It had been years and many many cities ago when she'd first wondered about the buildings vanishing. Sat late one evening in a quiet back street pub drinking with some friends, the conversation meandering late into the evening she idly wondered how it was that some buildings seemed to just vanish overnight. The idea was all but forgotten the next morning, an idle fancy dismissed and washed away with breakfast coffee. It was years later returning to the same pub that the idea came back in more solid form, standing beneath the pubs fading sign the autumn wind tugging at her coat, she suddenly realised - the book shop had gone.
For as long as she could recall the book shop had stood there, austere stonework oddly at ease against the pubs whitewashed facade. Now though it was gone replaced by brash blue hoarding, decorated with signs promising the imminent arrival of an exciting new retail development. She must have passed the shop countless times over the years, stood browsing it's windows waiting late at night for a cab to arrive or her friends to fall out of the pub to carry on the evening elsewhere. Now though it was gone. No hint left of what had once been there, just cheap wooden boards testament to the absence of something else. Even that though wasn't what gave the idea substance. More it was that whilst her memory spoke of permanence and familiarity, she couldn't recall a single detail of the shop that had stood there. Not the name, nor even what sort of books it may once of sold from the windows she'd so often browsed.
After that night she started noticing other building in other places that had been there "just the other day" but had now vanished. Replaced by more of the ubiquitous blue hoarding, or a retail development or office block. The idea became unshakable. With her friends she turned conversation to how strange it was that you rarely saw buildings being demolished, rather they so often were just one day not there. They laughed of course but all knew of buildings they'd walked past every day and that had then seemingly just gone, though they could never recall any detail of them, it was just "that shop" or "that house". Strangers she met told the same tale, though few thought anything of it. She turned to books, of town-scapes past trying to find evidence of the missing buildings but always they were out of focus or obscured by same passing vehicle, never quite fully there.
It was in such a book, that she came across the first hint that the building may not be just vanishing but rather going somewhere - to some half remembered city. Just a passing reference in a crumbling book of fading pictures. It was enough though to feed the idea. She started to look in the neglected corners of musty book shops and neglected libraries, for a particular sort of book. Nondescript books from forgotten publishers about places almost gone from memory. Within these books, once in a while she'd find a word, a phrase, a picture or some scribbled note in the margin alluding to the city the buildings went to. More than that over time these hints began to form a picture of how she might get there.
That had all been a long time ago now, since then she'd searched town after town after city until they'd merged together in her mind. Each distinct and familiar yet indistinguishable one from the next. In the pub her friends had wondered now and then what had become of the girl that was always talking about old buildings , before their attention turned back to more current issues. In a quiet street just off the main drag, between two shops not yet closed, she'd spotted it. An alley half block with weeds and fading litter, leading away between the blind backs of crumbling buildings that hinted at prior industry. For once the path, glimpsed before in a hundred faded photographs, wasn't flanked by barren blue hoarding, didn't behind an exciting new retail development, wasn't over hung with air conditioning units and watched over by the blind eyes of CCTV cameras. This time the path led away to emerge between two genteel town houses, somewhere different. Stepping out onto the street she entered the city of familiar buildings, lining half remembered streets that she must surely half walked before in other places if she could just get her bearings. Behind her weeds grew out from under the faded blue boards blocking the alley just beyond the houses back gardens.
