The Girl with the Compass
She walks a crowded hotel lobby, holding a compass, absently stroking the small orb with her thumb, as if releasing the object will loosen her connection to the world and her place in it.
But she has no place. That’s the sad irony of it all.
On her more energetic days she wanders patchy, austere hotel hallways pretending she’s someone important, perhaps an international diplomat for peace or a world weary businesswoman or maybe even a spy, traveling from city to city, country to country, world to world, thinking she is tired and overworked and just wants to be home at her bungalow in Florence or her flat in London or her apartment in Manhattan, but instead she’s here in lifeless central Massachusetts at an upscale hotel on some river she’d never learned the name of, or maybe had at some point and simply misplaced the information in favor of more important concerns like a meal and a place to sleep, wearing second-hand jeans with the left leg a few inches shorter than the right and an orange blouse with taco stains on it and, Oh God, the man at the front desk is staring at her and reaching for the telephone and she knows it’s time to leave because he’s calling security and in places like this, security is always armed.
She looks at the compass, turns down a hallway a quarter past north, and begins to run, her waist length hair knotted and whipping behind her like a flail.
And this is when the spy fantasy floods her spirit. She dodges imaginary bullets, pulls a gravity defying jump up and off of the wall, diving into a shoulder roll and a sprint.
She nearly blindsides a couple coming around the corner; his pants are lined and perfectly creased, tie straight and ironed, her ankle-length dress flaring out in all the right places, exposing just enough heel and red-painted toenails and creamy white calf to make the girl with the compass both furious and achingly jealous. The man throws a protective arm out, flattening his woman against the wall, the words “What the fuck is your problem, you crazy bitch?” shooting from his lips.
The girl with the compass—the spy with the collapsible spyglass—runs on, a door at the far end ahead of her lit with the neon of an EXIT sign. As she approaches, she sees a hand drawn sign taped above it, a message in black marker scrawled on cardboard that reads THIS IS NOT AN.
Someone yells at her to stop as she clamps her palms together—the marble-sized compass squeezed between them.
There’s only one way out, she thinks, the door just ahead of her. And that’s not it.
She points her fingers and twists and fires her pretend gun at the man who is holding his hands in a similar fashion.
But it’s not a marble between his palms.