Inside, gold wallpaper had turned urine yellow. The red carpet perked up as it ran past two ornate antique chairs with lion paws for feet. Beyond that lay a fortress outpost in the cramped antechamber: a barred cage jutting out and a counter painted black, from behind which a woman watched me. Beyond that lay the storage units, through an archway. A legend on a sad banner overhead read “Protecting your valuable since 1972.”

“What do you want?” the woman asked, no preamble. As if I might want almost anything at all.

“What do you think?” I said.

Showed her the key, as I wiped my shoes on the crappy welcome mat.

“Which one?”

“Seven.”

“Got ID?”

“I’ve got the key.”

“Got ID to go with that key?”

“I’ve got the key.”

She held out her hand. “Identification, please, and I’ll check the list.”

I considered pushing a twenty across the counter. That idea felt strange. But it felt strange to let her know who I was, too.

I handed her my driver’s license.

She was much younger than me. She had on a lot of black, had piercings, highlighted her eyes to make them look bigger, and wore purple lipstick. Practically a uniform in some parts of town.

She might’ve been a brunette. I remember her expression. Bored. Bottled up here. Doing nothing—and I wasn’t making her life less boring.

“I’ve come a long way,” I said. Which would be true soon enough. I would’ve come a long way.

“If you’re on the list, great,” she said, finger scrolling down a single sheet of paper with names printed impossibly small.

“Yes. That’d be great,” I said. Struck by how meaningless language can be. Yet I remember the conversation but not her face.

The woman found a line on the page with a ballpoint pen, gave me back my ID.

“So go in, then,” she said.

Like I was loitering.

“Where?”

“Over there.”

She pointed to the right, where another door waited, half disguised by the same piss-pattern wallpaper.

I stared at her for a moment before I walked through, as she picked up a magazine and ignored me. Somehow, I needed a list of life choices that had led this woman to be in this place at this time. To take my ID. To ignore me. To be sullen. To be anonymous.

I wouldn’t see her on my way out. The cage would be empty, as if no one had ever been there.

As if I had emerged years later and the whole place had been abandoned.