Quantum Physics and the Art of Departure: Short Shories

by Craig Lancaster

  When the taxi rolled up to the driveway, he hit send.

  * * * * *

  ALYSSA ALIGHTS

  THE GIRL pushed her back into the wall, straining against the mortar as if believing that it would relent and let her wriggle out of the raindrops that were falling into puddles around her. She didn’t actually believe any such thing; a break like that never comes your way, not when you really need it. But what were her choices? She could sit in the rain or try to get out of it, if only by increments. She dug in again, pushing the heels of her worn sneakers against the asphalt and shoving backward, and she could feel the rough edge of the brick pierce first her steadily soaking T-shirt and then the skin on the small of her back. She pushed till it hurt too much to push further, and then she looked skyward and took a raindrop in the eye, a just reward for looking there for answers.

  The alley she had chosen wasn’t much of a shelter, but she figured it would have to do. She hadn’t seen any better options since walking out of the Greyhound station hours earlier. She had tried a few downtown doorways, but soon enough, the rent-a-cops had come around and moved her along. She had considered—and then quickly abandoned consideration of—finding a bench in a city park. Too out in the open. Here, sandwiched between a parking garage and a hair salon and partially hidden by a trash bin, she figured she could at least close her eyes and rest. If someone came along, she would surely hear him (and it’s always a him, she thought) and she could hunker down or, if she had to, make a run in either direction to the street.

  She thought of that scenario again, and now it was suddenly alive and dangerous, as if her consideration of it had made it real. She cursed under her breath and tried to assure herself that she was as safe as a girl sleeping in an alley could be. Still, she had long since learned that she was the sort of girl who needed a contingency plan. Running to the street—screaming if necessary—was hers. She hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but she had hoped before and been disappointed.

  “Just let me close my eyes,” she said softly. She let her legs go slack, straight out from her, and the rain, falling sideways now, found and pelted them. The drops of water soaked through the denim, and she grew chilly. She tucked her chin and squeezed rain out of her auburn hair. The jagged teeth of the Billings skyline swallowed her in darkness, and her eyes grew heavy. It wasn’t long before sleep came for her. So, too, did the stardust memories of what had led her to such a place.

  The departure, while abrupt, could hardly be called a flight of whimsy. She knew precisely what she was doing, and why, and that she hadn’t told anyone the what or the why was her own decision. It had felt good to actually make one; decisions were all she had that truly belonged to her. A new town, a new name, a new start—she figured she was owed that, but because she had never known the universe to make a concession to the likes of her, she hedged her bets and forced the issue.

  On the day she left, she awoke at four in the morning and quietly filled her backpack with what it could hold—clothes, mostly, and her journal, but also a couple of granola bars and a small bottle of water. She crept past her mother’s closed door and stuck close to the baseboards, where the floor was less likely to emit a groan. In Patty’s room, she lingered, though she knew she shouldn’t. Every moment she waited increased her odds of being found out. She stared at Patty’s skin, the color of cream, and she stroked the girl’s hair, pulling back only when Patty stirred. She held her breath and waited for the girl to roll back into slumber. When Patty did, the girl stepped out of the room and continued her creep on little cat paws toward the door.

  Finally outside the house, she cut a path out of Sidney on side streets, staying well off the main drag, with its restaurants and gas stations. Even at such an early hour, the eyes that would surely see her leaving would give way to the tongues that would surely tell on her. It wasn’t until she neared the intersection of Highway 200 and Highway 16 that she dared skip over to the main road. She settled onto the shoulder and began walking southwest, toward Glendive, where a bus to Billings awaited.

  She patted the right front pocket of her jeans, which held a wallet. That, in turn, contained eighty-three dollars, all the money she had managed to save from her job at the M&M diner. The wallet, she knew, was the most important thing she was carrying. Every few steps, her right hand found its way to the front of her pants, and she traced its outline, verifying once more its existence.

