Free About Face by Adam Gittlin

and rolls. Sunglasses: bought two pairs for a combined twelve euros.
    As I tucked my change in my pocket and positioned the three medium-size brown paper bags I’d accumulated in my arms, I noticed I had hit the jackpot. Casual shoes and sneakers. As I moved toward them I noticed something else. A pair of eyes seemed to be watching me from two aisles over.
    They belonged to a young guy around my age—mid to late thirties. He was tall, fit, wearing jeans, and a hunter-green short-sleeve polo shirt. His skin was light and freckled, he had red hair, and a matching goatee. My pulse quickened. I turned away casually like I hadn’t seen him and headed to the sneaker booth. The owner welcomed me, and I began browsing. I picked up a pair of Puma running shoes, pretending to look at them as I strained to keep tabs on my new friend with my peripheral vision.
    I thought I saw him make a move. I looked up. He hadn’t. As I made eye contact, he slipped on sunglasses. He didn’t pretend to look away, but kept his focus locked on me.
    I dropped the sneakers and began walking, clutching the paperbags against my torso. The crowd had grown thicker, and I wasn’t sure exactly where I was. Using the bags like bumpers to nudge past people, I contorted my body to minimize jostling Neo’s carrier, and I headed in the direction from which I thought I’d come.
    Who was this guy?
    How long had he been following me?
    A couple folks had words for me as I squeezed by, but I paid them no attention. When I got to the end of the aisle, I checked for my pursuer. He, too, was making his way through the crowd.
    Under the scorching sun, I kept pressing. With each step, the absurdity and seriousness of the situation became more apparent. My sense of reason told me to maintain a decent pace as not to attract unwanted attention to myself. My survival instincts, which I had come to rely on so heavily these last few weeks, suggested barreling through people to create as much distance as possible between me and Red.
    Through the flimsy rubber soles of the flip-flops I now felt every ripple, every pebble, of the uneven earth of the outdoor market’s floor. Every few steps one of my ankles threatened to roll. The thought of having to outrun this guy was a daunting one.
    My senses went into overdrive. I honed in on the foot traffic patterns all around me. Tommy always said the best leaders know when to let others lead. I identified a young couple a few people away to my left at exactly nine o’clock that seemed to be in a hurry. In only seconds they had made it to eleven o’clock.
    Locals.
    I pushed myself forward diagonally, falling in behind them. Their approach was one of anticipation from obvious experience, an understanding of where tiny holes would open in the crowd right before they did, most likely due to booth location. Their route was anything but straight, more like an ambulance moving through parking lot traffic in Midtown Manhattan.
    After about a hundred feet, a sign above the sea of heads in front of me, off to my right, caught my eye.
    â€œSalles de Bains.”
    Bathrooms.
    I looked behind me. No immediate sign of Red. Pretending to look for something I’d dropped, I crouched down and shooed legs away left and right as I moved forward. I made my way to the edge of the crowd. I sprung from the fringe of Les Puces. I raced toward the sign.
    I rounded a corner and entered a hallway leading into a small, sandstone building. Straight ahead was a door that had a small plaque on it with a charcoal drawing of a woman twirling, her summer dress fanned out. Jutting off left just before the ladies’ room was another hallway. On the wall before the turn was an arrow and another plaque marked with a charcoal drawing—this time a guy in a seersucker suit.
    Two steps into the hallway I stopped. I leaned against the wall, closed my eyes, then lifted up my t-shirt and wiped the sweat off my face. I hadn’t