She's Not There Read Online Free PDF Page B

glance at the cop, he put the taxi in gear and pulled out into traffic. She turned in the seat, but when she saw the cop wasn’t following, she sank back into the sticky plastic and closed her eyes.
    The driver rolled up the windows and turned on the air. It flowed cold over her bare forearms, raising goose bumps. Maybe she should have bought a sweater back at the thrift shop, she thought.
    “Where to?”
    Amelia pushed the purple glasses up onto the bridge of her nose. “I . . . where are we now?”
    “Andrews heading north.”
    Andrews? It meant nothing. No one had even told her what city she was in. The whine of the jet came back to her. The airport was somewhere near here. She could get a flight out. But that was impossible without ID. A train? Rent a car? No, there was no way to do any of that if you couldn’t prove who you were.
    She sat forward in the seat. “Is there a bus station here?”
    “What kind of bus?”
    An animal . . . a bus with a running dog on the side. She had been on a bus like that before, and she had a flash of memory of seeing cornfields flying by outside the window. “Greyhound,” she said.
    The taxi crossed a drawbridge and entered a downtown area, and Amelia tried to find something that would strike a chord in her memory. A towering blue glass riverfront condo, an old Woolworth’s converted into a nightclub, office buildings and banks, a big boxy library fronted by a small park filled with homeless men. The taxi turned left onto a busy street and the names flashed by—Starbucks, Subway, Whole Foods Market—signposts for everywhere and nowhere.
    The newspaper . . .
    She unfolded it. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel . Was she in Miami? Then she noticed the headline—“Robbers Stab Lauderdale Valet.”
    Fort Lauderdale . Was this place her home? Did she and Alex Tobias live here? She glanced at the date at the top of the front page: “Sunday November 16, 2014.”
    The date triggered nothing, but it made her feel better somehow. It was something tangible she could grab onto, something that anchored her in time at least.
    The taxi pulled up to the Greyhound station, an old low-slung building in a rundown neighborhood. The lot reeked of exhaust fumes and urine. Inside the station, the only smell was of the disinfectant being used by a cleaning man mopping the tile floor. An old woman in rags, her arms looped with bulging plastic shopping bags, was banging on a candy machine, yelling profanities.
    Clutching the fake Vuitton duffel, Amelia went to the window. The woman behind the glass didn’t look up.
    “Do I need ID to buy a ticket?” she asked.
    “Not if you pay cash.”
    “Okay, one ticket, please,” Amelia said.
    “Where to?”
    Amelia hesitated. She felt the press of someone behind her and looked back into the face of an old black man holding a little boy’s hand. The man was wearing an old Army fatigue coat and he looked tired, yet he gave her a small smile. Amelia’s eyes moved beyond the man to the bus parked outside the doors. She looked back at the woman behind the glass.
    “Is that bus leaving soon?” she asked.
    “Ten minutes.”
    “Where is it going?”
    “Charlotte, North Carolina.”
    “One way to Charlotte, please.”
    “One fifty-six fifty.”
    Amelia dug in the duffel and handed over eight twenties. Pocketing her change, she moved away from the ticket window and took a seat on a hard metal bench. She unwrapped the chicken sandwich. It was dry and hard, but she ate it anyway, washing it down with the bottled water and three Aleves.
    The clock on the terminal wall read seven thirty when the call came to board. Amelia found a seat in the back and leaned against the window. The old black man and the little boy took seats on the aisle across from her.
    The bus pulled out, and Amelia watched the lights of the downtown high-rises disappear as they headed away. She caught sight of the street sign— B ROWARD B OULEVARD —as the bus swung onto a busy street