The Hollow Key

The first thing I noticed about the man was his hands. They were clean. Too clean for someone who'd been sitting in a bus station at four in the morning, and the nails were trimmed so short the tips of his fingers looked like they'd been sanded down. He held a ticket in those hands, and he kept reading it over and over, like the destination might change if he looked hard enough.

I'd been watching him for twenty minutes. Not because I wanted to. Because the fluorescent lights in the Greyhound station on 11th Street buzz at a frequency that makes my left eye twitch, and the only thing worse than staring at the floor tiles is staring at another human being. He was the only other person in the waiting area besides a woman asleep under three coats and a kid who'd been crying earlier but had stopped, which was somehow worse.

The man looked up. Caught me.

I didn't look away. That's a thing about me. I don't look away when I should. My mother used to say it would get me killed one day, and she said it in that voice she used when she was half-joking but also half-not.

"You going to Wichita?" he asked.

"No."

"Me neither." He folded the ticket and put it in his shirt pocket. "But I bought a ticket to Wichita anyway."

I didn't ask why. People in bus stations at four in the morning don't need to explain themselves. We're all here because something went wrong somewhere else.

The intercom crackled. A voice that sounded like it had been recorded in 1987 announced that the bus to Kansas City was running forty minutes late. Nobody reacted. The woman under the coats shifted, and the kid looked up at the ceiling like he was waiting for God to come down through the tiles.

I was there because my brother Marcus had called me three days ago from a payphone in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is a sentence I never thought I'd say. He said he needed me to come get him. He didn't say why. He didn't say from where exactly. He just said, "Ruth, I need you to come get me," and then the line went dead, and when I tried to call back the number, it rang and rang and rang.

So I packed a bag. I told my landlord I'd be gone a few days. I told my boss at the diner I had a family emergency, and she said, "Take all the time you need, honey," which is what people say when they mean, "Don't come back if you can't."

I had four hundred dollars in cash and a phone that was at twelve percent battery and a brother somewhere in Oklahoma who hadn't told me where to find him.

The man with the clean hands stood up. He walked over to the vending machine, studied it like it was a puzzle, and then came back and sat two seats closer to me. Not next to me. Two seats. That's a specific kind of distance. Close enough to talk, far enough to pretend he wasn't.

"You look like you're running from something," he said.

"I'm not running. I'm going."

"Same thing, sometimes."

I turned to face him. He was older than I'd thought. Maybe fifty. Gray at the temples, but not the distinguished kind. The kind that comes from stress. His eyes were the color of weak coffee, and there was a scar on his jaw that looked like it had been made by something sharp and deliberate.

"What are you running from?" I asked.

He smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. It was the smile of someone who'd been asked that question before and had a good answer ready.

"A woman who thinks I owe her money," he said. "And a man who thinks I owe him something else."

"What's the something else?"

"Time."

The intercom crackled again. The bus to Kansas City was now arriving at gate four. The woman under the coats sat up, blinked at the world like she'd forgotten where she was, and started gathering her things. The kid stood and walked toward the gate with the stiff legs of someone who'd been sitting too long.

I stayed put. My bus wasn't for another hour.

The man with the clean hands stayed put too.

"You know what I think?" he said. "I think you're going to Oklahoma."

I didn't answer.

"I think you've got family there. A brother, maybe. Or a sister. Someone who called you and didn't say enough and now you're sitting here trying to figure out how to find them when you don't even know what town they're in."

My jaw tightened. I could feel it happening, the way my teeth pressed together, the way my breath got shallow. He was right, and I hated that he was right, and I hated even more that he could see it.

"You don't know anything about me," I said.

"No. But I know about people."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the ticket. He held it up between two fingers, like a magician showing a card.

"I bought this ticket three days ago," he said. "I've been sitting in this station every night since. Waiting for someone to walk in who looked like they were going somewhere they couldn't get to."

"That's the saddest thing I've ever heard."

"Maybe. But I'm not wrong, am I?"

I stood up. I grabbed my bag, which was old and canvas and had a broken zipper that I'd fixed with a safety pin. I didn't know where I was going. My bus wasn't for another hour, and the station was cold, and the only other person in the waiting area was a man who'd just told me he'd been waiting three days for a stranger to walk in.

But I didn't leave. I stood there with my bag on my shoulder, and I looked at him, and I didn't look away.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Davis."

"Davis what?"

"Just Davis. For now."

"My brother's name is Marcus. He's in Tulsa. He called me from a payphone and said he needed me to come get him, and then he hung up, and I don't know where he is or what he's done or why he couldn't just tell me."

Davis nodded. He didn't look surprised. He looked like he'd been expecting exactly that.

"I can help you find him," he said.

"Why would you do that?"

"Because I need to get to Tulsa too. And because I've got a feeling about you."

"What kind of feeling?"

"The kind that says you're the type of person who doesn't look away. Even when you should."

He stood up. He put the ticket back in his pocket. He didn't ask me if I trusted him. He didn't ask me if I wanted his help. He just started walking toward the door, and I stood there for a second, and then I followed him.

Outside, the air was cold and smelled like diesel and rain. The sky was still dark, but there was a thin line of gray at the edge of it, the kind that means morning is coming whether you're ready or not. Davis walked to a car parked at the curb, an old sedan with a dent in the passenger door and a crack in the windshield that ran from one corner to the other like a river on a map.

"This is my car," he said. "It's not pretty, but it runs."

I looked at the car. I looked at Davis. I looked at the bus station behind me, with its buzzing lights and its sleeping woman and its kid who'd stopped crying.

My phone buzzed. Twelve percent. A text from a number I didn't recognize.

It said: *Don't come. I'm not there anymore.*

I stared at the screen. My thumb hovered over the reply button. Davis watched me, and I could feel his eyes on my face, and I knew he was reading me the way he'd read me inside, the way he'd seen the thing I hadn't said yet.

"Something wrong?" he asked.

"No," I said. "Nothing's wrong."

I put the phone in my pocket. I opened the car door. And I got in.