  A mile out of town, the first semi of the day rumbled behind her, coming from Williston. She turned and thrust her right thumb skyward and smiled. Just as she figured he would, the trucker eased his rig onto the shoulder. When she caught up to him, he reached across and opened the passenger door.

  “Where you headed?”

  “Glendive,” she said.

  “What’s there?”

  “My grandma.”

  “I’m headed for Spokane. You want to go?”

  “Glendive’s fine. My grandma’s there.”

  “Sure,” the trucker said. His creased face and black eyes bore in on her, and she sensed wildness and unpredictability behind them. That scared her, but the idea of not getting the ride scared her more. Her mother would be awake soon, and maybe she would call the cops. Maybe not. Someone she knew would see her out here, and that made her an easy mark.

  “It’s true,” she said.

  “Okay, girl. You got any money for fuel? I’m not supposed to pick people up. I could lose my job.”

  “I don’t,” she lied.

  His eyes flickered, and her guts did flips. She looked at the ground.

  “Well, get in. We’ll figure something out.”

  That he expected to be topped off could not have surprised the girl any less, and though she found him repugnant, she ciphered out the equation and found that it balanced. Blowjob equals ride equals Glendive equals bus ticket equals escape. She closed her eyes and went down, and when she sensed that he was set to go, she squirmed free of the hand pressed at the back of her head.

  “It’s a goddamned mess,” he said.

  She said nothing.

  “I ought to put you out right here.”

  She watched the unfolding asphalt.

  “Goddamned stupid girl,” he said, and he turned his attention back to the road. The truck lurched up a rise on the two-lane highway, and when it crested, she looked left at the watery ribbon of the Yellowstone River below and the painted buttes in the hazy distance. It looked like freedom to her, or the next nearest thing.

  She asked him to pull over at the gas station abutting Interstate 94.

  “Your grandmother work here?” he asked.

  “No, but this is where she picks me up.” She released the door handle and clambered down to the concrete.

  “You sure you don’t wanna come to Spokane with me? We could have a real good time.” The way he smiled and unfurled the word “real”—reeeeeaaal—gave her insides another hard twist.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “Your loss,” he said, and he reached across the vacated seat and pulled the door shut.

  She watched until the truck crossed back under the interstate and made the wide left turn onto the westbound ramp. Once it was out of sight, she ran for the restroom on the side of the gas station. She almost made it to the toilet before the previous night’s dinner and the bile she had been swallowing for a week turned on her.

  When her eyes fluttered open, she caught and held her breath.

  She heard something.

  She craned her neck left and right and scanned the alley. Nothing.

  The rain had passed. As her senses rallied into form, she heard the ping of water falling from the eaves into pools that had gathered in the alleyway.

  The storm clouds that had been rolling in on her all night had peeled back, revealing a mottled, blue-gray sky backlit by a quarter-moon. Even through the glow of the street lamp, she saw stars, and she silently thrilled at the vision. Her mind opened, and she stepped through her memories just a couple of months earl
ier, to the Fourth of July, when she and Patty had lain on the trampoline in her grandparents’ backyard and watched the fireworks cascade through the sky from the fairgrounds. With each burst of red and blue and green, she had turned and watched her sister in profile, the little girl’s wonderment stitched across her face. Afterward, they had counted stars, and the older girl had pointed out the Little Dipper and the Big Dipper and Orion’s belt. Such a simple thing it was, but she had known that it was a touchstone memory, something she could cling to as Patty grew older and more independent. She had learned to keep such things close to her heart. And now, in the darkness and the uncertainty, she held on for dear life.

  She pulled the fraying winter coat tighter around her shoulders. She had outgrown it a year earlier, but there hadn’t been time to get another before she departed. As the chill set in, she offered silent thanks that she had remembered to grab it from the front closet on her way out the door. She could find a bigger coat later. Tonight, she needed this one.

  Her eyelids sagged again, and she faded away.

  Forty feet above, at the top level of the parking garage, the silent sentry crept back to the ledge and looked down.

