Passages
- by Constance Neeser
Door 256.
Night. Quiet roads. Rain. Street lights reflect in puddles. A small food store remains open and mostly empty. They take credit card. Leslie speaks some Japanese. The owner is looking for help in the kitchen, so now Leslie has a job. She stays for a few weeks.
Door 257. Humid. Hot. Walking through the door is like walking into a wall. Tombouctou. She speaks enough French to get by.
Door 258. The land is moving, rising and lowering, swells in a storm. A boat.
Door 259. Night. Cold. Lights are off. Someone’s home. She makes her way down carpeted stairs. A cat yowls, lights flick on but she’s already in the street. Leslie teaches a medley of languages to a classical guitarist who would like to one day leave the Ukraine, but who worries that they’ll never practise enough, never earn enough.
Leslie also worries. When she stays too long in a place she can feel it, approaching, door by door, person by person.
Door 260. 261. 262.
Sometimes she asks herself if she is being followed, if this isn’t the doors and her fears. But the feeling returns.
The follower never relents.
Nairobi. An abandoned oil rig. Jeddah. Samarkand.
Footsteps on an empty street. A shadow on a street corner.
Door 263. Driving for uber in a car owned by a taxi company. Travel through the car door when the anxiety approaches.
Door 264.