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Chapter 9:- Score
It was starting to get uncomfortably warm. The sweat tickled as it made its way down my back, one droplet at a time. Every once in a while I’d unconsciously rub my hand against the small of my back, over my t-shirt, soaking up what had collected there.
The storm may have been gone, but the humidity was lingering, refusing to go away, following me wherever I went.
I was going to need to find a cooler place to be for the rest of the day. Otherwise, our little adventure was going to wind up at its starting point very soon.
As you get closer to the heart of the city, buildings become taller and crowd closely together. Shops like The Golden Cup are replaced by taller, older, less personal stacks of brick, steel and concrete. There are no vacant lots, no back yards, and the only blades of grass that can be found appear in the broken cracks of unnoticed sidewalks.
There are stores here, but they’re stacked on top of one another, and they cater mostly to the foreigner crowd. Signs are posted in two or more languages, and sometimes they appear in only one language that I can’t read. I generally go in anyway, lured by the promise of things I’ve never before seen, forgetting that they’re entirely boring and commonplace to everyone but me.
The store I stopped in front of had a sign that simply said “Leung’s,” and, in peeking through the window to the back of the store, I could see they had a bunch of cans lined up like tiny metal soldiers in their refrigerator section. I was so thirsty.
Inside it was dimmer than most grocery stores, and the aisles were narrow. I wandered here and there looking at random things, picking them up to read their labels and putting them back. Ginseng tea, canned pho broth, scallion oil crackers, blood orange Kit Kat bars with white chocolate.
Eventually I made my way to the back. There they were, two rows above the gallon glass jars of orange and green kimchi. “Agua de Coco,” their labels read, and I knew enough Spanish that I would have known what they were even if I hadn’t bought them a thousand times before.
Coconut water.
I threw three or four cans into my cart and made my way up front, grinning. I paid for them quickly, in cash, and stuffed all but one into my knapsack.
I leaned against the exterior wall of the store and drank in long, frantic gulps. I raised the can above my head with my mouth open, shaking it to get the last drops out.
I tossed the can into the trash bin at the corner and kept walking, letting myself be sucked into the core of the city.
It was starting to get uncomfortably warm. The sweat tickled as it made its way down my back, one droplet at a time. Every once in a while I’d unconsciously rub my hand against the small of my back, over my t-shirt, soaking up what had collected there.
The storm may have been gone, but the humidity was lingering, refusing to go away, following me wherever I went.
I was going to need to find a cooler place to be for the rest of the day. Otherwise, our little adventure was going to wind up at its starting point very soon.
As you get closer to the heart of the city, buildings become taller and crowd closely together. Shops like The Golden Cup are replaced by taller, older, less personal stacks of brick, steel and concrete. There are no vacant lots, no back yards, and the only blades of grass that can be found appear in the broken cracks of unnoticed sidewalks.
There are stores here, but they’re stacked on top of one another, and they cater mostly to the foreigner crowd. Signs are posted in two or more languages, and sometimes they appear in only one language that I can’t read. I generally go in anyway, lured by the promise of things I’ve never before seen, forgetting that they’re entirely boring and commonplace to everyone but me.
The store I stopped in front of had a sign that simply said “Leung’s,” and, in peeking through the window to the back of the store, I could see they had a bunch of cans lined up like tiny metal soldiers in their refrigerator section. I was so thirsty.
Inside it was dimmer than most grocery stores, and the aisles were narrow. I wandered here and there looking at random things, picking them up to read their labels and putting them back. Ginseng tea, canned pho broth, scallion oil crackers, blood orange Kit Kat bars with white chocolate.
Eventually I made my way to the back. There they were, two rows above the gallon glass jars of orange and green kimchi. “Agua de Coco,” their labels read, and I knew enough Spanish that I would have known what they were even if I hadn’t bought them a thousand times before.
Coconut water.
I threw three or four cans into my cart and made my way up front, grinning. I paid for them quickly, in cash, and stuffed all but one into my knapsack.
I leaned against the exterior wall of the store and drank in long, frantic gulps. I raised the can above my head with my mouth open, shaking it to get the last drops out.
I tossed the can into the trash bin at the corner and kept walking, letting myself be sucked into the core of the city.
