Tourist

I drape reclaimed items over ancient and decaying hangers and arrange them into a rainbow of tattered colors and ragged shapes. When the hangers finally succumb to their inevitable fate, I toss them into a large plastic bin and hope they are bound for a recycling center.

I watch as the teeming masses of desperate flesh paw through my rainbow in search of something marvelous. Their treasures selected, I punch the pre-determined cost of the detritus into the ipad-like device and announce the total. The purchaser’s face seems to drop, just a hint, before they claw through their pockets for that last coin which will guarantee they get to ferry all their glorious findings back home.

I accept the wilted bills and grubby coins, slathered with sweat and pocket lint, and lay them in the creaking register drawer, taking care to not touch the unidentified sticky mass on the bottom. I fold the rags, place them gingerly into an open garbage sack and pass the parcel into the eager hands of its new owner. With a grin and wave, they bid me “Good day!”, and hurry off to enjoy their prize.

Sometimes, the face turns ashen and they mumble, “I’ll be back tomorrow, then.”, after they’ve heard the price. They walk a little stooped, then, as they turn to leave and I know I will not see them tomorrow.

Sweat drips down my back as I empty the dressing area of the rejects and prepare them to rejoin their comrades in the rainbow, reeking of failure and fitting a little less snugly on the hangers.

I can feel hope wanting to be here. It peeks in through the front window glass, makes sure there is no room for it here, and sighs.

This is what I do to earn a meager wage, made all the more insulting by the sweltering conditions inside this metal box which serves as the thrift shop, since someone stole the a/c.

My back aches and my feet are screaming but they say this will pass, with time. So will I if I remain a tourist here in the land of loss and memory.

Open

Here it is. Oaken and heavy, it stands eight feet high, with an imposing iron knocker in the shape of a ship’s anchor and large, old, iron hinges. There is no handle on the outside, and no visible lock. The casement is thick, and pitted, weathered but not deteriorating.

It just showed up, one Thursday, here in the middle of everywhere and attached to nothing but its casement and the stairs.

I thought it was just one of those temporary art installations, you know the type, that show up over night and are gone in the next few days. We all did. Then it was gone, an hour after I first noticed it.

The collective inclination was that someone had complained to the authorities and it had been removed, which was probably at least partly true. This sort of thing was not new, some starving artist decides to get noticed by creating an impossibility amid the masses only to have it be misunderstood, unappreciated, and subsequently destroyed.

We forgot about it once it had gone. Didn’t even think about it again until it showed up the next week. This time the news crews were at it, posing questions and speculations and pleading for the artist(s) to come forward and claim their work.

No one did and, for the next several months, it was a sensation in the world. The internet, newspapers, TV shows were all abuzz. How did it happen? Where had it come from? Why would nobody claim the thing?

Obviously it was good for the community, people would come from anywhere to behold the “magic door”. Tourism boomed and the strip flourished as never before. A new trinket shop opened after the second week, how they came upon so many door-themed baubles we may never know. They wore t-shirts, carried signs, had buttons and bumper stickers, there was talk of a movie or play being written, billboards were put up, posters displayed, shop windows decorated with the newest majestic theme.

In the interim, people held meetings about the door. The military came to inspect it, scientists in tow. Scrapings for carbon dating were taken, machines designed to measure everything from radiation to ectoplasm were waved at the thing. Opponents posted PSAs and warned of impending doom, religious groups praised it as a sign from some deity or other. Ultimately, it was deemed non-hazardous by whatever authority was responsible for that.

Then, as quickly as it began, it ended. Before long, people stopped talking about it, stopped staring, stopped touching and taking snap shots. It was accepted by most as just another part of our lives. Nothing miraculous or spectacular, or even remotely interesting after a while. It would show up on Thursday morning and be gone before noon and everyone accepted that.

There were, of course, a few holdouts, myself included. We were dubbed “The Cult of the Door from Nowhere”, bit lengthy title in my opinion but who am I to judge? We, the others and I, just didn’t want to give up on the thing. Maybe my life is just that mundane and uninteresting or perhaps I am delusional and want it to notice me. It’s a bit like playing lottery, you never know if you don’t buy a ticket.

So, I rearranged my work schedule with the jeers of my coworkers and sneer from my boss always hounding me. I arrived at the site every Thursday and waited for my door. I sat with it until it disappeared, talking to it all the while. It became a sort of surrogate friend or child even, because when it got dirty from sitting there, I cleaned it and when it rained I dried it off. In winter, when it snowed, I brought blankets to keep us warm.

The others began to worry about me because while they were at the door every Thursday, like me, their lives didn’t revolve round it. They would climb be the steps and knock in whatever way they chose, then be off on their daily errands. I have come to terms with the probability that everyone thinks I’ve gone mad and it may be true that I have, but I will not abandon my door. If it never reciprocates, that will be fine because it knows me better than anything else in this world. It is my friend and I need it.

No one can be seen in any direction today, strange. Typically there are at least a dozen people walking to work at this hour. The others should be headed down the walk; we have gathered here every week for a year, but today is eerily quiet. There aren’t even cars moving on the roadway. People should be milling about and doing their daily things at least, but there is nobody. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen anything alive all day…

The door materializes, just like always, right at my feet. I dismiss the strangeness of the day, my friend is here now and that’s what matters. I climb the steps, like always. I place my hand on the knocker and …