‘Good-bye,’ Clara said to her husband.

‘You’ll feel all right tomorrow,’ her husband said. ‘It’s only a toothache.’

‘I’m fine,’ Clara said. ‘Don’t you worry.’ She got on the bus and then stopped, with the bus driver waiting behind her. ‘Milkman,’ she said to her husband. ‘Leave a note telling him we want eggs.’

‘I will,’ her husband said. ‘Good-bye.’

‘Good-bye,’ Clara said. She moved on into the bus and behind her the driver swung into his seat. The bus was nearly empty and she went far back and sat down at the window outside which her husband waited. ‘Good-bye,’ she said to him through the glass, ‘take care of yourself.’

‘Good-bye,’ he said, waving violently.

The bus stirred, groaned, and pulled itself forward. Clara turned her head to wave good-bye once more and then lay back against the heavy soft seat. Good Lord, she thought, what a thing to do! Outside, the familiar street slipped past, strange and dark and seen, unexpectedly, from the unique station of a person leaving town, going away on a bus. It isn’t as though it’s the first time I’ve ever been to New York, Clara thought indignantly, it’s the whisky and the codeine and the sleeping pill and the toothache. She checked hastily to see if her codeine tablets were in her pocketbook; they had been standing, along with the aspirin and a glass of water, on the dining-room sideboard, but somewhere in the lunatic flight from her home she must have picked them up, because they were in her pocketbook now, along with the twenty-odd dollars and her compact and comb and lipstick. She could tell from the feel of the lipstick that she had brought the old, nearly finished one, not the new one that was a darker shade and had cost two-fifty. There was a run in her stocking and a hole in the toe that she never noticed at home wearing her old comfortable shoes, but which was now suddenly and disagreeably apparent inside her best walking shoes. Well, she thought, I can buy new stockings in New York tomorrow, after the tooth is fixed, after everything’s all right. She put her tongue cautiously on the tooth and was rewarded with a split-second crash of pain.

The bus stopped at a red light and the driver got out of his seat and came back toward her. ‘Forgot to get your ticket before,’ he said.

‘I guess I was a little rushed at the last minute,’ she said. She found the ticket in her coat pocket and gave it to him. ‘When do we get to New York?’ she asked.

‘Five-fifteen,’ he said. ‘Plenty of time for breakfast. One-way ticket?’