Tuesday, April 9, 2019

Election Day: Many people are off from work. Many have flocked to the larger city, swarming downtown. In the hidden discount room at the CD store, music playing from a small radio by the open window blends with the sound from the bar downstairs. "Love Me Do" mixes surprisingly well with last year's still ubiquitous Eurovision winner. Bubbles float past the window, blown by an exhaust fan on the roof of a building a few doors down. A woman zooms past the bar on a lime-green scooter, wearing a bikini that matches her tattoos. At least I think that that's a bikini and that those are tattoos. In the basement of the mall, amateurs are doing folk dances. Some trip and fall over. Most don't. I don't even try. Trapped in the mall's baffling double-helix structure, it takes me an hour to return to a store where I intend to buy something but then don't. Escaping to the street, I'm right on time for a bus to carry me home.