black car and a beige car. The streets were dry and cold. It was a mountainous cold, one Savitha had never grown used to, and she pulled her sweater tighter around her shoulders. She’d stolen it, the sweater, from Padma, along with the small plastic knapsack, where she kept her remaining eighty-two dollars, the ripped photograph, a change of clothes, the white rectangle of paper, and what remained of Poornima’s half-made sari. The fragment she’d wrapped gently in old newspaper and placed at the bottom of her sack. The bus station was a two-story redbrick building; outside was a row of trees like the trees that had blanketed the mountains all along the highway, and beyond the trees were some buildings, tall but not nearly as tall as they had been in Seattle. It was not yet seven A.M., but Savitha still saw a few people wandering around, not as if they were going anywhere, but simply wandering. That struck her as odd for such an hour, but they paid her no attention, almost as if she were invisible, and continued on their way.
In the parking lot of the bus station, to the right of the row of trees, a man leaned against a yellow car, smoking. There was a woman sitting inside the car, smoking as well, her arm resting on the open window, but neither talked nor looked at the other, like strangers, in fact, though Savitha could see that his thigh was touching the tip of her elbow. Another man was standing against the eastern wall of the bus station, squinting at a newspaper. She stood and watched the light of the sun emerge from behind the distant mountains and bathe him in its glow, his pale white skin turning a burnished gold. She crossed the street and walked in the direction of the buildings until she saw a restaurant. Savitha went inside and sat down in one of the booths. There was a menu resting on the table, filled with pictures, and when the waitress came, Savitha pointed to the one that looked like three little dosas, all in a row. She took a sip of her water and waited. When the plate arrived and she took a bite (with the spoon, fumbling, not knowing how to use either the fork or the spoon), she realized that they weren’t dosas, not in the least. They were sweet! And inside them, instead of potato curry, was the same white fluffy, weightless substance that had been on the banana split. How odd. What a mysterious country, she thought, how small for all its vastness. But they were good, and she was hungry.
Before she left the diner, she bought a bag of chips, a bottle of water, and a package of what looked like little cakes.
She walked back to the bus station and sat on a bench outside, facing the row of trees but with a view of the street and the parking lot. It was fifteen minutes to eight, and she tried to stay awake until the ticket counter opened. She watched the drift of the low, round clouds rising out of the edge of the earth with the sun. To the west, the mountains, caressed now by morning light, turned pink and green and charcoal, the clouds above them also low, seeming to gather and gaze at those hills as if they were children. Savitha looked at the mountains and the clouds and thought, This is the most I’ve seen of this country. This is my widest view. And then she thought again of Mohan. A pain blossomed in her stomach and spread, thin and blue as ink, to her chest. She focused again on the mountains, the clouds, but they were distant and preoccupied. She concentrated instead on the street and the parking lot. At one point, a tiny swirl of tumbleweed rose into the air, spinning like birds. It was nearly transparent, whirling in the gust, carried by its own buoyancy and the slightest exhalation of wind. Savitha closed her eyes—just for a moment, she told herself—and fell into a light sleep.
She was woken by a car horn, or maybe a voice, and saw that it was a little after eight. She jumped up, cursing herself for falling asleep when they could be here, here, and ran inside, clasping her ticket stub. She went to the counter, held out her ticket, and said, “Hello, madam. When is bus to New York?”
The ticket lady, a black