  He had very nearly missed her. The rounds brought him to this place nightly. Tonight, there was no work—no stinking punch-drunk bums to chase out, no oversexed teenagers going at it in a parked car. He had made a final sweep along the periphery of the lot, collecting a few bottles and cans that he could use, picking up scraps of paper that he would throw away later. He was about to glance away when the girl wriggled into view beside the trash bin. He had stepped back lest she look up and spot him. Then he had pressed forward again—slowly, slowly—to take another look.

  That had been three hours ago. His bicycle sat a few feet away, propped on its kickstand. The cart attached to the back axle held the treasures of a night’s scrounging—a few magazines, bottles and cans, a couple of blankets he had found earlier in the evening behind the men’s shelter. He kept the police scanner pressed to his ear, but it had been a quiet night, with no malfeasance that required his presence. It was just as well, he thought. He wasn’t sure he could leave, not with that girl down there.

  The scanner crackled, and he turned the volume knob down and pressed the speaker tight against his head. Some bums breaking beer bottles in North Park. Patrol car on the way. North Park was his beat, but it could wait.

  I’ll do a sweep tomorrow, he thought. If they’re still in North Park tomorrow, they’ll be sorry.

  He twisted the knob on the scanner to the off position and looked down again to the concrete below.

  She had gone still.

  The man soft-shoed to his bicycle, his deft movements belying his size. He made sure everything was in order, and then he threw his right leg over the crossbar and started pedaling, down, down, down in a tight circle to the bottom of the garage.

  The big man crept like a stalking cat. He walked toward the girl at an angle so as not to cast a shadow across her eyes and rouse her. When he was close enough to see that she was, perhaps, even younger than he expected, he brought the blanket out from behind his back and gingerly set it across her.

  The girl flopped her head to the left, and he froze. The knotty muscles in his legs, honed by days on the bike, twitched with the impulse to run, and the big man grimaced at the effort required to resist. After a few agonizing seconds, the girl’s breathing kicked in again, and so did his.

  He stepped backward, ever so slowly, and mounted his bicycle.

  When he had pushed back silently to the street, he turned and pointed his nose east, toward the coming dawn.

  The jab from the broom caught the girl under the rib cage and launched her, yelling, out of a pleasant dream. Eyes wide, she looked up to see a short woman with jet-black hair and dancing eyes. The woman held the broom like a vaulting pole.

  “This isn’t your house,” the woman spat out, and when the girl pushed herself off the concrete, her tormentor backpedaled but kept the broom aloft and rigid, ready to repel an attack.

  “That really hurt, bitch,” the girl said. “Put that thing down.”

  “Go on,” the woman said, signaling the desired direction with the business end of the broom. “I’m so sick of finding people like you back here. This isn’t your home. This is my business. Get out.”

  The girl stooped over to collect her things, keeping an eye on the woman with the broom.

  “I was just sleeping,” she said. “I didn’t do anything to you.”

  “Sleep somewhere else.”

  The girl patted the familiar spot on the front of her jeans and felt relieved to find the wallet where it belonged. She shimmied into her too-small coat and then did a double take at the sight of the blanket.

  “Get out,” the woman said.

  “All right. Jesus.” She quickly folded and packed the patterned blue-gray Indian blanket whose better days had been spent wrapped around someone else, and then she turned to the woman and offered a saccharine smile. “Thank you kindly for the hospitality,” she said.

  “Go.” The woman bristled.

  With an exaggerated waggle, she sashayed past the woman, moving uncomfortably close and fixing her with a downward stare. The blessings of being a tall, gangly girl were few—most of them confined to basketball, which she despised—but playing intimidation games with short people was one of her favorites. Sure enough, the woman took a step back as the girl passed.

  Halfway down the alley, she raised her arms triumphantly, as if she had gone twelve rounds and won.

  The bewildered woman found her voice and called after her: “Don’t ever come back.”

  Arms aloft, the girl turned right at the end of the alley and disappeared.

  At a corner, she stood and took in the bustling cityscape. Her face twisted in concentration as she made note of her surroundings. Looking south toward the railroad tracks, she saw possibilities: boutiques and small restaurants and the like, all going concerns, many perhaps in need of someone to sweep floors or take food and drink orders. She could do those things and many others. She resolved to come back as soon as she was ready.

