6

It’s worth a try, calling the car-rental agency, so I do. Get a nice young man to pick me up, just as promised. He takes me back to the office, and as soon as he runs the card through, I know that I’m cooked. As I feared, they want a lot of money to take a car one-way out of state. More than is available on my abused credit card. He looks at me with a sheepish face. “Sorry, ma’am. I can give you a car for the day.”

“No. Thank you anyway.” I shoulder my duffel, jam the offended credit card into my back pocket, and walk out of there with as much dignity as I can muster.

I have no idea where I am. There is a bench outside of the rental place, and I sit on it. No sense walking off into the unknown. I should go in and ask the nice young man for directions. But to where? To what? The ride from the Crossroads Convenience Mart wasn’t long or complicated. I’ll walk back there and go back to plan B. Surely some nice trucker with Mass. plates will want a quiet rider.

“Ma’am?” The nice young man, really not so young—he’s old enough to have a day job and not be in school—is standing beside me.

“Yes?”

“The bus station is about half a mile from here. I bet you can get one to Boston.”

I am touched by his concern. “That’s a good idea.”

“I’ll take you.”

Twice in one day, I’ve been rescued by unlikely heroes. I want to find my dog, but I know that a bus to Boston is really my only hope of getting where I’m going. In all of this, I’ve forgotten that I have a destination.

I don’t let him see that I have been defeated. I shake my head against that thought. Oh no, I’m not giving up hope of catching up with Artie. This is just a better way to find him. When I get to Boston, I’ll locate Artie easily. I know I will; I’m certain I’ll remember where he was going with his cargo. Once I catch up, I know that I’ll find him. He won’t turn around and head back immediately. He said something about a relative. I try to think back on Artie’s conversations. Mostly, I had tuned them out, since they were the kind of brash manly-man nonsense so many men like to think they impress me with. But I’m sure, mixed in with the hero-in-his-own-life stories, that he’d mentioned a sister or a cousin he would see when in Boston. I’ll find him. I have to.

Artie has my dog.

“That would be nice.”

The young man spins a key ring around his forefinger like a gunslinger. “We can take this one.” He holds the passenger door open for me, a gesture that makes me feel old, or at least old enough that he sees me as requiring courtly behavior. He’s got to be around twenty-one or twenty-two, about the same age as my son. Which makes me think, as I am actually old enough to be his mother, that’s how this young man sees me.