest. Saunders grabbed the seat in front of him and lurched to his feet. Outside, he had a glimpse of a concrete platform, a brick breezeway, a glowing old-fashioned clock stuck up on the station wall. He began walking swiftly for the front of the car.
“’Ey,” laughed the wolf. “Don’t you want your coat? Come on back and get it.”
Saunders kept walking. He reached the door at the end of the cabin in five long strides and hit the DOOR OPEN button. The wolf barked a last laugh at Saunders’s back, and Saunders dared a final glance over his shoulder. The businesswolf was disappearing behind his paper once more.
“Microsoft shares are down,” the wolf said, in a tone that somehow combined disappointment with a certain rueful satisfaction. “Nike shares are down. This isn’t a recession, you know. This is reality. You people are finding out the actual worth of the things you make: your sneakers, your software, your coffee, your myths. You people are finding out now what it’s like when you push too far into the deep, dark woods.”
Then Saunders was out the door and on the platform. He had thought it was raining, but what came down was more of a weak, cold mist, a fine-grained moisture suspended in the air. The station exit was across the platform, a flight of stairs to the road below.
He had gone no more than five paces before he heard loud, derisive yipping behind him and looked back to see two wolves descending from coach. Not the wolves in suits but the one in the Wolfgang Amadeus T-shirt and the other dressed for a Manchester United match. Manchester United clapped Wolfgang on the shoulder and jerked his snout in Saunders’s direction.