I stood in front of it now, empty of vendors, empty of people, wrapping my long coat around me tightly, my feet aching in their sandals. I clutched Amadeus in my arms, feeling vaguely preposterous. He didn't squirm or claw at me like most cats; instead, he let himself be wrapped up in a scarf, and carried, as long as I let him poke his face through the folds, and occasionally a paw or two would find it's way out. A strange cat.
I'd walked ten blocks, at three in the morning, to get to Pearl Market. I didn't know what I was doing, or what I should be doing. I looked around, searching for signs of life. A janitor swept some trash into a pail, and then emptied it into a garbage can. In the distance, cars honked, and tires hummed. The sidewalk was slick from a rain the night before. The janitor's eyes were empty, and his tired gray uniform hung around him like a sack. He glanced briefly up at me, and then back down to his work.
�too late for her to be here�I'll never get this smell out�fish heads, cabbage, fruit peels�my god. Where is she going? Oh well. Nothing happening�maybe she's working�sad thing�
I jumped, and the janitor looked up. Quickly, I darted past him and down the iron stairs to the lower level, my feet clattering against the metal and the iron ringing like the inside of a bell. Four flights of stairs later I made it to the bottom, feeling like I was inside of the earth. The top of the stairs stretched far away from me, and the smallest patch of night sky sank its finger into view. I stepped onto the creaky wood floor, glancing around. I was beyond fear. Granted, my heart was doing a rumba, and my blood pressure had sky rocketed far beyond a healthy level, but hey. Look where I was, what I was doing. And the time of night I was doing it, for heaven's sake.
Faded posters advertising Japanese beer pressed up against the glass windows of the tiny shops with dark interiors and unlit signs. I glanced at the name of the closest one. 701- Quiao Peng Smoke Shop. Amadeus peered up at me from his wrappings and blinked his huge gold eyes at me.
The level wandered off into a passageway of sorts. I passed several boutiques, and the passage grew narrower, the echoey sound of my footsteps diminishing. The dim lights yellowed my vision, and the creaking of my own feet scared me. Finally, a Zhi Mao poster appeared on the side of the wooden hallway, with a generously elegant arrow painted about it, pointing onwards.
The hallway terminated at a small shop. Had the circumstances been different, I would have deemed the place cute, but nothing that stirred up such a feeling of absolute dread could be deemed cute then. It had taken me three hours to get out of the apartment. I stared at the paper, held it up to the light, and smelled it. I even relegated it to the freezer. Finally, shanghaiing Amadeus and getting it over with seemed like the only option. I wouldn't be sleeping anyways. It was sad, almost. I thought, what if I die? And a very melancholy thought answered it. What difference would it make? Not like my family would raise any kind of hell. They were all senile, or dead.
The door was partially open, and lights glowed from behind purple curtains. A note was taped to the doorknob:
Come in.
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