I enter.  Me voilà! I think - though I would upon entry appear to be thinking it quite alone.  Behind the counter stands, or hunches, or crouches, or I'm-not-sure-what, the figure - the face, the semblance of a face - of a man who seems entirely unamused.  And equally unimpressed with the cosmopolite that I am.

"The restrooms, please." I announce.   He stares at me, and something like a smirk slowly invades the lower half of what passes for his face.

"The what?" he asks.

The mantle of his voice, meanwhile, doesn't really register - at least not as a voice.  It sounds - how shall I put it? - more like a grumble from the earth's bowels.

"Where are your restrooms?" I ask without further ceremony.  The cave-like mouth becomes a cave.  Opens wide, opens black.  Yet nothing comes out of that blackness but the semblance of a laugh.  I lean in for a glimpse, then draw back in horror.  It's pitch black, arid, rank - like an exhaust fan blowing out the backside of a restaurant kitchen.  A kitchen in which poultry or fish have lain too long and have begun to turn.  Against me, against the kitchen, against themselves, even.  The stench makes me want to retch.  I run out.

As I walk down the sidewalk at a brisk clip, the laugh seems to pursue, grow louder, reverberate from the concrete on all sides of me.  I turn the corner back towards home with a full city block to go, then another turn, then another half-block until I'm safely at my front door, can get inside, can lock the door and board up.

I notice that the heat seems to pull at my legs, to drag me down, to hold me back.  'Seems to render forward motion and mobility a thing of desperation, a struggle, a fight, a war in which I am welded to the spot.  My mouth is dry; my lips, parched; my throat, burning.  I want to cry out, but I haven't the strength.  I want help, but I see no one to call to.  There is not a single other person around, I think with a shudder.

I stop and listen.  The laugh is gone.  And then I realize.  Realize that the only sound I hear is that of my own breathing.  Not a voice.  Not a honk.  Not even a distant siren.  In this city of eight million, not a sound - except for my own breathing.

I back up very slowly against the side of the building and let my eyes survey the panorama, left to right, one hundred and eighty degrees.  Nothing moves.  Not a thing.  There's no life on the street but me.


I push off the building and set out again on my earlier course towards home and safety - walking at a steady clip, though not so quickly as to attract attention.  The last thing I want is to arouse suspicion.  And so I walk straight on, hands down at my sides, eyes dead-set ahead.

I reach the corner and turn.  Here, as before, no sign of life.  But I can already see my front door at a distance.  I suppress the urge to cry out, to laugh, to suggest anything but absolute sobriety and presence of mind.  At thirty or forty paces from my front door, I allow my eyes to scan slowly to the left, across the street, to the park bench, where I see a mound.  And a shopping cart.  Upon first inspection, they look identical to the mound and cart that had previously occupied the same space.  I quicken my pace, avert my eyes.  There is - at least for the moment - no chaff of knowledge I wish to glean about either.

I hurry to the front door and slip through before anyone or anything can stop me.  'Shut the door tight and look down to find the same planks and nails I'd previously used to board up the same door - apparently untouched in the few minutes I've been out.

I do the job quickly.  'Allow myself a smile and a chuckle as I realize once again my good fortune.  I'm safe!  Secure!  Not yet entirely at home, but at least inside my building.  I've lost nothing! I tell myself as I next hurry to the stairs.

Once inside my own apartment, I repeat the exercise with door and windows.  Quickly!   There's no time to lose!  They'll be coming!  Coming for me!  I'm perspiring profusely, my clothes soaked through with my own sweat.  But there's time enough for a shower and a change of clothes.  For now, safety's the thing.  Safety, security, property.

I pound in the last nail and test my defense for durability, then fling the hammer to the floor and run to the bathroom.  I strip as if my clothes were on fire and throw them every which way - then step into the shower stall as if I were on fire.  My body, pouring sweat - scorched, in flames, bristling, burning up.

I turn the faucet and look up to the shower head for relief.  But nothing comes out except a distant rumble from the pipes.  A rumble that sounds like a laugh - out of a mouth, out of a cave, out of the bowels of the earth.  This can't be! I try the hot water faucet for the same result - its rumble sounding like an even deeper, more cynical reverberation of the first.  I hastily turn both faucets off so as to rid my ears of the sound, then jump out of the shower stall and run to the kitchen.  It's a fluke I think to myself as I reach out to the faucet over the kitchen sink and frantically turn.  But no.  Nothing but the rumble of plumbing.

I throw open the freezer door, take out a tray of ice-cubes, give the tray a whack against the counter-top.  Cubes fly everywhere and I dive for a pair - then apply their cold, wet surfaces to my skin to douse the flames.  Relief brings a chuckle of contentment.  They're melting quickly and I'm standing in little puddles - but I don't care.  My fire is out!

I suddenly think about my judas window and tiptoe over to the far side of my apartment, put my eye to the tiny opening and peer out.  There, across the street, is the familiar park bench and shopping cart.  On the bench, a mound of black plastic.  As if on cue - as if a gust of wind had been called up at this very instant for my blessing - the edges of the plastic fold back.  I squint for focus and see, inside, a heap of something formless that is neither gray nor white, but some color in between.  At this distance, I can't discern the consistency of the grayish, whitish mass until a second, more persistent gust of wind picks up and scatters the mass in all directions.  It is - or was - apparently, a mound of ashes, now gone.  An instant later, the black plastic flies off into the air like a thing of no consequence, of no earthly properties like weight or substance.

A shadow enters my visual frame momentarily, then slowly withdraws with the shopping cart and leaves the park bench once again empty.

I sink to the floor to consider my safety, my security, my great good fortune.  I, for the moment at least, have all of me - high, dry and secure.