Picked Up in Chinatown

I walk through the Chinatown rain—I’m wearing high heels and have no coat. I don’t know where I’ll go.

Justin is gone. I have my phone—I could call him—but no. I’ll show him a night without me. I stick out my thumb. The first car to pass stops. A Lexus.

“You want a ride, honey?” The driver: a clean-cut guy with high cheek bones, light eyes. He’s probably forty? He’s wearing a suit.

I run around to the passenger side and get in.

“Where you headed?” he says. We’re moving now, east, I think.

“Where are you going?”

“Marin—home.”

I unclench, exhale. He’s alright.

“I’m married,” he says. We’re on the Golden Gate Bride. The city is a blur of lights and navy and wine-red.

“Yeah? I’m engaged.” I scrape the dirt from under my fingernails—my fingernails always hold gunk—with my thumbnail. Does he think I stuck my thumb out just for him? “I’m trying to get to Vancouver,” I lie.

He turns on the radio—instrumental jazz—and stares ahead at the car-lit rain. “I hope you don’t plan on hitching there.”

“I do. Made it this far from LA, and I’m not dead.”

“Don’t have to lie to me.”

“I’m not.”

“How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

“You’re not engaged.”

I look at him—his nose is elegant, his eyes gentle and grey-blue like a lake in day-fog. “Maybe I’m not.”