Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by Z. Z. Packer

and got in the car without speaking.
    “Where do you live?” Lynnea asked.
    “You know where I live.”
    “Our Lady of Peace. I know that,” Lynnea said, “but where is it?”
    “Hollander Ridge.”
    “Where in Hollander Ridge?”
    Sheba’s eyes bugged out. “C’mon, Miz Davis. You really don’t know?”
    “No, I don’t.” They stared at each other. Sheba sighed. A cloud of her breath hung in the cold car interior.
    Lynnea pulled off and headed down Thirty-third Street in the general direction of Hollander Ridge.
    Sheba gave her a jumble of directions: Erdman, Moravia, Bel Air Road, and Frankford Avenue. Then the streets got small and narrow, with turns where Lynnea hadn’t expected streets to be at all.
    “Scared yet?”
    Lynnea didn’t answer. Sheba called out turns; otherwise the rest of the ride was silent.
    Our Lady of Peace was its own planet: singular, immense, imposing. The statue of the Virgin Mary was larger than Lynnea thought statues of Virgins should be, and was covered with pigeon droppings. A sign with a picture of a lightning bolt on it was attached to the high electric fence that ran around the building. A whitewash of floodlights illuminated the sign. Next to it, another sign, wooden and hand-painted, read: TRY TO GET IN OR OUT WITHOUT PERMISSION AND DIE.
    “Well. Here you are,” Lynnea said. She thought for a moment, then said, “If you need something, or want me to visit you, give me a call.”
    “I don’t think I’ll be needing your help. But thanks for the ride.” Sheba slammed the car door and clomped up the sidewalk.
    Lynnea stretched her head over to the passenger window and clumsily rolled it down. “Be good. Take care of that baby.”
    Sheba stood, eyes still and unblinking.

    O F COURSE she had said the wrong thing: Sheba obviously hadn’t wanted the baby, but what was said was said, Lynnea thought. On the way back, Lynnea sailed through the red lights hoping to get home as quickly as possible. There she could think. Cry. Maybe fry herself an egg. She went the wrong way down one-way roads. Streetlamps buzzed here and there, but most were broken and did not flicker at all.
    She came to an intersection where the traffic lights were out, looked both ways, and zoomed through. The single Whuurp! of a police siren stunned her for a moment, but she kept driving, only slower now. She thought of herself as an ant, foolish enough to believe that if she kept ambling along, the giant foot above wouldn’t come smashing down. The police car trailed her. A voice barked through megaphone static, “Pull over.”
    The policeman got out and his door made its official-sounding slam. He walked over to her car, hitching up his pants as if preparing to recite a blasé Miranda. She rolled down the window. The policeman bent his head down to greet her. It was Robert the Cop.
    “Hey, man. How’s it going?” She smiled up at him.
    Robert the Cop whippe out his ticket pad. “You were speeding.”
    Lynnea kept the smile pasted on her face. Robert the Cop wrote something on his pad. When he flipped the page and kept writing, her smile deserted her. “I just dropped off a student, O.K.?”
    He walked to the back of her car to take down her license plate number. She thought about running him over. No one in Hollander Ridge would care. One less cop.
    He came back around driver side and stuck his head in again.
    “It’s Lynnea. Lynnea Davis. Remember me? Teacher training? Bonza? Role-play?”
    “Yep. I remember. Did you know you were speeding? Through red lights?”
    Lynnea tried counting to ten to calm herself, but only got to three. “Do you know what it feels like to want to go home?” she asked. “To have worked one long motherfucking day with a bunch of kids who want to strangle your ass and you want to strangle theirs and you think about that sentimental shit—that ‘if I can only reach one’ shit—and you don’t reach anyone?”
    He nodded once. “Yep,” he said. He tore the