There’s a pair of lights outside the window, perhaps a construction barrier, flashing at differing intervals, sometimes lighting perfectly in sync, at other times completely opposite. The long-sequence pattern catches his attention, as he tries to decipher some hidden code within. There is none, but by the time he realizes it, he’s already forgotten where he is. When he is. Everything bleeds, runs together, impossibly intertwined. A mirage of the mind.
But no, he isn’t crazy. Not at all.
“Hang on. I wanna see something.”
He glances in either direction, checking for traffic. Looks both ways again as he crosses the street, more furtively this time. Her footsteps follow, slowly, then quicker, as she jogs across the deserted side street.
“Somehow, I’m thinking this is going to be illegal...”
“Oh, don’t worry... it most definitely is.”
Around the backside of the crumbling wall--perhaps at one point it had been a room or enclosed courtyard of sorts, though now it’s little more than chewed gravel and a sparse collection of weeds even more insistent than the winter chill cutting through his gloves--a simple linework teddy bear, five feet tall and quite pudgy around the middle, sits with his back against the corner. The bright orange spray isn’t even faded. “Hah! Yes, it’s still here.”
“That’s so badass! And completely adorable at the same time!” She chuckles. “I’m feeling like this must have been you?”
“Feel like it might’ve been,” he grins back.