Let me talk about process. I reviewed the information and pictures on Piccadilly Circus and then didn't use most of it. As I began to write, I began to hear Virginia's voice come through so I went back to A Room of One's Own and used a direct quote from there and put it in Virginia's mouth. Also, though I write in first person, the narrator and I are not one and the same. I hate places like the Hard Rock Cafe and Planet Hollywood. Also, my character is not a member of the Richmond Education Association. I am.
Also, I began writing in the past tense and then remembered that I prefer writing in the present, so I changed everything and liked it better.
By the way, this program is not allowing me to indent paragraphs, so I am going to write block style. When you write your Infernos, tab or indent at least five spaces. Do not use the block or business style or you will lose points.
Anyway, here goes:
There is something vaguely familiar about the woman who approaches me just as I leave the tube station and enter the neon glare of Piccadilly Circus in London. Her clothing seems dated, somehow, a navy blue dress with a hip length bodice and a pleated skirt, double-breasted and with a sailor collar with white stripes. Her long grey hair is tied back into a bun at the nape of her neck, but a few careless strands dance about her face, which is remarkably unlined, though she's sixty if she's a day.
She can not be familiar, of course, because the only people I know in London are my cousins, the Keens. Perhaps she thinks I am a long-lost relative of hers, and that is why she gazes in my direction. It is of no concern of mine, surely. And besides, I have things to do, places to go, people to see.
Piccadilly Circus is ablaze with neon and people, mostly younger and with multiple tattoos and piercings. There are some older people also, with unfortunate tattoos and piercings, much of which has expanded with weight and now sags with age. I turn away.
The Planet Hollywood sign, with a larger than life picture of Elvis in Vegas disco get-up, his hand pointed skyward Saturday Night Fever style, beckons. All the other tourists seem headed in that direction, so that must be the place to go. I wonder if it's as cool as Toronto's Hard Rock Cafe, I consider, and then decide it's probably even cooler.
I step onto the cobbled streets and have just passed the public square where artists do portraits or caricatures for ten pounds, when I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn to see this troubling woman, smaller than I had originally thought, standing and smiling.
"I'm just a tourist," I begin explaining. "I don't even know where I'm going."
"I know you're a tourist," she says in that wonderfully clipped elite-Londoner's dialect. "I have come here for you."
"I don't recall having made plans for a tour guide," I say as I file through my brain for the plans I had made with the tourist agency. No, a guide would have been nice, but its price was too dear and I would prefer to spend the money at Harrods' or Marks and Spencer or even on an extravagant evening out.
"I know you turned down the guide," she says. "In fact, I know everything about you."
Now I start filing through my brain to see if I might have done anything to alert the Department of Homeland Security other than to vote the Democratic ticket. I'm not even a member of the teacher's union, so it's not likely that.
"No, I'm not a spook for Homeland Security," she says.
"How could you know," I say, and before I can finish, I find myself transported like Ebenezer Scrooge, to a rose garden in Regents Park.
"I know all," she says calmly and turns me in the direction of one of the lakes near the Japanese gardens. "I see all. You too will come to see all."
She takes my trembling arm and guides me past the Princess Diana pink blooms and toward the lake where the mallards and swans glide about while Canada geese fly in and out, hither and thither, if you will. Why am I thinking this way? Hither and thither. The weeping willows are in full lamentation, the lake reflects what it chooses of sky and bridge. Something about a fish.
"Alas, laid on the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth eating," she says and I know from this moment on that this, impossible as it seems, is Virgina Woolf.
