The tiles are cold. It feels somehow wrong to walk upon them barefoot: one gets that feeling of vulnerability, putting one’s naked feet into the domain of boots. He shivers slightly. Being in this corridor, with its row of sliding doors and its institution-green walls is a strange sensation in and of itself: he keeps expecting somebody, maybe a stern nurse or a dark-suited official, to emerge from one of the doors and ask him why, exactly, is he strolling down this corridor with his hair all wet, wearing nothing but a fuzzy bath towel.
The feeling is altogether exciting.
Nobody comes to investigate the patter of his feet on the tiling. The building seems deserted. The doors lack number plates (in fact, they don’t even have handles), so he counts them aloud as he walks – eleven, twelve, thirteen, and all the way down to thirty-two. That’s the one, she’d told him. “Thirty-two” – she said, “knock thrice, then twice, then five times.” And so he does.