A fly landed on his head but I never dared to shoo it away. The blowfly’s legs seemed to have been stuck by contact cement and its wings struggled to take flight, away from the scalp that missed a day of shampooing. He was rumored to bathe only every other day, and to prove this, his secretary asked me to check out the yellow stains on his white shirt each time he vigorously raised his arms when trying to make a point. But I never looked at him in that way or long enough to affirm talks about him in the workplace. I was more concerned with the fly whose wings had already given up and died on his shaved head that made him look a bit like Charlie Brown.
The road leading to the hotel was a series of inclines that snaked upward, planned with a lot of indecisiveness from a non-native engineer who solely followed direct orders from a fellow non-native who wanted a rest house surrounded by pines and enveloped by the piercing cold weather of the mountains. The builders were of course successful but unmindful—there were too much winding and sudden turns on the road, and my intolerance for long trips caused me to dream of moments when I would just sit or stand, whichever was possible, while scooping a cup of taho glistening in caramelized syrup and tapioca. The dizziness was so consistent that the leaves and branches of the pine trees appeared to have been inflated and their green hues too sharp that a spoonful of sour broth had already spilled from my mouth and stained my shirt. My handkerchief was in my knapsack and buried underneath his three suit bags. But the vanilla scent of the car’s freshener caused me to throw up again, and that dog décor on the dashboard with a bobble head that kept wobbling aggravated the light-headedness.