Warwick Collins - Gents

He began to understand the grammar of the place, the movement of footsteps, the declension of doors, the patterns of approach to the urinals and the cubicles.

Some of the men seemed to drift down the stairs in a somnambulistic trance. Most of them had a single purpose – to relieve themselves – and then return to the day. In the chamber beneath the earth time itself seemed suspended. No one made eye contact because it could be misinterpreted. Ez learned never to look a customer in the eye unless he was directly addressed.

He became aware of the space around a person, and of the squares of space in which individuals moved. Each man’s grid seemed to move with him. Sometimes a particular man might hold his attention like a singer in a spotlight, but it was an indirect surveillance, by means of the senses of hearing and smell and vibration. Ez could hear the sound of a man’s footsteps across the floor, the creak of his clothes. He would listen for the speed and hesitancy of footfall, the faint squeal of rubber soles, the flatness of leather, the heel touching before the toe, the creak and slam of a cubicle door.

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