There There - Tommy Orange Page 0,69

lights are out. Is it too late? What time is it? I look at my phone. It’s only nine. I’m okay. I look back and see Geraldine’s car where we left it. No cops yet. I could call and wait for the police, tell them what happened, tell them about Paul.

The station is empty. I go straight into the bathroom. On my feet, in a crouch, on top of the toilet in one of the stalls, I try to order my ticket on my phone. But he calls. I can’t order because his calls keep interrupting me. I see a text at the top of my screen and try to ignore it but can’t.

You here? the text says. I know he means the bus station. He must have seen Geraldine’s car, seen how close the Greyhound station was.

We’re at a bar around the corner from where we crashed, I text.

BULLSHIT, he texts back. Then he calls. I press the top button of my phone in. He’s probably here. Walking through the bus station. He’s looking for the light of my phone. Listening for its vibration. He won’t come into the bathroom. I turn the vibrate on my phone off. I hear the door to the bathroom open. My heart is too big and fast to hold in my chest. I take a deep breath as quiet and slow as I can. Still standing on the toilet seat I duck my head down to see who came in. I see women’s shoes. It’s an old woman. Big, beige, wide, Velcroed shoes step into the stall next to mine. Paul calls again. I press the top button again. I see a text come in.

C’mon baby. Come out. Where are you going? the text says. My legs are tired. My knees throb from the crash. I get down from the toilet. I pee and try to think of a text that might lead him away from here.

I told you we’re down the street. Come down. We’ll have a drink. We’ll talk through this, okay? I text him. The door to the bathroom opens again. I drop my head down again. Fuck. His shoes. I get back up on the toilet.

“Blue?” His voice booms in the stall.

“This is the women’s room, sir,” the woman in the stall next to me says. “There’s no one in here but me.” And I know she must have heard me in the next stall when I peed.

“Sorry,” Paul says.

There’s still too much time before the bus gets here. He’ll wait for the lady to leave and come back in. I hear the door open then close again.

“Please,” I whisper to the woman, “he’s after me.” And I don’t know what I’m asking her to do.

“What time’s your bus leaving, darling?” the woman says.

“Thirty minutes,” I say.

“Don’t worry. When you get to my age, you can get away with that much time in here. I’ll stay with you,” she says, and I start to cry. Not loud, not a sob, but I know she can hear me. The snot comes and I sniff in hard so it won’t keep coming.

“Thank you,” I say.

“This kind of man. They’re getting worse.”

“I’m gonna have to run out, I think. Run to the bus.”

“I carry mace. I been attacked, robbed more than once.”

“I’m going to Oakland,” I say. And I realize just then that we’re no longer whispering. I wonder if he’s at the door. My phone isn’t ringing anymore.

“I’ll walk over with you,” she says.

I order the ticket on my phone.

We walk out of the bathroom together. The station is empty. The woman is brown, ethnically ambiguous, and older than I thought even from the shoes. She has those deep wrinkles on her face that seem carved, wooden. She gestures for us to lock arms as we walk.

I climb the steps into the bus, the old woman behind me. I show my ticket to the driver on my phone, then turn it off. I walk to the back and slink way down in my seat, take in a deep breath then let it out, and wait for the bus to start moving.

Thomas Frank

BEFORE YOU WERE BORN, you were a head and a tail in a milky pool—a swimmer. You were a race, a dying off, a breaking through, an arrival. Before you were born, you were an egg in your mom who was an egg in her mom. Before you were born, you were the nested Russian grandmother doll of