I’m trying not to be seen. Midday shadows congregate in small, heavy heaps under the rusted and shattered awnings of Oldtown. A trio of teens eyeball me from across the long, narrow stretch of vacant storefronts. I crouch in the shade, fumble with a roll of film, and size up the ruined facades of an older, different city than what’s before me now. The buzz of pedestrian traffic and vendor stalls is decades gone. A cold quiet prevails.

A woman walks by. She’s wearing sweats, and her face is tight from the cold wind. She coughs a bit. It echoes down the plaza. I look up and smile. She asks the customary:

“D’you know where you are?”

I do. I gesture with my camera towards a boarded up second-floor window and start to explain about how this place is really interesting, and would make a great photograph, when she cuts in.

“Y’know…”

Her gaze floats up to a sign that reads “CHANGES” in multicolored letters.

“This place needs a new life. Nothin’ but rats livin’ up in here. Rats and fools,” she nods her head emphatically at the teens sitting on a pylon (“Man, fuck you bitch,” barely echoes back to us). “Got rats all day, whew. Come up inna my alley down there on President Street. Never seen so many rats. You be careful.”

She politely declines a photograph, and ambles past the teens. Errant insults and a grandmotherly “Fuck y’all” criss-cross the plaza.

The sun shifts and my shade is gone. A brilliant gleam triumphs over the gloomy shadows. I look west. Through the narrow hallway of age-worn Oldtown—like tunnel vision—the clean outline of downtown’s highrises shimmer in the sun.

A rat runs by.

The first and most important rule is “go to where the cats go.”