All Around Atlantis Read Online Free Page A

mother’s silence, fading? What had become of everything that had gone on here? “Hello hello,” she said. “Hello hello hello hello…”
    Â 
    The bus ticket cost Francie eighteen dollars. Which left not all that much of the seventy-three and a bit that she’d saved up, fortunately, to get her back to school and, in fact, Francie thought, to last for the rest of her life. “But, hey,” Jessica returned just long enough to point out, “you’ll be getting free therapy.”
    Francie put her box on the overhead rack and scrambled to a window seat. West Tenth Street . West of what? The tenth of how many? How on earth was she going to find her way around? If only her mother had let her go last year when Jessica invited her to spend Thanksgiving in New York with her family. But Francie’s mother had been able to picture Jessica’s mother just as easily as Francie had been able to. “Out of the question,” she’d said.
    â€œâ€¦if there’s no spouse… ” So, her mother must have used his name on that form! They must never have got a divorce. Could he be a bigamist? Some people were. And he might think Francie was coming to blackmail him. He might decide to kill her right then and there—just reach over and grab a…a…
    Well, one thing—he wasn’t living on the street; she had his address. And he wasn’t totally feebleminded; he’d sent a fax. Whatever he was, at least what he wasn’t was everything except that. And the main thing he wasn’t, for absolute certain, was a guy who’d been mashed by a bus.
    â€œWould you like a hankie?” the lady in the seat next to Francie’s asked, and Francie realized that she had wiped her eyes and nose on her sleeve. “I have one right here.”
    â€œOh, wow,” Francie said gratefully, and blew her nose on the handkerchief the lady produced from a large, shabby cloth sack on her lap.
    Despite the shabbiness of the sack, Francie noticed, the lady was tidy. And pretty. Not pretty, really, but exact—with exact little hands and an exact little face. “Do you live in New York?” she asked Francie.
    â€œI’ve never even been there,” Francie said. “My roommate from school invited me to visit once, but my mother wouldn’t let me go.” Jessica’s family had a whole apartment building to themselves, Jessica had told her; she’d called it a “brownstone.” It was when Francie had foolishly reported this interesting fact that her mother put her foot down. “Actually,” Francie added, “I think my mother was afraid. We had a giant fight about it.”
    â€œA mother worries, of course,” the lady said. “But it’s a lovely city. People tend to have exaggerated fears about New York.”
    â€œYeah,” Francie said. “Well, I guess maybe my mother had exaggerated fears about a lot of things. She—” The box! Where was the box? Oh, there—on the rack. Francie’s heart was beating rapidly; clashing in her brain were the desire to reveal and the desire to conceal what had become, in the short course of the conversation, a secret. “Do you live in New York?” she asked.
    â€œTechnically, no,” the lady said. “But I’ve spent a great deal of happy time there. I know the city very well.”
    Francie’s jumping heart flipped over. “Have you ever been to West Tenth Street?” she asked.
    â€œI have,” the lady said.
    Francie didn’t dare look at the lady. “Is it a nice street?” she asked carefully.
    â€œVery nice,” the lady said. “All the streets are very nice. But it seems a strange day to be going there.”
    â€œIt’s strange for me,” Francie said loudly. “My mother died.”
    â€œI’m terribly sorry,” the lady said. “My mother died as well. But evidently no one was hurt