Phone Booth

I sit waiting, watching, in the shadows of a scratched avocado airport phone booth. I've arrived from God-knows-where, my origin erased in a haze of drug abuse and first-class drinks. My instructions, only recalled a few hours ago when my pants dropped in the dirty salmon bathroom stall, are nothing more than blue symbols and characters penned into my thigh. Vague and distant echoes of the disembodied voice I know belongs to the man who wrote out my instructions rang through my head. "You'll know it when you see it. You'll know it when you see it."

The phone booth has the same thick, smothering stink of oil refineries and old carpeting. Gum is stuck in the keyhole of the blue and silver payphone, some asshole's idea of a joke. Slight movements of the stale airport air relieve my hot skin as I sway, still intoxicated but no longer hallucinating. I try not to let any part of my body touch the green-lacquered steel of the phone booth walls; they exude an aura of contamination and unpleasantness.

Suddenly, I spot it. Newly shined wingtips and a silky black suit, out of place in the permanent sleepiness and dishevelment of the airport. I rise up in my phone booth, black and white dizzy spots speckling my vision, hearing dampened momentarily, then it wears off and only the drugs are affecting me. I step out of the shadows, blinking into the light, as Mr. Wingtips draws nearer, having seen his charge. I nod, wordlessly affirming my identity, and Wingtips leads me away and out of the airport to wherea polished black Cadillac sits, tinted windows hiding the couple I know must lurk within. I close my eyes, take a steadying breath, and am astonished at the swirl of protest I feel from my drug-laden body. Of course. I had forgotten to stop walking. My balance is thrown for a hundredth of a second and the fall seems to take forever...

... I'll finish this sometime if you're lucky...