Page 21 of The Drifter

She stood very still afterward. She had said it to a stranger in an elevator, and she was not the kind of woman who said things.

The elevator dinged.

I stepped out. She followed me, half a beat late, moving like a woman who'd been woken up. I could feel the shame coming off her. That's what it was. Not embarrassment. Shame—the deep kind, the kind that comes when you've let somebody see the thing you've been pretending isn't there.

So, I threw her a rope.

"Traveling is the only thing I do," I said. I said it easy, to the carpet, walking. "That's it. That's the whole résumé."

She didn't say anything.

"And I'll tell you the truth about it, because I don't figure anybody else will." I stopped at the door of the suite and turned around. "Most of it isn't anything. Most of it is a bus with a bad air conditioner, and a man beside you who wants to talk about his back. It's a room that smells like the last person in it. Half the places I've been, I couldn't tell you one thing about them now except the name."

Her eyes came up.

"Sometimes, it opens up on you," I said. "Sometimes, you come over a rise at the right hour and it's worth every mile you ever traveled and every one you didn't. That happens. It doesn't happen a lot."

"Then, why do it?"

"Because I don't know how to do the other thing." I let that sit. "Which puts us in about the same shape, doesn't it?"

She looked at me for a long moment.

"There's probably a middle," I said. "Somewhere between never going and never stopping. I've never been able to find it. But I expect it's out there. I expect it's got a real nice porch on it."

And she laughed.

It came out of her before she'd cleared it. Short, low, startled. She put her hand up like she meant to catch it and put it back.

We stood there a minute.

She didn't move. I didn't move. Neither one of us said anything and the hall was very quiet. Then, something came over her face and she reached into the pocket of that pink blouse and came out with the key.

"Oh," she said. "I—God. I'm sorry. I have your key."

"I noticed."

"That is—" she was already at the lock, and her ears had gone dark. "That has never happened. In fifteen years."

Fifteen years, I thought. She'd said a little bit of time downstairs. Now she'd handed me the number without meaning to, and she didn't even hear herself do it.

She got the door open and held it. She put the key in my hand, and stepped back into the exact three feet of air she'd been carrying since the lobby.

I took the door.

"Ms. Benning."

"Sasha."

"Sasha." I looked down at the key in my hand. "If you could go anywhere—anywhere at all—where's it going to be?"

She laughed again.

And this one—this one was different. This one didn't get caught. It came up out of her whole body and it took ten years off her face. She leaned her shoulder against the doorframe like a woman who'd forgotten she was at work.

"Anywhere outside a ten-mile radius," she said. "I'm serious. I have lived and worked inside a ten-mile circle. That's my answer. Anywhere else."

"All right. And then?"