Around noon Kaja's husband called from work at the embassy. There will be a dinner tonight, some sort of a cultural summit, and it is best if she attends with him, since important people will show up and having a woman around might come in handy.
"Is it at the embassy?" she asked.
"Somewhere else. Are you busy right now? Can you grab a pen?" he sounded a little raspy. Tilting her head to clamp the receiver between her cheek and shoulder, she jotted down the long address.
"Do you know where that is?"
She stared at the white wall above the fridge. "Yes?" She quickly added, "I won't get lost this time, I promise."
For a moment he said nothing. A fax machine beeped in the background.
"Do me a favor and just get a taxi. And wear something nice. Sandra called in sick today so you are guaranteed to be hottest girl from our embassy."
She let out a quiet chuckle.
"Alright. Talk to you soon." He hung up.
Of course Kaja wasn't getting a taxi. They had moved to an expensive foreign city now, and although her husband had a decent paycheck, he was only just starting out on what might one day become a lucrative career. She had to think about their future. Besides, the taxi drivers here creeped her out--ubiquitous old men with their white gloves and ties, their painted smiles slipping off their faces if you stared for a second too long.
But maybe she was being too harsh. No doubt they were all perfectly normal people. Nothing ever seemed to go seriously wrong in this perfectly run country--and somehow, that was the most unsettling part for her.
Kaja preferred the metro. She always left early--just in case she took a wrong turn or missed a stop. That horrible tangle of colored lines like threads pulled tight across the city was slowly starting to make sense to her. She had memorized her route: the stations, the transfers, the direction each line ran.
If everything went smoothly, she'd be there in forty minutes.
At first, the car was fairly empty, though there wasn't a single seat left, so Kaja stood alone near the doors.
A few heads turned slightly when she stepped in. The kind of attention she drew as a tall blonde woman wasn't always welcome, though most of the time the locals reserved their opinions behind their poker faces. They were really good at pretending she didn't exist.
Certainly, Kaja wasn't used to this, not being paid any attention; paradoxically it felt like all the attention was paid to her.
She had heard stories about how other fellow expats dyed their hair to a deeper shade and that immediately made a difference. Her husband would be working here for a few more years. She wondered if one day she would have to do the same, and the thought made her uneasy.
Kaja glanced down at herself. She had dressed thoughtfully--not too flashy and not too loud. But still, her taste was unmistakably Western, and she was used to dressing not to hide her body but to make it more noticeable. Her arms were bare, and her neck was unburdened by any blouse collar or cardigan. The black sheath dress followed the inward dip of her waist, traced the curve of her hips, and ended just below the knee, where it tightened again, instead of falling down to cover much of the calves like the local women's dresses.
She was wearing tights and a pair of stylish burgundy pumps, on which she shifted her weight from time to time and continued to unfold into the space rather than folding into herself. She thought about the mysterious, important people she'd meet tonight. She undid her hair, then pulled it back again--she knew she had a lovely forehead.
After several stops the car began to get crowded.
She was pressed against the side of the door that rarely opened. The air was turning thick and stale. She realized she was staring down at men's bald heads. There was nowhere to look but out at the wall of gray apartment blocks with matchbox balconies, never going above an unreasonable height, broken only by the brazenly colored corner shops.
From her handbag, Kaja took out a pocket edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, its gilded edges worn. It was an old gift she always carried--partly because she'd never finished it, partly because she kept forgetting where she'd left off.
Her fingers landed on a random page:
"'Well, I'll eat it,' said Alice, 'and if it makes me grow larger, I can reach the key; and if it makes me grow smaller, I can creep under the door: so either way I'll get into the garden, and I don't care which happens!'
She ate a little bit, and said anxiously to herself, 'Which way? Which way?' holding her hand on the top of her head to feel which way she was growing; and she was quite surprised to find that she remained the same size..."
The car swayed gently from side to side. Around Kaja, the world blurred, just like the mirror fogging over after a hot shower.
Then she felt something pressing against her feet.
She was standing with her feet pressed together, because how crowded it was, and the thing was ever so slightly pushing at her heels. She moved her feet slightly apart, but it followed in. She peeked down and saw a man's muddy sneaker.
Kaja felt a flicker of unease, but it quickly washed over her. She guessed she was getting used to the constant lack of space, the frequent brush of shoulders, without any apologies.
But the sneaker continued to nudge against her heels until she had to move again. His leg went between hers and his pants were brushing against her calves. Her feet were as apart as she could allow without touching other people, and now the man's intruding foot rested almost perpendicular to hers.
Except for an occasional cough from somewhere farther down, there was not a sound in the car but those made by the train itself.
