Change

“Hey Mr. do you have some change? You see my car just broke down and I would like to call for a towing service only my mobile is out of battery and …. You know it’s kind of late.”

“I know what it must seem like to you and believe me this is a huge change for me coming to this new place and looking for a place all by myself. I am not one of the junkies who are forever walking the streets with one sob story or another. I really am in a fix and even though you may think that I am just one of them I am not; at least no longer…”

All of that was whizzing past her head as she grappled with my current situation. Just when she had thought that she had enough of this begging or asking for “help” on the streets. It was like she was being sucked into it for no fault of hers. The thing was that if she didn’t get off that road in the next 5 minutes, all that she had worked for these past few months was going to go down the drain. All the meticulous planning…. All those sleepless nights…. All the sweat and hours and savings that she finally had the courage to put at stake was literally going to wash out in front of her very eyes and the last thing she wanted to do was to stand there wool gathering indulging in a fit of self pity at the most inconvenient of times if there was any.

Gathering her remaining wits, she decided to stick to the truth and ask for help, this was not about the next dinner. This was after all about the rest of her life. If she did not make a dash for it now, she would never be able to break free of her life here and seek other pastures green or not but at the very least different.

She peeked into the car with a lone fatherly-looking-fellow and asked for a ride to the next town. She cooked up some cock and bull story about being left behind on some field trip and not having enough money to take the tube.

The man seemed receptive enough, didn’t seem to mind and seemed to understand her plight and was willing to help. In fact he went on to say how he had been tired to driving alone and wouldn’t mind some company on the way.

After the initial chit chat and pleasantries, they fell into a comfortable silence. The guy bought some bags of chips on the next gas station and was nice enough to get some cola for her too.

She had had a very long day and now that she was finally going to be free of a life of drudgery and she was finally going to earn her living… this new found sense of freedom was exhilarating but in spite of all the excitement of the past hour, she felt her eyes closing…

“May be if I sit up straight and put on my shades, the guy wouldn’t even notice that I have taken a nap. After all it’s not nice to be sleeping next to the driver; was her last conscious thought, before she lost the fight to keep herself up.

When she got up the first conscious thought in her head was that she felt sore, like she had done a lot of work and the muscles were aching, the thigh and arms and she also felt a dull thud of an ache in her abdomen… thinking she must be due any day now, she got out of bed. Only then did she realize that this room was not her bed room and she barely had any clothes on. She looked frantically around her feeling confused and trying to piece together what had happened, she recollected the car ride and the coke and noticed a few bills on the dresser.

“Things after all had changed a lot in the course of the night” she thought; and then she heard the unmistakable click of the door lock…