| |
Two blocks in Green Valley would have been a matter of a few minutes of walking, waving at a few neighbors, and stopping to pet one of the neighborhood cats.
Two blocks in Minneapolis were much larger than they looked on the tiny, crowded map, and they were dense with people to navigate. Tawny ended up waiting through two lights at one of the intersections, not realizing that the blinking yellow crossing signal meant hurry forward rather than stop and wait, intimidated by impatient cars and honking drivers.
It was noisy and hot, and by the time Tawny arrived at the Greyhound station, her shoulders ached. Probably, she should have left the books to be shipped.
It wasn’t worse than deciding to walk her route with packages had sometimes been, but she was glad to arrive at the station and put her bag at her feet as she stood in line for a ticket.
Probably her phone would have allowed her to buy a ticket, she realized belatedly, but by then she was only a few people from the start of the line and she preferred having a printed ticket to some mysterious screen on her phone that she would never find again.
Ticket in hand, Tawny realized she’d have nearly an hour to wait until the bus took her to the Green Valley stop. She had a moment of nervousness, looking out over the crowded room.
It was the scene in a movie, lacking only the ominous music.
The laminate floor was cracked and dingy. One of the banks of lights was off-color, and faintly flickering.
In one corner, it looked rather like a drug deal was going down between a few dozen rough looking characters. A collection of bikers lingered in one corner, defying the heat with their full body leather.
“Hey lady, got a dollar?”
The man, lurking at her elbow, had a wild look in piercing blue eyes below unruly eyebrows. His beard made Damien’s look downright puny, and Tawny as pretty sure it had never been combed. What little hair remained on his head had possibly never been combed either. He wore old, mismatched clothing, and his feet were bare. He reminded her of a stray dog that was expecting to be kicked—one that might just bite her preemptively.
Tawny started to clutch her purse closer, then swiveled when another gruff voice demanded, “What’s going on here?”
One of the terrifying bikers was looming over her, covered in tattoos and piercings.
Tawny had only a moment to think that it would have all been much easier if she had just had a car and been able to drive herself home to Green Valley.
That’s when she realized that she’d left her new phone on the table in Damien’s apartment.