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with fast-food wrappers, used condoms, and cigarette butts. In the gutter, a paper cup rolled a semicircle, moved by a tired breeze, and then rolled back in defeat, as though it realized the uselessness of the struggle.
    She met him when she was riding her bicycle in Tilden Park. An elderly man driving a pickup clipped her rear wheel. She got tossed end over end and landed on her head. Mitch spoke softly and told her not to move, help was on the way, everything was going to be all right. He asked her name and she couldn’t remember it. Frenzied panic scattered through her mind. Two weeks later he called, shy and hesitant. They went for coffee and little sparks sizzled around them like fireflies flashing in the dark. At the wedding, she floated on romance and happiness. They danced. He whispered in her ear that he loved her, would love her forever.
    She looked down at the litter surrounding the sickly tree and imagined his arms around her, smelled the clean soap smell of him, felt his solid strength. At this very moment he waited at home, her home, the walls she’d painted, the sofa she’d picked out, her geraniums in the pretty blue pot. Close, it was all so close, just a bus ride away and she could be home. Her throat tightened, she had difficulty swallowing.
    Cars zipped past, buses pulled in and out, belched and groaned like tired old beasts. She crept up the block, moving in inches like a patient recently recovered from serious illness, and went back inside the depot. The bank of phones was right there. She lifted a receiver and fumbled coins from her purse. Mitch would pick up the phone in the living room, or maybe the kitchen. Maybe he was heating lasagna from the freezer. Taking the foil from the flat glass pan and sliding it in the oven. As the noodles warmed and the cheese melted, the kitchen would smell of rich, garlicky tomato sauce.
    She hadn’t put away her nightgown, it was hanging over the hook on the bathroom door. Would he hold it and smell the lingering scent of her perfume? Put his face in it and think he’d lost her? Would tears come to his eyes, those deep brown eyes that could look so warm? Coins were thumbed into the slot without conscious decision. The dial tone buzzed in her ear. She punched in the numbers for home. The impulses traveled through miles of wires and made the black phone on the kitchen cabinet ring.
    He would snatch the receiver. He’d yell. Where the hell are you! Her hand squeezed the receiver. He’d send somebody. Oh my God, he’d call the police department. Tell them to send a patrol car. Cops could be here in minutes. She slammed the receiver back on the hook, fingered the coins from the little box. Her head ached as she walked away from the phone and over to the row of seats. A tired man looked at her and looked away.
    She couldn’t afford to buy anything to eat and she wanted to save her peanut butter sandwiches until she needed them more, but she did have Amelia’s snacks. Isolating two chocolate-chip cookies, she nibbled off small bites and chewed slowly. With a deep intake of air, she pulled out the fiery red-and-orange yarn. Holding it close, with a fierce frown of concentration, she poked the tip of the needle through a loop of yarn.
    After several rows she stretched it across her knee to examine it and was quite pleased with herself. As the minutes went by, sleep beckoned and she longed to close her eyes, stretch out on a bench like the nearby kid in ragged jeans and grimy denim shirt. She didn’t dare even blink slowly, afraid she might miss the bus, or miss seeing a tall man in a uniform coming toward her. Raising her head to glance at the clock, she clamped her teeth against a gasp. Tall man in a uniform! Stupid, stupid, stupid to sit so far from the door. She’d never reach it before he caught her.
    The man walked through the room, looking casually around. When he got closer, she saw no gun, just a radio and a cell phone.