I turned my back on the shop and walked away as fast as I could. My heart thumped and my chest was tight and sore and . . . I was in the pool again. The wetness on my face confirmed it. The world was starting to disappear behind a veil of blurry water.
Not now. Not now . . .
I continued walking. Nothing around me looked familiar anymore and I couldn’t remember where I’d left my car. But that didn’t seem important right now. I was so embarrassed. The embarrassment clawed its way across my cheeks, making them red and hot. As I walked, the ground beneath me felt like it was curving under me, making it hard to keep my balance. The pavement seemed to twist around a singular point, bending and lifting to meet me, like I was inside a work of anamorphic art. But as I continued, I finally saw what the singular point was, and it stopped me dead in my tracks.
Red and white danger tape was wrapped around four bright-orange cones standing upright on the pavement. As I was trying to figure out what this dramatic show was for, two women walked past me.
“You think they would have fixed this by now,” one woman—the one with the high clickety-click heels—said as she stomped past and stepped over one of the bright-orange cones. “It’s so ugly, plus it’s dangerous.”
“And it’s been like this for months,” the other one in sporty trainers and tight activewear pants said. “Letting our roads go to ruin like this. And everyone has complained, but you think they’ve fixed it!”
“I know. Such a bloody eyesore!” clicky heel added. I looked up and watched these two women walk away, the one casting an almost disgusted glance over her shoulder at whatever this thing was. This thing that was so damn offensive to their sensibilities. I looked down expecting to see . . . well, I wasn’t sure exactly. But when I saw it, I was shocked.
Was that all? This disgusting thing that seemed so offensive to the women, and to the city, which had cordoned it off like something that didn’t belong here. There, on the pavement, was a small pothole and running out from it, a crack in the concrete. I took a step closer. Was I missing something?
Okay, sure, the crack was fairly large and the pothole was big enough that someone’s Chihuahua might be tripped up, but still.
I stared. Something inside me started to stir. It was small at first. A feeling I couldn’t name, a feeling that seemed too far away to recognize. Floating just outside my consciousness, flapping just beyond my grasp. I closed my eyes and in my head I reached out and grabbed it, the feeling that was floating past me and when I did . . . anger.
Red-hot anger rushed through me like a dart down my spine. My eyes flicked open and I looked around, taking in every detail of my surroundings. I stared at the rows of perfect glass-fronted shops, the coffee shops and restaurants, their expensive chairs and tables dotting the pavement, a red carpet leading into gold doors, the champagne bar, polished crystal flutes hanging upside down just waiting for fashionable people to slip their extra-plump lips over them. The potted plants, meticulously manicured lollipop trees in perfect rows along the street. The upmarket optometrist, rows of YSL, Dolce & Gabbana, and Bulgari blinging and shining in the sun. Aesthetic dentist Dr. Smile, for your perfect, bright-white smile. Vegan smoothie bar, goji berries, and chia seeds and all those things that promised to clean you out, make your insides as perfect as your outsides. The cars, rows of them parallel-parked to perfection: Range Rovers, G wagons, and Porsche Cayennes. My head spun as I looked around. Not a leaf out of place, not a hair, not a nonwhite tooth in sight, not a lump or bump or drop of cholesterol. It was all so perfect here. This suburb, this little bubble, this little part of the world, was the representation of all that was flawless and faultless. And then among it all, like it was trying to squeeze itself into a dress it had no right wearing, a crack. A hole. A small blemish on the smooth surface of perfection. I looked down again. This was the only imperfect thing about this place, apart from me. And like me, it was alone in this champagne-colored world of bubbles and downward facing dog. Cordoned off like it had a disease. Sullied. Dirty. Imperfect.
And then it hit me. I looked around once more and then pulled my car keys out of my bag. I knew what needed to be done. I just needed to find my car first.