Across the busy street from South Station, Debbie dragged her suitcase. She entered the only building that looked vaguely like a former hotel. Her friend was not sitting at any of the tables. She sat at the empty bar in the dining room, avoiding the noisy, young, Happy Hour crowd. She sipped on a Corona beer with a wedge of lime in it. She stared outside the windows.
"I think I see my friend," she said to the hostess.
"I'll watch your suitcase for you if you want to go look," she said. Debbie thanked her. When she returned, she told the hostess she had to go. "We're sorry you couldn't enjoy your drink," she said.
"I can't stay here," her friend Maddy said. She had driven around the block because a meter maid had threatened to ticket her. "I said, look, my friend's coming from out of town and she doesn't know the city," Maddy said.
"Always there when you don't need them," Debbie said.
"The desert. That's far, Madam. I don't want you to move that far away," she said.
From the window of the plane, Debbie gazed over sunny Boston Harbor, the several isalnds swirling in the Atlantic, the small skyscrapers at the tip of the city, the outlying areas. Where was Lowell? She saw rivers, cities, any one of which could have been Lowell. Brick city after brick city. Rivers. Was that the Merrimac River? Were those the canals?
This was God's view. The same God who created and eventually took her beloved cat. She surveyed the peaceful scene, clouds casting navy blue shadows on the flat, flat plains. Orange red swirls and jigsaw puzzle pieces continued for a while. Must be Mexico. Dark bluish green rivers curved throughout the deserts. Debbie stared outside the window. Red and orange squares and purple pieces gave way to the beige Arizona desert. She witnessed the huge uniform circles in the landscape which her father had seenwhen he flew to California a few years ago. "Go Suns," a landsaped pattern proclaimed from the ground.
