I leave the flat, the sky gunmetal grey, billowing clouds, the bright lights of shops shining in the dark.
I need to find something to eat…
Instead, I am in an Uber coming back to the flat. The driver asks me, “Can I drop you here? It’s just through there,” he points.
We are in a parking lot behind a row of shops or office buildings, like you would find at the back of a strip mall. Presumably my road is on the front side of the building. The Uber driver can’t go any further.
He points at an alley behind two green industrial dustbins, and the other side of the bins, and through the alley, I see the lights of Main Street.
After I am back on the road, after I’ve wandered some distance, I realize I am lost and I don’t know my way back to the flat. I try to Google Maps the way, entering the word ‘Northeastern’ but I keep misspelling it. I try again, only shorter this time: ‘NEU dorms’ but still my phone auto-corrects the spelling.
A group of young students (or are they a family?) pass me by on a narrow market street. I’ll try them, I think, although I never ask for directions.
I’m already missing Dee. Like I should call her.
“Do you know the way to Northeastern?” I ask a tall young man from the group.
He is tall and handsome, short black hair with a square jaw and rugged American-like features. He looks like an athlete.
“Sure,” and he points with a firm palm towards the market building ahead of me.
The market was from where he came. “I’ll help you,” he says. “Through here.” He comes with me into the building and we walk together along narrow paths between the market vendors.
We pass the meat section and cross over to the fish stalls. A fishmonger ahead of us, his fish laid out on chopping blocks looks up at me as he brings his cleaver down on a silver tuna’s neck. A clean strike reveals the clear red meat of its torso. The spine shows as a single bloody circle in the middle of the meat.
“Continue on through there.” The young student points left side of the fishmonger’s.
“Yes, I can make it from here.” I tell him.
And I continue past the fishmonger’s. The shiny market floor tiles are red, they are washed with the water that flushes the entrails of fish to the gutter that passes along the center of the aisle.
Beyond the fishmonger’s is the exit, the other end of the building. I am about to leave when, across the way, I spot a toilet. It is nothing but a large rusted door encased in a wall, a metal clasp slightly open, the door panel with the symbol for a man, barely visible, etched in the panel.
A sign on a metal plate says ‘Staff Only’, presumably it refers to the fishmonger’s, but I reckon they won’t mind and so I enter.
The toilet has dark rough hewn walls but inside it’s bright enough as, from a small opening at the top, the light comes from the fishmongers outside. The light casts a glow across coarse white painted walls and floor.
The stench of stale urine is unbearable. It attacks my nostrils. In the far corner of the toilet is a hole, the end of a sloped floor, where I presume you piss. I am about to set myself to do just that when from somewhere in the ceiling, water pours down the walls and across the floor, presumably to flush the toilet.
The water spills across the coarse floor. It comes close to my shoes, but the stench of piss is still in my nostrils.
I step back enough to avoid the water as it drains down the hole.
Photo in public domain from Raw Pixel.
