The streets aren’t all curved, but they do all look the same. I lose my bearings in under 10 seconds and can barely keep our guides before me and Francesca behind me in sight at the same time.
This is the “Old City.” Ciudad viejo… the place where men have died running for centuries. The cobbled streets where footpads and cutpurses have shuffled down these side streets and alleys waiting for an easy mark since the city was built.
This is where they are going to murder me.
The light is gone. The door from the street to this passageway just shut and now there is nothing here but the rotting wood, the stone walls too close on either side, and the strange drunk foreigners I can’t understand. I hear them as they beckon me to follow them up the stairs.
No light. Four flights of creaking rotting precipitous stairs. No light.
I can feel the sconces on the wall; sometimes with my head, as they are placed too low. They may have help candles or light bulbs with equal likelihood. They hold no light for me now.
Suffocating minutes choking on the mold seem like much too long. Far too many stairs. Babel. We’re climbing to Heaven.
Finally a light; a bare bulb that has managed to withstand the ravages that are evident in the broken planks and score walls that form this dungeon. Now, I can see my drunken guides as they are. No longer sinister; simply well and truly drunk.
The key materializes in my hand. I didn’t know I was holding it, but the angry red outline in my flesh tells me I was and always have been; it shouts of my tension.
Key forward, I open the door.
The first fresh air in what seems like an eternity hits my nose. After the streets of vomit and urine, and the stairs of decrepitude, this wonderful aroma of laundry and home is a feast and a fortune at once. Hardwood floors greet my feet stepping off the tumbledown palace stairs behind me. there is a study to my right, a bathroom to my left, followed rapidly by a kitchen, a living room and two more bedrooms.
The entire flat is furnished. The walls of the common area are lined with bookshelves which are in turn filled with movies, books, and knick-nacks from all over the world. Africa, China, Australia, America and most of Europe are represented in the décor around the room. Much like the city surrounding us, this tiny place I’ve carved off is filled with thoughts from almost everywhere on the globe.
Joe and Rang are busy staring at Francesca’s breasts while I take in the view of the street. We are on the top floor. The balcony opens up above hard pavement with a tigh high rail made more for decoration than anything else. This isn’t the Waldorf. There are no safety railings or nets to catch jumpers. I am staring 50 feet to the cobblestone below covered with people and light refuse.
There is a guy peeing in a doorway down the street.
An Open Doorway.
I remember why my back hurts. Grabbing my backpack, I open it up and pull out the gigantic bottle of Jack Daniels, thunking it down on the round table at the edge of the room.
Joe’s voice says what we’re all thinking. “Whiskey, you mad bastard.”
