Someone who has waited thirty years to see if you’d come.
Linda heard it once more, inside, without his mouth.
She closed her eyes.
She opened them.
The lot was still the lot.
The man was still the man.
She was still Linda Brooks, waitress, daughter, sister, person who left, person who had not yet taken a step in either direction, held on a seam of wet concrete by a year that refused to stay in a shoebox.
If this were a different kind of night she would make a list.
Pros of taking the key: the debt spoken; the face seen; the if answered with a yes she owed since the sink.
Cons: the look; the years she cannot give back; the possibility that waiting has turned into something that will not survive a door.
Pros of refusing: the shift; the pot; the life that functions; the knee; the plant on Sunday.
Cons: the rest of the calendar. Every circled workday with a name in her pocket.
Lists had never helped her at twenty. They would not help her under an awning. She had not listed her way onto the bus. She had packed.
She had no bag now. Only a receipt and a uniform and a man who would not do the choosing.
Linda let the list die.
She listened to rain.
She listened to a truck on the route.
She listened to her name, the one on her tag, LINDA, the one customers used when they wanted sugar, and behind it the name on the receipt, which was not hers and had once been the center of her mornings.
Two names.
One key.
No decision.
That is a cruel place to leave a woman.
It is also the only honest place the night allowed.
She stayed in it.