Mitchell's Story Pt 18.5

Funny how things repeat. Remember Mitchell told me about his visit to the country house where his father and younger brother and stepmother lived and the trouble he had one day with the bathroom door lock. I wrote you about that, and something that happened to me yesterday brought it back to mind!

I was at the college and two guys were following me and to get away I led them into a classroom and escaped through a different door before they came in behind me. They realized the trick I'd played and followed me out through the door I'd used (not the one we'd entered by).

In the hallway already I closed that door and locked it to keep the men in the classroom, and- this is the funny part- the lock was the same style Mitchell had described, the kind you open and shut with a sort of dial on the knob, a brass doorknob this was, anyway metal a brass color. I turned it and the door locked successfully. I knew that would stop my pursuers for only a short time. The lock wasn't strong; two guys bothering me would soon be able to open the door but they'd be delayed a few moments and that was all I needed to get away. By the time they got out of the classroom, reached the hall I'd be gone and they wouldn't know in which direction, where to look next.

By the way, they weren't seriously endangering me, just playing a game but still I didn't want to be bothered by them.

Sometimes an event or its detail resembles another. A problem in a public place reminded me of a mistake Mitchell had made at home. We were in an art museum and there was a smoke condition. This happened the day after Mitchell's cooking error had produced one in our kitchen also! We could see the smoke in another wing of the museum. It wasn't much, just faint like a haze.

That wing, the main one, was far from us but the glass walls made it visible. From where we stood we could also see outdoors, the museum garden in winter, monochrome and quiet, with deep black tones. You felt you could take a step and be there but of course the window pane was in the way. The design of the building kind of conflated space.

The smoke in the distance really was light still but might get worse. We saw that the people there were leaving. Their group exit made the location appeared crowded. The front entrance wasn't wide everyone for everyone to go through it at the same time. They gathered.

Mitchell and I decided not to hurry out. The room where we stood, actually a hallway leading between wings, wasn't smoky after all. We'd been heading to the cafeteria but stopped in our tracks, as everyone around us had.

One of the guys who followed me (there were two and one the leader, physically larger, not big but tall and lanky looked strong at his shoulders) had tried to flirt, said my face looked like glass, smooth he meant I guess. He and his friend obviously were interested in whether the rest of my body was as well. I could tell by how the leader smiled. Just being playful, though, annoying but not seriously.

There was a delay outside the college when I left (this in turn reminded me of the museum smoke incident!) I learned that venders who gathered in front of the building were being pushed away and instructed not to come back. New rules had been set forbidding them from selling their goods there. The person who told me (I asked, still inside the building wondering what caused the hold-up) was a maintenance staff person charged with enforcing the order from the administration. They were serious about their job, answered my question grimly as if determined not to be distracted from the task. I felt sorry for the venders, some of whom were from Africa, poor and just trying to survive.

Meanwhile Mitchell talks about where he's going to run today. He says he's tired of running, would like to take a break but continues anyway, that the people he meets on his course and at the gym help him maintain his resolve, that they cross paths regularly and are like friends, have in common the same hard practice. If they can do it, he thinks, so can he. I guess they're acquainted like I am to the maintenance people at the college I pass every day and talked to yesterday or the African vendors outside.

Why do I tell you everything!?