Nairobi

        You know what they say about nature abhoring a vacuum. Now that things with my foot are stabilized, another worry needs to fill the vacancy. I spin the wheel and it lands on my old standby: soul-crushing loneliness. In a way, my physical issues are easier to deal with than the emotional ones. I have trouble with the foot, I get it worked on, I stay off it, it gets better. There's not a corresponding treatment plan for loneliness. I've been alone for too long, and I'm starting to feel like I always will be. Another old chestnut is that you become invisible when you turn forty... well, I'm going to be fifty this year, and nearly a decade of invisibility has taken its toll. When years pass without so so much as a peck on the cheek, without a single touch or even a flirtatious glance or remark, you start to feel like you're withering away.

        I finally give in and try online dating again. The only messages I get are from women halfway across the world. Sometimes the Philippines, occasionally Romania, but almost always Nairobi. They're not from anywhere else in Africa or even other cities in Kenya. Just Nairobi. Not a single real, local person shows any interest in me, or responds to my messages.

        I know I shouldn't let it bother me, but it does, and by Saturday night I'm pretty miserable. I go out for a beer and the only people at the bar are couples. I go to bed early, passing out not from drinking but from a complete unwillingness to stay awake even another half hour. 

          I drag myself to work the next morning morning, feeling both heavy and hollow at the same time. During my morning patrol, the woman in the control room calls to say there's a fire at the camp behind the museum. "It's big," she says, sounding panicky. I grab a fire extinguisher and hurry outside.

        The fire is, indeed, big. One of the inhabitants of the camp apparently threw all their belongings in a heap and set it ablaze and fled. His partner, an older woman, is sitting placidly next to it on a bucket. I ask if she's okay and she smiles and says something I can't make out.

        I've never used a fire extinguisher in my life, but I pull the pin and aim the nozzle at the conflagration and squeeze the grip and a plume of white retardant whooshes out, putting out most of the flames in seconds. Smoke billows from the pile; I try to step out of its path but it seems drawn to me. With a few more blasts I kill the remains of the fire and stomp on some stray handfuls of smoldering newspaper.

        The woman has not moved from her bucket this entire time. I chat with her a bit. "At least that'll take care of the bugs," she says, as the sound of sirens rises from around the corner.

          When I get home that night I see that I've gotten seventeen more messages from Nairobi and one from Thailand. My clothes still smell of smoke.  I close my account.