"I'm going exploring, " I said to the woman behind the desk.
"That's nice," she said.
"It is nice," I said, "and true. Nice and true."
"Goodbye," she said.
Later, I told a clerk that soon I would be in the jungle deep, exploring the undergrowth.
He said, "Don't get malaria."
"I don't want malaria, " I said.
"Better not catch it then," he said.
I was speaking to a girl in the library.
"Are you familiar with the ocean? " I said.
"The sea?" she said.
"The ocean, the sea, yes. Do you know it?"
"I think so. Why?" she asked.
"I’m going there, to the sea. Soon. Tomorrow. Maybe, I hope."
"Are you asking me?"
"Asking you what?"
"To go? To go to the sea, the ocean?"
I shook my head, "No, I don't think I was. Did I? ask?"
"No," she said sullenly. "But you spoke, you spoke to me and I thought we were supposed to go to the sea."
"Together? or separately?"
She shrugged. "Is there a difference?"
I looked at her, working up my nerve. "Do you want to not go with me, then?"
"Yes," she said, "I will be happy to not accompany you wherever you like."
I stepped outside and saw the same city skyline I had seen so many, many times on so many different days. Days in rain, half-rain, sun and half-sun. The light was downcast and low. There was a man standing outside the building, talking low to himself. "Go, go, go, go, go," he said, more a mouth than a man, a mouth mouthing words. As he spoke, he walked several paces and stopped. "Go, go, go," he said and stopped again. He kept like this, heading south. I wondered where he was going and began to follow his stops and starts. After five blocks, he turned suddenly, lurchingly, and headed north. "Go go go go," he said, nearly knocking me out of his way. I also turned and followed. He walked precisely two and a half blocks and turned, almost violently, south once again and continued. After only one block he swung himself around. When he reached the middle of the block he stopped, facing out and said, "Stay, stay, stay, stay, stay." Then he closed his eyes and said nothing further. After a full minute I was convinced he had fallen asleep like that, standing stiff and in the middle of the street. Suddenly his eyes sprang wide and he walked west, right into the street and into traffic, I tried to stop him but he kept going, cars swerving around him as he went missile-like and determined. I stopped following and watched as he gained distance, moving down the opposite street. I was sure that it would only be a matter of time before he turned himself around and went east, then south then north, west and back again. I had grown to understand his pattern and in that understanding, boredom swelled. I grew tired of watching him like one gets tired of watching a clock tick, at first mesmerizing, then monotonous. I left him there and thought of the girl in the library. I wished I had not lied. There would be no trip to the ocean or the jungle or the desert for that matter. No exotic locales, just gray streets as far as the eye could see, stretching, stretching, horizon to horizon. Grey streets and ashen men moving like clocks, like cars, to and fro, to and fro. Go, go, go, go, go.
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