Crowded scenes have a tendency to squeeze you up at folks you'd rather not meet in broad daylight.
This route up north shines me in streets I purposely avoided. Too many tourists, pickpockets and cops. The so-called normal landscape you'll have a hard time appreciating after noticing the small tents made of scrape of jackets in shaded corners or under the linden trees further from sights, more so if you know what the place looks like at 3 in the morning. Word of caution : don't wear flip-flops around here in any circumstances.
The painted tiles draw a great mural depicting an Aztec celebration under thousands of feet and used needles in styrofoam takeaway boxes. I kicked off the letter and joined the former as I squeeze through a 50-ish-looking man with short legs taking pictures for their kids and square-face wife.
I follow the flood of people, wherever they go, I go. Only when I derail too far off my initial destination do I cut some corners. Trying to shake someone off in a crowded scene is extremely easy but the pressure at the back of my head is still haunting me with the sun above occasionally making me squint my eyes, wishing I'd wear the shades.
Something's wrong.
It's been 13 minutes. No one would be that persistent on jumping someone on a fucking whim, at least those three don't appear so. I've tried to spot the tailer with bay windows across the traffic or sharp turn into dead ends but the pressure only disappears momentarily until I return to Via martinase.
Counting paranoia out of discussion, whoever it is has some serious talent.
I turn right out of intuition and find myself in a small parking lot surrounded by three-story-high brick walls partially blocking the daylight and a small gap between all the moss and dried paint blinks at me. A hangman-looking wire pole nailed next to a closed window with newspapers as curtain. The wire runs along the wall into the gap and is turned right by the distant gleam from the sunlight through the shapes of people back on Main Street. The place is empty, quiet, and filled with reflectors.
My vision dreaded hues of purple and the pressure continued throughout my walk across the perimeter. I turn left to walk along the gray and maroon washed brick wall to the left, by a light blue truck at the corner with side mirrors closed but the see-through glass gave me a small insight into the rear mirror reflecting the sights of the parking lot entrance on my south-east.
The timing would've been better if I slowed a step or two but I saw it. A slightly hunched figure with a flash of gray hair pokes out the alley before I lost sight. I saw his face but couldn't remember a single detail.
Didn't hear any footsteps. Didn't blindly follow into a possible dead end, and only did so when I was off sight. Shit, I was close to faulting this on paranoia.
With the newfound confirmation. I gave up on catching the person by myself, it's not happening in a neighborhood I'm not accustomed to. Instead, I widen my steps and paces towards the metro station.
20 paces behind. It's the perfect distance for gaining ground or a left turn into a kiosk if the target suddenly goes towards you. But 20 steps is still far. Far enough for me to work with.
I left the shiver up my spine and the pressure up my nape in the parking lot. Forgetting their existence all together and walking side by side through the gap back in the malevolent embrace of a sunny day and heaving wave of Yankees and Europeans passing towards farer north.
Across the four-lane street and a row of bollards in the middle is the horizontal street, possibly leading to downtown or Augustus. St. My eyes swayed around the foreign district as I pathed the quickest path away from this spot in my mind.
I take the left and cut through crowd of white summer dress ladies walking at the speed of a Parkinson unbuttoning his pants. Then run a small traffic light to an overpass made of reinforced glass and bare rebars but the stairs up are padded by peddle stone. I quicken my steps to the limit before drawing pedestrians' attention.
And as I climbed up the stairs, the traffic light I ignored turned green. Those summer dress hags remained their marching speed even if the countdown under the green light only went up to 25. I skip two steps by an unmoving hobo with a board leaning next to his green army coat. It reads 'fuck off'.
20 steps behind....... I took a gamble and kneeled to the left of the snoring homeless man as if I was tying my shoelaces while I stare through the transparent overpass at the small alleyway I emerged from and everything near it.
A rat climb up the tube by a leather shop's bay window, causing a little girl who was staring at the sewing machine on display to trot and jump, the two well-dressed old men by the storefront turned half-interested towards the scene while a man in lose sleeve shirt tilt his figure into the boutique behind them. On the right the alley between shops raised of spotless windows and dirty marble, those white-dressed swine finally made it through the traffic light, and the ones rude (smart) enough to bypass them were off quickening their paces as the light turned red.
