Out by the station she used to wait too long for the phone to ring. Just hanging there like a dull bit of dust unsettled after the storm. No one said yes or no or told her to trim her nails. By the eighth week she was ready to clump up her hair and yell almost loud enough to feel the inter-workings of her ear bust at the sound.
Those last miles waiting themselves out on the dashboard ticker. This was the way it worked. Pack light--the way old men do when they head down to Boca Raton in the winter months. Underwear, three pairs of socks, two shirts, one pant, a razor and call it a day.
He said he would meet her at the end of the trail where they had set up shop above a light blue walled restaurant that served quiche and tiny tarts with coffee to women who had too much money wrapped up in their hair. Inside the flat, one mattress firm on the dust bunnies against the hardwood, one empty bedroom and an old orange burnt chair that emanated of cheap wine and soil when the sleeper pulled out. He said, here everything means something simple. Cheap 4 am pizza, free cable and rent the price of an old used 92 Civic. Clean purchases he used to say. What you can afford minus $20. Spend that at 4 am. But she knew the mason jar full of change on the nightstand held only 35 cents after last week.
"I hate," she had said to him weeks before. The phone was hot, burning against her ear and the numbers were wet and sticky with her makeup swimming across the rubber. "Miles can't change a thing."