"Dude, what's going on, why aren't you opening the door?" Gene asked as he made his way over.
"I'm trying..." I said. "I can't..."
"Well why not--"
"I can't! Okay?!" I slammed my fist against the door once. "It's locked from the outside again."
"What? How?!" Tammy said as she ran over.
"How the hell should I know?"
I pushed myself away from the door, walking a slow circle as I felt both hot sticky air and cold sweat down my back and on my face. While I closed my eyes and exhaled slowly, I could hear Gene trying his best to muscle the door open. Like me, he had no luck.
"Oh yeah, this is great," Gene muttered as he kept slamming his shoulder into the immobile door.
Tammy told Gene not to tire himself out, and he moved aside so she could see the door for herself. I instead picked up the book that mysteriously decided to come out of its place on its own. I'm not sure if it was just incredibly irony or some cosmic joke, but the open page in the book proudly displayed a picture of the Tower of London. Closing the book, a large tome about public execution and other related items, I hurled it into the back corner of the store, knocking over the stacks of damaged books with a long avalanche of noise.
Gene and I both turned our focus to the door, tucking aside our flashlights in between our belts or in our pockets. Together, we slammed the door in unison for the better part of a minute. Our shoulders began aching and our progress remained static. We uncomfortably perked up once again by a combination of something smashing against the wall next to us and Tammy's shriek in response to the sudden noise.
"Okay, what the fuck was that?!" she said, pointing at whatever was now crumpled against the base of the wall. Taking another slow -- but anything but calm -- breath, I pulled my flashlight out from between my belt and lit the object in question.
It was a small book. It was as if someone had thrown it at us.
The book was not the only thing I saw, either.
"I was the only one on the ground, right?" I asked my friends. They nodded in the positive. "Okay, then whose hand prints are those on the floor?" We all came around to look at the cleared spots in the dust. I was wrong, though. They weren't hand prints -- they were footprints. Small, bare-footed footprints.
My bandanna was soaked with the moisture from my breath and the sweat coming down my brow. At this point I was imagining the dust collecting on my mask, dampening and building a sticky grey cement that dared to cut off my breathing altogether. Gene retched a little and mentioned feeling feint; Tammy remained as silent as she could, slowly making her way back up to the door.
For me, a thousand questions flew through my mind as I slowly traced the direction of the footprints with my flashlight. The footprints led, not surprisingly at this point, between the bookshelves and turned towards the "damaged books" corner. I may have had a thousand questions, but I knew where I'd find the answer for at least one.
"Nate, come back, please!" Tammy pleaded as I slowly started walking back deeper into the bookstore. I was still on the verge of choking as the store grew warmer still. With my flashlight in my outstretched left hand, I reached for my Leatherman with my right. Again, the absurdity of our situation never left my thoughts. The urban adventurers had their rules: no souvenirs, only photographs; no vandalism; above all, however, was no fighting with law enforcement or security should the situation arise. That last bit lingered in my head as I gripped my Leatherman tightly and passed between the shelves. There was no way that there was going to be a night watchman around the next corner, but still...
...I felt sick...
"Nate!" both Gene and Tammy screamed to me, shocking me upright and choking me on my own thick spit.
"What?!" I said hoarsely.
"The door!" Gene said, "it's open!"
He didn't need to tell me twice. I turned around and dashed towards the open door and the dirty stairwell. Tammy and Gene were already almost up the stairs as I flew out the doorway. We didn't have the flashlights to prove it, but I could tell that another huge cloud of dust was probably billowing out in my wake. I slipped on what must have been dried pigeon droppings, falling against the stairs and barely breaking my fall with my forearms. While on the stairs with Tammy and Gene shouting for me to get up, I looked at my hands in front of my face, at my flashlight and my Leatherman.
Cursing to myself one last time I pushed myself back up and turned around. Despite the whispered yet urgent protests of the two at the top of the stairs, I slammed the door shut again, bracing it with my body while I jammed my flashlight back into my belt and fumbled for the screwdriver attachment on my Leatherman.
"Light! Someone!" I called up. Immediately I had two distant beams shining on my back from the top of the stairs; I couldn't blame them for not wanting to come back down. With the shaky, haphazard light behind me, I tried to keep as calm a head as I could while I screwed the padlock latch back into the stucco wall, giving each one an extra little twist to ensure that nothing would pop them back out any time soon.
The very moment the final screw was back as it was before we had arrived, we all hurried out of the community centre and back to the car. Whether only I heard the voice saying "Get out!" or not I'll never know, as I never bothered to ask Tammy or Gene about it.
* * *
All I can remember from the rest of that night was that we all spoke very little in the car, and none of us wanted to go back home by ourselves. That night, we all went to Gene's house. We changed into the spare clothes we all had in the car and sat together on the couch watching television infomercials until the sun came up.
I sneezed as Gene and Tammy started to fall asleep.
They thanked me.