Sun sets from the tip of the distant sky right above the skyscrapers taunting their shining integument in front and spraying the sun light into this already glinting side street, west of Via Martinase. The fake jewels hanging by the 40ish woman's chest and the real ones biting the earlobes, the golden rim of aviator shades lock on the bald hotel doorman's nose bridge, the bronze buckle of a flat briefcase which looks too shiny to be real, sitting on a lone bench by the bus stop.
My eyes traced all the little details of the street but found nothing wrong, everyone was doing exactly as expected. But no one was paying attention to the overpass, or the guy kneeling unnaturally close to the hobo while tying his shoes......
"Qué demonios haces?" A surprisingly clean and well-articulated voice rings from the homeless man's throat. I knew he was awake the second I stopped by, but did't expect his tone to be so calm.
"Escondite." I shoot him a quick glance before darting my focus back to the exit of the parking lot alley. The man in a green army jacket turns his gaze to the spot as well, while doing so, I give the side of his neck another glance.
He's way too clean.
His layers of coat, hoodie, baggy jeans, beanie, and face. Get him shaven up and he's as good as anyone else......
"Lo perdíste." He states annoyingly.
"Qué?"
"Te lo perdiste cada 15 segundos..." The glistening hazel color eyes roll down and the wrinkled hand pulls out an old chronograph leather watch with lines of crack across its surface and mold-infested dots on belt. His bony index finger dances on the hands of the watch before hiding it inside his jacket again.
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"You've missed it 7 times. You're about to miss it again." He knocks the window behind while he announces sarcastically, hooking the end of the syllables up in the air. With the back of his hand flat on, he opens his empty palms with countless callous most noticeably around his thumb. Then he retracts the pinkie.
"Cinco." I press down the irritation in mind and pull my vision back to the full view beneath.
"Cuatro!" Ring finger bent inwards.
The man in a loose-sleeved shirt walks sideways out the alley and.....whoever the hell's next to me is watching. Weird, didn't recall there were back doors around the parking lot. He side-eyes the narrow seam before sauntering along the street.
"Tres! Estas ciego?" The middle finger twirls tauntingly before joining the other two.
Puta madre.
I squint my eyes toward where the loose-shirt man is heading but the small queue at the bus stop blocks out further sight.
"Dos!" Bloated thumb up.
Fuck it. Instead of trying to find the stalker, I burn the image right at this moment inside my brain, every single pedestrian's whereabouts, what they're up to, where they're heading. Like a painting on the ceiling. Don't try to change it, mesmerize it, and wait for the reckoning.
"Uno." A fist on the glass. He turns toward the street along.
An itch at the back of my head as the pressure reacted for a single second. My eyes move by themselves to a pair of green at the shadow of a wire pole next to the alleyway I've been fixated on. That single second, three shops and a traffic light away. I see them widen as the gray-haired man in a track coat, cotton pants before he disappears into the closest open store without making a scene. Can't remember a single face feature from this distance but I'm sure he has a hunchback.
"Aficionado." The homeless man leaned back on the overpass with his eyelids lowering but noticing my raised brows he added. "I'm talking about you.” Now should I thank him or stomp on his face?
"And you are?" Not answering my question. He tilts his head back onto the street view while his rounded eyes trace the storefront where the stalker has gone. A moment later, he moved his hip back a little to sit upright and tilted his head slothfully at me while keeping the line of sight.
"Got smoke?" I look around the empty overpass for a second thinking if he's that out there and took out the pack in my jacket pocket. Half a column of ciggies lean on the wrap paper with their mildly squashed filters. I cursed in my head and threw him the whole pack.
"Here." He catches it with one hand to flick open the packaging with his thumb and catch one between his unkempt beard. Then, he twirl the pack and raise it back towards me in which I wave it off. The homeless man blinks twice before stuffing the pack inside his jacket as well.
"I'm not gonna light it for you." Upon my words he dart his clear hazel eyes at me like I just cursed all his ancestors. "You can get matches at any Red Cross if you ask nicely.....in English." He hums before checking his watch again, murmuring a dialect I never heard of in Euforia.
"Then give me a hand." He grunts and hangs his right arm on the handle and raises the left at me. I sign a silent breath and warp the arm around my shoulder before dragging him up right after a couple of hops.
He's surprisingly heavy.
With a hand on the handle and his left leg dragging in a strange, curled stance. The homeless man rest the cig behind his ear before limping towards the stairs I used, hard boots knocks and screeches against the glass floor.
"He won't give up, little birdy. He's determined..." He exclaims as well as waving his hand aimlessly to the left. Unconsciously I glanced the pharmacy the tailer walked in only to turn around and find the homeless man's already at the edge of the stairs.
