The Journey

[nycwriters]

Her face was dark in the shadows save for the liquid pinpoints denoting tears welling in her eyes. Smoke billowed out of the window crack. He hadn't even noticed that he had lit a cigarette. he was inhaling sumptiously, like it was oxygen in a paper tube.

She gasped with caught breath... was that anger in her furrowed brow?

"Dan.... leaving her!" She spit. "..... just a girl...."

He knotted his shoulders and sucked a breath through the smoke. His fingers had dented each side of the cigarette. He heard punches of time clocks, demands of managers in Sarah's expectant tone, and he wanted release. He crushed the cigarette in his fist and clenched it to the steering wheel.

"Please, let me in.... Dan?" Sarah caressed the window like a lover's cheek. Hopeful and unsure, she trembled on the outside of this metal shell at the glimpse of this shaken man.

It wasn't supposed to go this way. This wasn't part of the plan. This was his escape from it -- from everything. Only with a partner in crime.

He dragged his eyes away from the windshield and looked up at Sara. Her face was flushed with anger that she was having a hard time concealing.

Truth be told they didn't really know each other at all. They'd met at a coffee shop two weeks ago. She'd been splitting open ketchup packages and flinging them across the restaurant at 2 in the morning with a spoon catapult resting on a salt shaker. She thought nobody was watching her, but he had been. He was fascinated by how this one small act of defiance seemed to both enthrall and please her.

It was the little girl in her that drew him. It was after about the fifth package that she suddenly stiffened up and sensed him before she saw him. The smile plastered to his face made her relax and smile back. He loved that little-girl-Sara. It was the way she ate life that drew him in.

But all that had come crashing to a halt when another little girl surfaced -- the one about 50 feet from them now.

"Dan, if you leave her, you leave me..." She choked though a taut throat. He knew she meant it.

Sarah was a rescuer- bent on pity cases. She had rescued him from his life of mediocricy, and staying with her meant that he would have to open his eyes to the world community around him.

Dan would commonly walk by beggars on the streets, anxiety filling him as their empty eyes and pennied cups jingled at him... but Sarah- she would embrace them, invite them for coffee. Dan found himself in the beggar's eyes- that's why he found himself on the verge of a panic attack every time he got close enough to smell the alcohol and body odor rising from their clothes. The hopelessness, the acceptance of caste.

The girl with green eyes had not accepted her place in life yet. Dan was more scared of her than anyone.

"Can't we just call child services or something?" Dan whined. It was plain he was trying to get around the inevitable.

"Out here in the desert!" Sarah screeched. "What the hell did you do with guy I ran away with? The one who woke up -- as you called it -- to life? We cannot drive six or seven miles and then hit some payphone and make some anonymous call. That girl has been out here at least a couple of days, judging by her clothes."

Sarah sighed when Dan remained immobile.

"Look," she said softly, her voice taking a tender approach, "we'll just take her to the next town .. no further. Just so I can sleep at night knowing she's got food in her stomach and a roof over her head."

The car's door creaked open, its hinges protesting its age. Dan ran ran his hands through his hair and pressed them to his eyes. It was like him to hide.

"Ok," he finally said. "Go get her."