I left the washroom, somewhat, despondent, and climbed the stairs up to street level. Cooley-Sail Square was a flat granite quadrangle bound on all sides by movie theatres, shopping malls, and in one corner the irregular towers of the OMNITV studio building. It was early enough in summer that the weather was nice and on the cool side, and over by the rectangular water fountain was a scattered array of tables where shoppers and retail workers alike sat, chatted and enjoyed the myriad food trucks parked all around. Advertisements for clothes, movies, stage plays, and local landmarks flickered above on screens attached to the oddly shaped, curving buildings around.
I glanced around. Rosalie said she would be up here, checking things out, but she wasn't in evidence, not at any of the tables and not among the people crossing the square. I didn't think that a blue-haired girl with a guitar case would be all that difficult to find, so I squinted and began scanning the far crowd, the people bustling past on the far sidewalk, bordering the streets that bound the square.
I was still peering around when I felt a shiver come up my spine, dread suddenly clawing at my mind. I could feel someone's eyes on me, my stomach lurching with sudden, sourceless fear. My head turned, and I caught sight of a person standing on the other side of a side street, focused entirely on me, ignoring the crowd weaving around them. They were tall, a good foot taller than anyone around them, and bald as an egg, staring at me impassively. They were wearing a grey coat of some kind, and it took me awhile to realize the black voids they seemed to have in place of eyes were, instead, a pair of small, round sunglasses. Their skin was a dull, unhealthy pale grey, and for a moment I thought I could see that they were talking, their mouth moving, but it was hard to tell at this distance.
I was startled out of my trance when something hit me in the chest, causing me to grunt in surprise and stagger back a step. I instinctively grabbed at it, and looked down to find myself holding a shoebox. Rosalie stepped up next to me, and gently pulled me away from the doors. "You're going to get knocked over when the next train lets out, if you keep standing in front of the doors like that," she admonished me, but when she looked up at my face, she frowned. "Are okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."
"Maybe I have," I muttered in reply, scanning the crowd, but the tall person was gone. I shook my head, as if I could dismiss the memories, and looked down at the box. "You got me shoes?"
"Yeah, you can give your feet a wash in the fountain and then slip them on," she told me, as she wrapped an arm around mine and began to gently tug me in the direction of the tables. "Don't take too long, I feel really exposed out here. There don't seem to be any Harvesters, yet, but let's not play dice with fate. Besides, it's only a few more blocks to that place I mentioned."
Washing my feet in a public fountain wasn't exactly something I relished doing, but when I saw the brown, sticky stain I had managed to gather over the course of my journey, I managed to make myself do it. None of the people all around seemed to notice me at all, just treating me like I wasn't even there. A young boy in a Raptors jersey who was "tightrope walking" on the lip of the fountain even hopped down, walked around me, and resumed his journey on the other side without saying a word. I guess what Rosalie said was true. The shoes she stole for me were a pair of canvas high-tops, simple, comfortable and functional, after you got past the overpriced branding.
Once I laced them on, I stood and sauntered over to where Rosalie was sitting at one of the fountainside tables. At some point she had gone and picked up a fat city hot dog furnished with mustard and ketchup, and offered it to me. "Thanks," I said, slipping into another chair and gingerly picking up the dog by the napkin it came wrapped in, mindful of what my hands were just doing. The sweet sauces and salty, juicy hot dog tasted like ambrosia, and I found myself devouring it in short order.
"Thought you might be hungry, given you didn't even have time for shoes," Rosalie said with that crooked grin, before she pushed herself up from the table. "Come on, let's get moving. Soon we'll really able to rest, and maybe get some more of your questions answered."
I rose with her, tossing the hot dog napkin in with the tissue paper and assorted tags in the shoebox, and we headed for Elizabeth Street, one of the small streets bordering the square. I followed along behind Rosalie, taking the time to drop the shoebox in a trash can as we departed.
Elizabeth was a narrow, two-lane road with tall buildings crowded close around. Few companies advertised over this way, and although the road was still crowded with cars, the sidewalk wasn't as crowded. We followed Elizabeth north for a few blocks, until Rosalie found what she was looking for- a stubby, shabby-looking office building, an art deco edifice made of aged concrete. My companion ascended the steps to the little lobby, and I followed after, enjoying the puff of cool air conditioned air as I walked through the front door. It wasn't too hot outside, but I had been run off my ass since I woke up so anything was welcome.
The lobby was similarly ancient, tiled in dirty white and mint green, with only a brass-bordered directory of offices and a couple artificial plants for decoration. A filthy old man with white hair crouched in one corner of the room, wrapped in a dirty old trench and surrounded by bags and coolers as he silently watched us walk by. We moved past the elevators, and down a hall at the back of the lobby, passing office doors until Rosalie found what she was looking for- a clouded glass door labelled with "Marlowe and Prince, Barristers + Solicitors" printed on the glass in black-bordered gold letters, scratched and pitted with age.