4

I take her to the rundown buildings along the water front. They've always been rundown. Closing, re-opening, getting wrecked, renovated, bulldozed, resurrected, always decaying, always dark. Some of them are factories, lofts, pseudo power plants, labs, residences, dock houses, and in between them there is always the same stink. The almost, but not quite sewage stink. It smells like being near a dried up pond in the middle of the woods. It's pretty bearable if you take the fact that you're smelling every kind of waste imaginable and just put that as far back in your mind as possible. The smell doesn't seem to bother her, but if it does she is very good at hiding it. "Are we there?" She asks. I tell her we're almost there and we both realize that it's a quarter to four. "Maybe we can come back in the evening," she suggests. "Although I think I can prolong my lunch just a little." But I shouldn't, and I don't, I walk her back to the store, she flips the sign, kisses my cheek. "Evening?" She asks. I say yes, evening. Then she's back at her counter, back in her book, and I'm back at work and everything is fucked.