other, without making introductions. His net wouldn’t attach securely to the ceiling, so he woke tangled. The mattress was damp and grey. Something smelled.
Shortly after settling down for the night, he’d spent twenty minutes debating whether his bladder could hold, but it had now become painful. He scrambled out of the net, untucking a corner from under the end of the mattress, crawled to the floor. With the shutters closed, the only light came through the door. The bathroom was ruinous – mirror stained and cracked, broken pipes exposed, holes in the floor and walls. A pair of bright blue flip-flops had been helpfully provided. A thick, fuzzy ant line emerged from a fissure; it looked like hair shaved from a face. He squatted over the drop hole, just in case. As he returned to bed, he checked the lock on the door. It held, barely. For some reason he then opened it. The corridor was empty. He could go back to sleep. An object caught his eye. It had been deposited between his room and the next on his left. It was dark. He shouldn’t leave his room as he wasn’t dressed and didn’t want an embarrassing encounter, a trader stumbling back from the bar. It might have been an item of clothing, perhaps a hat. He leaned closer and it seemed to move. But it was just a gathering of dirt, a pile that had been brushed there for some reason. Mud, stones, mainly small sticks, trailed in by someone who hadn’t wiped down.
The doors rattled with the barest movement – a breeze, another door being opened or closed, someone coming in or out. A few more times he thought he heard someone and, once or twice, voices and even footsteps running away – the kids, he guessed.
He determined, the following morning, to put a stop to the incidents during the night, the banging on his door, the laughing. He couldn’t get any work done in these conditions.
He found Miguel returning to his hut and explained the situation. It wasn’t acceptable; the man really had to keep a tighter leash on his children. The conditions in the room were far from satisfactory. ‘And why is it only me, Miguel? Why do they bang on my door?’
‘I don’t know. Some foolishness – I apologize profusely. It won’t happen again.’
But it did. A pattern repeated. He’d finally, after some delay, get off to sleep, when he’d hear the banging, the laughter, the footsteps running away. So close, especially the voices, he could have believed they were right there in his room. He’d scramble out of bed, dismantling the net, run to his door as quickly as he could, but find, on throwing it open, that the corridor was empty. Then he’d wait. He knew they’d come back. Only somehow they anticipated him. They waited not only until he’d left his vigil, but for him actually, and miraculously, to fall asleep again. Then the knock. Another. Repeating until he gave in, jumped up from the bed, ran to the door, saw nothing in the half-light.
He sealed the open office window as soon as he noticed. He tested the lock three times, then traced the edges of the further two windows, checking for any airflow. The atmosphere had turned over. It didn’t seem possible that somebody could have been so blithe, so ignorant as to have done this. Carlos, he thought, had been lost anew, all remaining evidence gone.
He left the office, closing the door behind him. The employees appeared oblivious, habitually absorbed in work. He wasn’t sure who to approach. Nobody would admit culpability. He would be passed from one department to another, simply wasting his time.
He returned to the empty office. The keyboard was meaningless now. The carpet, the chair, the windows and the desk. Whatever had been left in the vacant office was gone. For the first time he sat directly on Carlos’s chair. The rings from the coffee mug were just perceptible on the desk. He wondered how long the window had been open. Although it hadn’t rained, the corners of the carpet were damp. Detritus had blown in. Something was present on the edge of the desk, too far to reach.
A bloom, soft, blue, no bigger than the nail on his smallest finger. Rather than pick it up, he leaned in to smell. It should have been dead, neutral, but the odour was as strong as the colour was bright. Carlos’s desk was narrower than the model