Page 87 of The Company We Keep

When he came back, he was on a bus and a woman was pressing something cool into his hand. It was dark outside.

“Here you go sir,” she said. She was young and serious looking. “You can clean up with this. Do you need something to drink?”

He looked down at his hand. She’d given him ababy wipe.

He laughed in spite of himself. It was all so absurd.

“What direction are we going?”

“Um, out to the suburbs. East towards San Laredo. Here,” she said, producing a water bottle. “You should take this even if you’re not thirsty. Do you want a mirror?”

Oh. She wanted him to clean himself up. That made sense — he must be a mess after the explosion. How did she know?He accepted the little mirror she held out, and started to scrub his face with the baby wipe.

When he was done, she took the dirty wipe back, stuffing it into her bag and accepting the mirror. He cracked the fresh bottle of water and drank it in one draw. He was feeling less and less like he was going to lose time again — and that, at least, was good.

“You know, they say online to just, like, give money if you can,” the woman said, watching him intently. “Like it’s paternalistic to just assume you know what somebody needs. I mean, I guess I should’ve offered that, first. I mean, most people ask for something if they need it but…”

“No offense, ma’am,” he said, meticulously forcing himself to form the words. “But what are you talking about?”

“Sorry —sorry!That was probably really offensive. Oh my God. I’m just, like, making assumptions. I’m just saying, I’ve never been in your position. I just want to, y’know, help if I can?”

“In my position?”

“You know…homeless?Sorry, maybe that’s offensive? Everyone is just a person — I don’t mean to be rude I just —”

He laughed hard at that and it made his head and chest ache at the same time. He couldn’t decide which broken, offending piece of himself to grab, and so he doubled over instead.

“I guess Iamtechnically homeless,” he said, fighting the wave of nausea that came with the laugh. “Thank you for the water.”

“I mean, what I’m getting at is, do you need some money?”

He smiled and reached for his pocket. He wondered if his wallet had stayed on him during the blast. Somehow, it had. Of course it had — how else would he have paid for bus fare, he realized. He retrieved it and thumbed out a few hundreds.

“No, I don’t. But you were nice to the right person on the right bus,” he said, pressing the bills into her hand.

She stared at him dumbfounded. He slumped back into the seat, and waited for the next exit sign that would tell him how close he was to the eastern safehouse.

“Hey, you know, on second thought — you don’t have anything toeat,do you?”

Anythingabove a slow walk had Dust’s head pounding — and suddenly, as he tackled the four miles between the bus stop and the safehouse, it made a lot of sense that Dust hadn’t gotten very far in the 36 or so hours that he’d spent wandering Las Abras. At least he no longer felt like he was going to pass out.

But consciousness had its own problems. His ribs were aching, his head was aching, and at least a half dozen other ailments were making themselves known. Dust’s tailbone felt bruised, his wrist was swelling in a way that gave him pause, and one of his ankles was doing its damndest to roll and throw him down onto the gravel every 50 or so yards.

He was fucked if no one was at the safehouse. Beyond the fact that it would mean The Company probably hadn’t ever made it out of the penthouse, Dust had no way of getting into the house if he made it there and found it empty. It looked nondescript from the outside, but its defenses were shored up like goddamn Fort Knox.

Without a way in, without a phone, and faced with another four-mile hike back to the bus stop, Dust wasn’t surewhathe’d do.

Everything was riding on them being there.

Well.

And even if they were there, he thought, what would happen to him?

Better to die by their hands than unconscious on some rural road.

At least he’d have some peace in knowing they had made it.

He rolled his ankle four more times before he saw the house on top of the hill.

---