Imani started looking around, unbothered by the other people waiting in line. She grabbed an extra Rice Crispie treat and handed Aria two instead of one. Then she opened a purple plastic binder and took out a slip of yellow paper from the front pocket. She pointed at an address written on it in white lettering. “This here’s a voucher. If you take this down there tonight, you can at least get a warm meal. I think they got a two-piece chicken meal and I think they even got cake some nights, but whatever the case may be.”

Aria took the slip of paper from her, conscious of the impatience of the people behind her in the line. “Thanks,” Aria said, trying to enhance the gratitude in the word with the look on her face.

“You have yourself a good day now, OK?” Imani said. Aria nodded and walked away from the table. The sky overhead looked like boiling cream. To the west, the white was turning an ominous purple. Aria could feel that the plants nearby had settled into an eerie stillness, like they always did right before a storm.

By the time Aria took the bus to the address written on the meal voucher, the streets of the city were more like black rivers. Each raindrop that hit the surface splashed as if it was hitting the surface of a lake.

Aria sat at one of several long rows of tables with a plate of rice, carrots, tortillas and salsa. Just as Imani had suspected, they were serving vanilla sheet cake that night. The frosting, which had been over-beaten with shortening, was almost waxy. Still Aria savored the square of it that they had given her.

She was glad that no one would be singing the happy birthday song to her before she ate it. Even though there was no candle, she made a wish inside her own mind. The wish was to stay with Omkar forever.

“Do you think any o’ these poor saps know how much this shit they’re feedin’ us actually costs?” the man sitting next to her said. Aria had been chatting with him for well over an hour now, since they’d stood together in the line to get in; long enough to remember that his name was Mark. Aria smiled to acknowledge his question, but didn’t answer it.