The escalator sighed throughout its ascent. The flight of stairs was stretched as high as I could raise my head before I felt a slight backward plunge. Randomly arranged human back-sides generously splashed over my vertical twenty-degree field view. After the tread spat me free into the elevated plane, I schlepped again under the weight of the duffel-bag.

The wide glass windows gazed at the long row of vehicles. Shades of blue eclipsed the bronze mantelpieces at the four corners of the room. Criss-crossed swords, an elaborately ornate grandfather clock smirking at you like it knew your deepest secret, portraits of dead queens, teak-wood tables and chairs; quite the assortment. A sudden aroma of Arabica crept into my nostrils. I pointed to the fourth item on the menu and looked up. She looked comically beautiful, the sunlight creating glowing ambers out of her hay-colored hair and sieving the retinal spikes from the blue background. She looked on at me, almost expecting me to talk. I opened my mouth, wanting to tell her about Fardis, our road trip from Oulu to Ankara in the 1968 red Cadillac, how we whizgigged endlessly at the puppetry show, how tasty were the mangoes that we stole from Khalajaan's wire basket above the kitchen cabinet, how gently the fluffy cotton seeds would fly over our heads, how the fish would tickle at our feet, and how that would feel like a feather teasing our spines. But I did not; however, I did something I had never done before. I took down the green dotted napkin and scribbled my address. For what seemed a lifetime, her eyebrows crinkled, fixating at the paper. Just when I was ready to apologize, she looked back at me and the geometry of parallel lines disappeared, re-appearing as the most wonderful curve I had ever seen. She left, quite nonchalantly, brimming with exhilarating enthusiasm to the newest couple at the far end of the room. She soon returned with a porcelain cup of hot water and an orange dulce tea bag and a box of sugar cubes. Many thanks were expressed and her thin frame moved gently away from me.

I watched my face making an indistinguishable shadow on the wooden floor. Shadows are strange templates that effortlessly cheat dimensionality, creating absurd dark blobs on solid surfaces. Shadow projections do not exist in thin air, do they? They permeate you, transcend you, manipulate you, but they are always beneath you, following you into corners and streams. I wanted to lose opacity, lose my silhouette; oblivion. I left with a heavy blanket over my heart. I turned to gaze at her making another cup of expresso, back to her rigmarole.

The cabbie was the curious kind, wanting to know where I was from and where I was going. Home, the three squiggles on the paper. Home where I would be greeted by the dalmatian at the neighbor's window pane and four smiles. Home where I screamed every night, shattering the Cap Morgan and soaking pillows. Every reminiscence a banyan root, waiting to lynch.

Fardis on my lap, his head tilting to the left. Fardis, of a thousand suns whose eyes now stared at me, inanimate.

Then one day, it happened. The ward authority conveyed that Ammijaan would now respond. I kissed the postcard until it sogged wet. As the lever in the lock clicked, I felt like a chute bloating with hot air. I must have walked about twenty meters before I felt a strange impulse to turn back. She was standing at my doorstep, with two boxes and a suitcase.