*I don’t have to look into the pocket to know what I’m feeling in there. A little food, some batteries, a book (Don Quijote or how ever you spell it), My lucky rock, and there it is; the pager. Pulling it out I make a quick check of the time and see that no one paged since coffee. Cramming it back in I look back up at the girl. Her name, I decide, must be Madison or maybe Sarah (but spelled Sera; and she’d make sure you knew it). Yes. She must be Sera. And I wonder who put Sera on the wall in here, and where Sera is now.

Remembering the damn bus I twist to my knees, grab a strap of the pack and get on my feet as I swing the thing onto my back. Make one last look around, catch Sera’s eye one more time and begin walking briskly back out the way I came in. Just like a tunnel it gets brighter as I walk toward the fence. The sun is up now, but just doesn’t filter into the alley this early. When I reach the fence the wind catches the left side of my jacket flinging it open. Damn, I forgot about the wind, and the chill. But, I pull the pack off one shoulder and gently lift it up and over the bar. It’s tough to keep it from dropping out of my hands, or ripping my shoulder out of socket, but by now, I don’t have to think about any of those things anymore. Just gently set it on the ground on the other side by balancing the pack on the bar, climbing half-way up the fence and gently lowering it. Once it is down I hurl myself over and heft it back up.

I should be happy to be getting out of this city. Maybe I will be when I actually get on the bus, or when it finally drops me off in the next one. But I’m still in too much of a daze to really feel much of anything. I guess I’m just going through the motions, doing what has to be done.