So I went out in the street looking for an escape from the heat in my apartment and looking for someone to talk to. But the streets were hot, and dead. There was not a soul lurking outside my building: no Yulia, no golden teeth, no passers by; no uniformed men, no street sweepers.

Not a car passing, no gypsy taxis to take me wherever it was I was going, which would be some hotel with a swimming pool. I carried a bag with my bathing suit, a book to read, my passport, documents, and a brick of Uzbek money; a stripe of sweat grew on my shirt where the bag's strap pressed against my body. I waited by the side of the road, but decided to walk, when I saw or heard nothing in the distance, no cars, just dead silence, save for an airplane taking off in the distance or the sound of dirt turning over under my sandal.

I walked in the silence and thought of the Song of Solomon, of Solomon wandering the city singing, "I will rise now and go about the city, in the streets and in the squares; I will seek whom my soul loves. I sought him, but found him not."

He searches the streets, the markets, the town square, looking for his love. He asks the sentinels about "whom his heart loves." But, in this city, there is no one; no one milling about the entrance to the massive, austere Ministry of Internal Affairs building. No music coming from the direction of the markets. Not even the ladies selling berries -- it was the berry season, and earlier in the week, the ladies from the villages could be seen everywhere selling their sweet fruit from troughs and buckets. Every day it would be a different berry, a strawberry, a raspberry, a cherry, a blackberry, something that gave this grey city some color. But today it was so hot, so incredibly hot, that they didn't venture out.

On this street, which had been renamed so many times over, I didn't even know what it was called anymore, the tracks for the trolley had been taken out and the street was paved over. How did I not notice the disappearance of those hundred year old trolleybus tracks, tracks that when a bus rolled past made the streets rumble like a low-grade earthquake; tracks from a trolley I had once read about in Solzhenitsyn's "Cancer Ward," on which the protagonist rode upon his discharge from the hospital. Now history was buried under fresh asphalt.

Crumbling concrete benches from the park had been pulled out of the ground, leaving empty square holes in the asphalt. This was where the gays used to sit, or lovers seeking privacy in the dark at night would sit. There was no place here for them anymore. No place for them on the streets. No place inside -- was there even anyone inside? The windows of the massive concrete apartment blocks all seemed closed and curtained. From them, there was not even the sounds of air conditioners whirring.

I thought: what if everyone disappeared? Everyone except me.

I'd wander the streets something like the last man on earth. The day after a nuclear holocaust. The image was not so far off. Tashkent had that post-apocalyptic feel to it. Many buildings were constructed with those concrete bearings in front of the windows -- a design I had been told was inspired by keeping the residents safe in the case of an American bomb hitting the USSR. That probably wasn't true. But the buildings had concrete falling out from their sides, needed paint jobs, had steel girding popping out. The lawns were unmanicured and overgrown. The relic Russian cars parked on the street were nicked and dented and looked as though barely able to run. Trash spilled out into the gutter like the day after a party. I looked down at the dirt on the ground under my feet, and couldn't even find other footsteps there, save my own.

I was so thirsty. The kiosk on the street was closed. I rapped on the window, hoping that perhaps there was someone inside. There was no one.

I saw officers coming out of the Ministry of Internal Affairs building. They are everywhere, I am told. Supposedly, even when I don't see them, I should assume they are there. They would be here after a nuclear holocaust. Them, cockroaches, and Cher.

I heard a car coming from the distance. I walked to the sidewalk edge and put my hand out. Coming into view was a big white Land Rover, and I put down my hand and continued to walk. They never stopped for passengers. They were either diplomatic cars or the cars of extremely prosperous Uzbeks who didn't need my carfare. This one had red diplomatic plates. As I walked, I could hear it behind me pulling to a slow, riding right beside me to a stop.

A tinted window slid down and a cold breeze escaped, brushing against my face. Leaning to me from inside, in sunglasses, barely recognizable, like a desert mirage, it was the guy from the evening before. Jason. "Need a ride anywhere?" Jason asked.  ¶ 4:58 PM