The lady turned away and then brought out a chit of paper. On it, she wrote, $109. “But I have ticket,” Savitha said.
The lady shook her head and said, “That’s only to Spokane. This is the cost of a ticket to New York.” She pushed the chit of paper toward Savitha, and she took it. Another small white rectangle of paper.
She walked out of the bus station.
Along the side of the bus station was a curved road, and beyond it, another parking lot. And beyond even that were yet more buildings and yet more parking lots. Savitha looked and looked at the endless, unbroken pattern, despairing, and then she noticed that she was still clutching the chit of paper in her hand, dampening it with the sweat of her palm. She threw it into a trash bin. The clouds, since the early morning, had fattened, and scuttled lazily eastward; Savitha watched them with envy. She walked with a lurch to the southern end of the station, and then to the northern. She sat again on the bench outside, listless, wondering what to do. Then she got up and walked again.
She walked for some minutes until she reached the edge of a river. Here she sat down on another bench and tried to keep herself from crying. She hugged her knapsack to her chest, as if it were the only hope left to her, and she realized, with something nearing heartbreak, that it was. She had no idea what to do, how to get more money. She’d clearly misunderstood the man who’d sold her the ticket in Seattle, and now she thought, Even if I hadn’t eaten the sweet dosas in the restaurant, I still wouldn’t have enough money. I never did. She felt a stabbing pain at the end of her stub, a phantom pain she had not felt in many months. She shook out her arm and considered walking some more, but her tiredness returned, more parched, depleted, so she merely sat and looked at the river.
As it neared midafternoon, more people arrived at the river. There was a jogger or two; one man was peeling an orange; a few mothers stood in a group, watching their children at play.
Savitha blinked as if waking from a deep sleep. She was hungry, but she thought she should save her chips and cakes. She didn’t dare spend the money she had remaining. She drank water from a fountain and walked back southward, though away from the bus station; that was the first place they would look for her. She turned the corner. There was a long street, leading into a cluster of buildings. Cars were parked along the street, and as she drifted toward the buildings, she caught sight of the license plate of one of the parked cars. Savitha stopped in her tracks. She glanced up and down the empty street, then she bent down and read it again slowly. She was not mistaken: the letters added up to the words New York. She sat down, right there on the curb next to the car. What was she doing? She was waiting. What was she waiting for? Anything, she thought, I’m waiting for anything.
Her stomach growled. She succumbed and ate the chips and the two tiny cakes.
After an hour or so, an elderly couple came walking toward her. The woman was wearing pink pants, just past her knees, and a yellow shirt that read New Mexico, Land of Enchantment. All Savitha could read was the word New, and she counted it as a good sign. The woman’s silver hair was curly and cut close to her head. She wore pink lipstick that she’d tried to match with her pants, but clearly hadn’t, in a gauche way, and Savitha thought she must’ve always been so, even as a young woman, on the edges of beauty, at the very walls of prettiness, but never quite inside. The man was wearing a baseball cap and jeans and a checkered shirt, and they were obviously married. And had been for many years, since their youth, Savitha thought, noticing the familiarity, the distance, the dull ache between them. When they reached Savitha, they looked at her inquisitively for a polite moment, and then they saw her stub; they turned, suddenly self-conscious, hesitant, to their car. The New York car. The man took out a set of keys.
Savitha jumped up. “Pardon me, sir, madam. New York? You go to New York?”
They both looked at her again, befuddled, and then the woman let out a small whoop, and she said, “Oh, honey, this is a rental car. We’re not going to New York. We’re heading down to Salt Lake.”
Savitha stood there and watched them.
“Show her, hon,” the woman said. “Show her on the map.”
The man brought out something from the glove compartment and unfolded it into a wide piece of paper. He laid it out on the trunk of the car, and all three of them bent over it. “Here,” he said. “This is where we are.” Then his finger traveled south and east, and he said, “And this is Salt Lake City. This is where we’re headed.” He looked at Savitha; Savitha looked back at him. She held her stub away, behind her back. But he seemed to no longer see her stub. He seemed instead to sense how confused she was, how crestfallen, and, as if it would comfort her, he trailed his finger to the very edge of the map and said, “And this is New York.”
They all turned back to the map, and by now Savitha had realized the couple was headed mainly south, not east. But she didn’t want them to leave; she liked them. She could tell they were parents, that they knew a kind of love that was limitless and hopeless, both at once. She grew desperate; she considered, at the very least, asking them for some money, but was shy, embarrassed, and didn’t know how. And then, again with a rare kindness, the woman looked at Savitha for a long while, and said, “Maybe she can ride with us, Jacob. Come over to Butte with us.”
He shook his head. “That’s all mixed up, Mill. She’ll be a tad closer, but Spokane’s a better spot for her.” He stopped and said, “What’s your name, anyway?”
Savitha nodded and smiled.
He pointed at himself and said, “Jacob.” He pointed at his wife and said, “Millie.” Then he pointed at Savitha.
She smiled again, wider, and said, “Savitha.”
“Saveeta,” he said.
Savitha looked at the mountains in the distance, standing like sentinels, like guards against the east. The old man followed her gaze and said, “A tad closer is a tad closer, I guess; come along if you want to.”
She turned to them. First to him, to decipher what he’d just said, and then to the woman. She was smiling. A little of the pink lipstick on her teeth. “Come on now,” she said, “get in,” and motioned to the rear door. Savitha stood for a moment, unsure what to do. She understood by now that they weren’t going to New York, despite their license plate. She also understood, in that moment, her piercing aloneness, her billowing sorrow—she had no money, no food, and no road behind her.
She climbed into the backseat.
The couple chatted between themselves for some time. At one point, the woman said, “Where you from, honey?”
Savitha didn’t understand what she’d asked, so she said, “Yes, yes.”
The woman opened a bag of peanuts and offered them to Savitha. She could’ve easily eaten the whole bag, but Savitha politely took one and said, “Thank you, madam.”
“Call me Millie,” the woman said, and then leaned her head back and was asleep a few minutes later. Savitha heard her softly snoring.