  Her first stop, though, lay several blocks away, and she walked toward the tracks to find it. She kept her eyes forward and didn’t meet the stares that migrated to her. It wasn’t difficult for her to imagine how shocking she must have looked. She had slept outside, in a steady rain, and she had emerged from sleep facing a mad woman with a broom. She’d had no time or opportunity for primping. As another passerby stared a moment too long, she pawed at her brittle hair, dropped her head and kept moving.

  The railroad tracks cleaved Billings in two. Behind her lay the workaday part of town, the one that filled every weekday morning and emptied at night. Ahead, the part of town that scratched out its existence daily came into view. The girl crossed the rails and stepped into Old Town, into the province of grown-over lots and buildings bullied by weather and neglect, an area of many decades’ decline now pockmarked by small signs of gentrification, mostly old buildings retrofitted for new offices. A block ahead, she saw the men’s shelter, and she knew from her surreptitious Internet surfing at school, as she plotted her leave, that her destination lay just beyond, in the thrift shop that helped support the shelter. She patted the wallet in her jeans pocket. After the bus ticket and some food, she had thirty-seven dollars and change, and she hoped that would be enough for some decent work clothes and enough cosmetics to make her passable for employment.

  The morning action frothed around the shelter, with the previous night’s guests hitting the streets to while away another day before coming back for a hot meal and a cot. Her intrusion— “Here comes the sausage-fest,” she said to herself as she approached—drew a few predictable wolf whistles, but mostly, the men let her pass without a word. She dodged a few gappy grins, neither returning nor encouraging them. As she walked on to the thrift store, she felt a tightening in her stomach, something she recognized as a fear that their fate—to be turned out dail
y, without a real home and without real love—might someday be hers. Soon, if she couldn’t make her plan work.

  The girl lingered a moment before going in and tried to shake the doubt from her head. She couldn’t afford to lose confidence before she even started.

  If that’s all you’ve got, she said inside her own head, just go buy a ticket home.

  She pulled open the door and stepped inside.

  The fashions were wrong—everything that fit seemed a decade out of date—but the prices were right. She collected five pairs of women’s slacks, in an assortment of fabrics, and five blouses and sweaters for twenty-two dollars and fifty cents. When she told the woman behind the counter that she would use the garments as work clothes, the clerk asked softly, “You staying someplace?”

  “Not yet,” the girl said.

  The clerk threw in a beaten-up duffel bag, bigger and more sensible than the girl’s backpack, free of charge. When she inquired about makeup, the clerk dug around in her own purse and scared up lipstick, foundation and eyeliner.

  “Thank you,” the girl said. The kindness awed her.

  The clerk smiled, patting the girl’s arm. “Good luck, kiddo.”

  Facing herself in the mirror, she wondered if she should be thankful or horrified that she had only a single 40-watt bulb to reveal her dishevelment. The reason for the stares seemed clear enough now; shocks of her red hair flared out from her head at ridiculous angles, and her face was smudged with so much grime that her freckles faded into the background.

  She cleaned her face and hair as best as she could, then slipped out of the clothes she had been wearing for two days. Standing there, naked and clean, she felt good for the first time in a long while. Her body—all hard right angles for so long—had begun to fill out in all the proper places, and the rangy limbs that she tried hard to love, as they came from her father, were giving way to the soft edges of a woman. She turned ninety degrees to the right and took in her profile in the mirror. She broke into a toothy smile as she looked at the outline of her breasts. God, she loved her boobs. They were perfect—big enough to attract attention (sometimes unwanted attention, but still) and shapely enough to ensure that she wasn’t top-heavy. She liked that she could move men’s eyes with her chest, and so long as her not-so-secret admirers looked discreetly and didn’t move aggressively toward her, she took no offense at being watched in that way, like some girls do. She was certain that she didn’t want to live in a world where breasts couldn’t be admired.