"Hey! How did you found him in the first place?" I shout towards his descending figure.
"Jugué mucho al escondite!" He laugh ironically with a crystal clear voice before it became a genuine guffaw as his figure disappeared under the peddles stone leaving me wondering what the fuck happened. To the right, the man in an army jacket mixed into waves of moderately interested pedestrians heading west towards shore or Disalos.
***
I shook off the speculations running wild inside of my head and paced through the empty overpass with 'fuck off' cardboard sign leaning on the side.
1:11 I've spent way too much time playing games with that stalker and gone stranded to my original route. Judging by the landmarks, I should be somewhere west of the closest circular line station now. I can barely see the signature twisted structure of tower 57 behind columns of 'preservation act' marble buildings, the silver rebars swirl elegantly towards the sky swaying sharper and sharper until the lighting rod dipping the sky shaped it as a drill, a nail on the floor amongst the classical Hungarian oriented hotel buildings and the glorified khaki color shopping centers and business headquarters that'd been off trend for half a century.
Three blocks later. As the tension at my nape subsided and the red circle sign hung by the wind on the underground exit's malachite green canopy finally appeared at the fourth wrong turn.
Stepping down a bit more urgently than the others, the dimmer lights of warm yellow need some time to adjust as the afterimages of scorching sunlight reflected on rows of double parking windows.
The old incandescent lightbulbs in budge black cages shines the musty, damp air in its half-meter radius. They were set along the freshly tiled mosaic frescos after the cultural reawakening project (currently the most successful project run by Congress).
10th Street and the docks might've been the earliest development jump for Faust but the first metro system was the circular line at the east. Evidently, it attracts quite a few as the whole system got an aesthetic that some consider romantically nostalgic as if they spent their childhoods in a fucking underground shelter.
The lights were blocked by the inconsistent rush of people going by with their 2000-dollar suits or 20 bucks worth of fake citizen IDs. Their frail and uptight postures are depicted as shadows on the right of the mosaic tunnel, painting it black with flecks of light jumping up and down like the night sky in a blackout.
Crowds of people at half an arm's reach trying to give each other as much distance as possible natheless acting like you're offending their personal space as well as them too. I adjust to the pace till I hear the screeching chime of the red line express across fare gates. There, I bypass a group of college kids in tap-water-taste jean jackets and squeeze aside a dame on her phone standing not too close nor too far to the only card reader without a waiting queue.
I sprint through the already cleared platform with only a few sitting idly on the benches tilting at the information board. Two seconds after the last chime stopped I skipped steps into a leap. The hem of my jacket almost got clamped between doors but I got on. As I pat off the wrinkles by the zipper I notice the wave of folks by the card reader were still in their initial careless pace.
Made sense, anyone who's loitering around the by-branches of Via Martinase at 1 in the afternoon probably never got anything to hurry about in their life. But amongst them, despite I couldn't feel the pressure at my nape, it felt like I could see a pair of green eyes jumping from a man's shoulder to another's.
***
The ride was uneventful, or so I thought as my mind was occupied by the grey-haired tailer and the army jacket hobo. Whatever the hell they did what they did, it’s telltale these ordeals had been happening way too fucking common. And no matter if their 'Liu Jiu' or else it had become a problem.
As I step out of the Saint Christopher station to the familiar sights of degenerates and whores. I took the lesser traveled alleyways and barbershop's backdoor that saved me a couple of minutes and made it to Dean's at 1:34.
The slightly obesity man smoking out in front the walkman sits somewhere between a jazz player who had endured physical labor for too long time or reversed.
Though fun fact: Mr. Norris over there in a lampblack stained apron is a real undertaker and bonafide tone deaf.
"Shit.” The cigarette got tossed to the empty lot as he rests a hand on his left knee to get up “Lord don't take me now for I am witnessing a sight to behold. That motherfucker's still alive!" Striding towards me in the same demeanor as someone who's got a bone to pick, grin like the first time an infant sees the television.
Dean practically bashes my shoulder down, shaking me in his left arm while simultaneously leading me to his run-of-the-mill-looking dinner in the southeast of the lanes, it's closer to Manche Mousquetaire than anything else. Things are relatively much less dense in comparison, but it's without a doubt part of the lane's crude and wicked tradition. So does the man laying half of his body on my shoulder despite knowing I hate it.