The fluorescent lights of the Target off Route 4 always hummed at a frequency that made my teeth ache right behind my molars. It was a Tuesday afternoon around 3:15, and the parking lot had been a nightmare of minivan doors swinging too wide and shopping carts left sideways across the white lines. I had ducked inside because my lower back was acting up from lugging three heavy bags of potting soil through the garden center, and I really just needed five quiet minutes in a stall with my eyes closed.
I don’t even know why I remember the exact time, but the little digital clock on my dashboard had read 3:12 when I pulled the emergency brake. I hurried past the rows of discounted throw pillows and the cheap plastic bins, my sneakers squeaking slightly against the polished concrete floor. The ladies room was mostly empty except for a woman at the sink vigorously washing her hands with that pink industrial soap that smells like synthetic almond. I slipped past her without making eye contact and ducked into the third stall on the end, the one with the latch that always needed a firm upward lift to click into place.
The metal door swung shut with a hollow, echoing clang that seemed twice as loud as it actually was in the tiled room. I had just unbuttoned the top button of my denim trousers and let out a long, ragged sigh of pure relief when the silence broke entirely.
“Hey! How are you?”
The voice came from right through the beige metal partition on my left, sharp and cheerful and far too loud for a public restroom. It sounded like it was coming from someone standing right beside me instead of on the other side of a flimsy sheet of steel. I froze, my fingers still resting on my waistband, wondering for a split second if I had accidentally walked into a double-occupancy maintenance closet or something equally bizarre.
“Embarrassed,” I said back before I even had time to think, my voice pitching up in surprise as I stared at the peeling gray paint on the wall inches from my nose. “I’m alright!”
I figured it was some neighbor from down in Millinocket or a woman from church who had spotted my sneakers under the door gap and wanted to make small talk. People in our town are entirely too friendly sometimes, even when you are trapped behind a locked stall door trying to catch your breath.
But the reply came back instantly, bright and breezy and completely unbothered by the fact that we were both sitting on public toilets.
“So what are you up to?”
My face went hot, a sudden prickly flush creeping all the way up from the collar of my shirt into my ears. I shifted my weight on the seat, annoyed that I couldn’t even have five minutes of basic human privacy without someone trying to narrate my afternoon.
“Ummm just trying to handle a little private business over here!” I called out, letting a sharp edge cut right through my words so she would get the hint and drop it.
I waited for her to laugh, or maybe to apologize for being nosy and go back to washing her hands. Instead, the partition rattled slightly as she shifted her weight, and her voice dropped down to a conversational, almost pleading tone that made my stomach turn over in confusion.
“Can I come over?”
I stared at the metal wall like it had just grown teeth. The sheer audacity of the question hung in the damp air between us, heavy and unbelievable. I did not know this woman, I did not want her company, and the last thing on earth I needed was someone crawling under or over the metal divider to join me in a Target bathroom stall.
“Excuse me?!?!” I yelled out, my voice cracking with a mixture of sheer outrage and mounting hysteria.
Then the voice said, “Listen I have to call you back there’s an idiot in the next stall answering all my questions!”
The sound of a plastic button clicking cut through the air, followed immediately by the sharp, metallic snap of the stall door next to mine swinging open. Footsteps clicked rapidly across the linoleum floor, heading straight for the exit without pausing once at the sinks. I sat there in the sudden, deafening quiet of my own stall, my brain refusing to process what had just happened for several long seconds.
The pieces fell into place with a slow, grinding realization that made me want to pull the fire alarm and hide under the floorboards. She wasn’t talking to me. She had one of those little white plastic stems tucked into her ear, talking to some friend miles away while wandering the aisles, and my voice coming through the tin wall had just been a fun little interruption to her afternoon chat.
I stayed in that stall for at least ten minutes after she left, staring down at my sneakers and listening to the distant beep of a register scanning items out on the sales floor. When I finally found the courage to unlock the door and walk out to the sinks, my reflection in the mirror looked pale and drawn, the corners of my mouth pulled tight into a grim line of pure humiliation. I splashed cold water on my face, dried my hands with a brown paper towel that tore into little pieces in my palms, and walked straight out of the store without buying a single thing.
