Lucky(36)

“Maybe,” he said, pulling her off the path and into the shadows, staring into her eyes, lifting a hand to cradle her cheek like her face was a precious, delicate thing. He leaned closer and closer until the only thing to do was—

Their lips met in the darkness and it didn’t matter anymore that she had never had a friend to talk to about what a first kiss was like, what to do, how to tilt your head. After the first few seconds, none of it mattered. It felt like something she had been doing her whole life. There were things about him she didn’t know, but she would learn them all. She felt like a character in one of her books. He was her John Thornton, he was her Henry Tilney, he was her Gabriel Oak. And her life was about to change.





CHAPTER TEN


Lucky stood in a pay phone booth just outside the Seattle Greyhound station. Her hair was blond now; she had bleached it in a bathroom and cut it even shorter. She called directory assistance and asked for the phone number for Devereaux Camp in New York. She wrote it down on her hand, then fed quarters into the telephone and dialed the number, adrenaline coursing through her body. After several rings, a gravelly-voiced man answered. “Devereaux Camp, help ya?”

Lucky didn’t speak.

“Hello? Hello?”

“Is Gloria available?” she managed.

“Just a sec.”

The phone was put down and there was some muffled talking, some fumbling, and then the man shouted, “Gloria! Phone’s for you!”

It had started to rain. The world outside was like a painting in varying shades of gray, with only the odd flash of color: the purple and gold of the Seattle city buses, the green of a tree, the navy trench coat on a woman rushing by, the red of her umbrella.

“Hello? What can I do for you?”

Lucky couldn’t speak.

“Helloooo?”

Lucky had the receiver pressed against her ear so hard it hurt—so when Gloria slammed down the phone, that hurt, too. Lucky winced, then replaced the receiver on its cradle and left the phone booth. She stood in the rain, waiting for inspiration to strike. If she wasn’t ready to talk to her mother yet, what next, where now?

She walked for a while, then ducked into a coffee shop. Two police officers were sitting at a table in the corner, near the window. One of them caught her eye as she walked in and she forced a quick smile, rather than a guilty look away that could draw attention.

She got in line, bought a small coffee, and left the café. The officers didn’t look up as she exited, and her panic receded. She was getting used to living in a constant state of fear. Outside, as she walked, she could feel the lottery ticket against her body, taped to the inside of her rain-damp sweatshirt. The ticket helped. It anchored her to an alternate future. She stopped again when she saw a sign for a used book store, ducked in the door on impulse—and as soon as she did, the familiar aroma of dusty endpapers and shelves filled with books hit her. The volumes she saw felt like companions she had lost along the way.

In the fiction section, she traced a finger along familiar spines, then moved along to French Literature. She swept her eyes along the spines: Camus. Colette. Duras. Hugo—Les Misérables. She eased it off the shelf. She had started reading it as a child, then left it behind when she and her dad had moved in with Steph and Darla. This one was a hardcover, and it cost ten dollars, which was more than she could really afford. And she could have tucked it under her sweater: the proprietor of the store was in another aisle, shelving books. But she didn’t steal it. She walked up to the cash register, she rang the little bell, and she paid for it. She cradled it against her body, under her sweater, as she walked back to the bus station.

“Ticket to Fresno, please,” she said to the cashier at the counter, having finally come to a decision—mostly based on the fact that she had no options. When she was on the bus, she pulled out her book and began to read. She understood Valjean, the way he absorbed the personas he inhabited. She knew he wasn’t real, but she still felt less alone, less of a stranger to herself and to everyone she met, as she read.

Hours later, she looked out the window. The bus was approaching the California border now: she saw it on the sign as the bus sped by. She stared at her reflection in the bus window and slowly began to change her posture. Her name was Jean, she decided. She’d been living in Los Angeles, trying to make a living as a screenwriter, but a bad situation with a friend had caused the bottom to fall out of her finances and her dreams. Slowly, over the course of the past year, she had lost it all, and eventually ended up on the streets. She had never imagined something like this would happen to her. She had been sleeping on the beach in Santa Monica for a while, but it didn’t feel safe. A transient woman she had met—she couldn’t remember her name now—had told her about Priscilla’s Place, so she had panhandled enough for a bus ticket and here she was, looking for somewhere to stay. She was not going to tell Priscilla who she really was. She had her colored contacts, her short, bleached hair. She would change her voice, change her posture, do everything in her power to become unrecognizable. It might not work—her father might have called and said to expect her. But she had to try. She couldn’t just walk in there and say who she was.

It was getting dark, and she was hungry and stiff. But she had nothing to sustain her, food-wise. She ran her thumb along the lottery ticket inside her shirt and considered the importance of this small slip of paper—how much it could sustain her, and for how long, if she managed to find a way to cash it without having to go to prison. It was too important to walk into Priscilla’s with, she realized. They would probably search her, looking for drugs or other contraband before she was allowed to stay at the shelter. She drew her hand away from the ticket. It was just a piece of paper—but it was everything to her, now. She needed to keep it safe. And she had an idea.