Let me see if I remember how it goes...
Two girls are walking down a sundrenched alley in Broad Ripple. The Indianapolis suburb is part hippy, part hipster, with just enough frat-boy influence to house a Jimmy John’s caddy-corner to the record shop. It is early spring, the girls have exams to worry about, but there will be time for that. There is always time. The sun and history have shown them this.
For a while their walk has no conscious direction, they are simply ambling, letting winter-locked legs remember the feel of pavement and movement. One of them wears a peasant skirt, while the other feels more comfortable in knee-length shorts. Cutting through side streets to walk along the river ensures they will feel sufficiently cut-off from the city and the world. After some time they begin to feel hungry, and consider the prospect of lunch.
They decide on an Indian cafe. They enter, the only customers in the restaurant, and take a seat near the window. The skirt-clad girl offers to buy lunch for the girl in shorts. It is a few days before her next paycheck, or maybe she is unemployed. Either way she is grateful for the offer, and happy for a relationship comfortable enough to accept charity without a second thought. She orders Aloo Gobi. Both finish their meals with Mango Lassi.
There is, between them, idle conversation, and then a tranquil silence.
After an appropriate amount of time, the two get up to leave. Feeling a sudden pang of guilt for not paying (perhaps she has squandered the money she should have had this afternoon, or perhaps she just doesn’t want to burden a friend) the girl in shorts fumbles awkwardly for her wallet, hoping she has some cash that has gone unnoticed.
“Hey,” she says, bemusedly, “there’s a dollar in here.” She begins to place it on the table, a symbolic offering toward the larger tip her friend is leaving. The girl in the peasant skirt shakes her head, scolds, “No, no! Don’t leave your last dollar as a tip. Save it for something important.”
Outside the sun is still bright, but still air carries peripheral whispers of an evening chill. Silently the two girls walk toward the car in which they arrived. They cross a pastel-painted bridge, their shadows lengthening with each step. Ahead of them, huddled against a pale orange wall, is a large pile of rags. As they draw nearer, of course, it stirs.
The boy is young, with long blond dreadlocks and sharp eyes. “Excuse me, hey, have you guys got any money?” he asks. He shivers, although the heat rising from the pavement even now fights to keep the cold at bay. The girl in shorts feels goosebumps rising on her legs, and wishes she had worn jeans. She begins to shake her head at the boy, then remembers the tip she never left, the words of a friend.
Years later she will mull over memories vanished by age; the time of day, the proximity of the restaurant to the river, what a friend might have eaten for lunch. She will question these holes, wonder why they deepen and expand while other images linger; the feel of a crisp one-dollar bill, the freedom in its parting, the icy stars through the window on a long drive home.
