They Call Me Patrice

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She climbed the rooming-house stairs like a puppet dangling from slack strings. She was about twenty, with small, well-turned features, but her cheeks were a little too thin. Blond hair hung listlessly, as though no heed had been paid to it for some time past. The heels of her shoes were a little run over.

She managed the three flights, somehow, stopped at the door and took out a key. A wedge of white protruded under the door; it lengthened into an envelope as the door swept back above it. She picked it up. Her hand shook. She seemed to come alive a little.

Only her name, no address. She moved to the middle of the room, snapped on the light. She ripped hastily along the top of the envelope, and her hand plunged in. It held no message. She turned it over and shook it.

A flutter of paper came down on the table.

A five-dollar bill. Just an anonymous five-dollar bill, with Lincoln’s picture on it. And a strip of railroad tickets, running consecutively from starting-point to terminus, the way they do. The first coupon was marked “New York”; here, where she was now. The last was marked “San Francisco.” San Francisco, which she’d left one day two years ago.

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