Exact Change

He watched a crane haul the twisted wreck of the bus from the Breaker Street canal. Water erupted from shattered windows and the holes where headlamps used to be. A thin stream poured from the front bumper, reminding Ray of that water slide he'd taken his grandkids to last summer.

A thin, brown forearm dangled from a window. He recognized a henna tattoo. She'd hopped aboard every Tuesday and Thursday on the way to her night classes. What the hell was her name? Dove? Duvet?

"Divya." She stood next to him, watching the bus rise dripping from the canal. "I'm Divya. Told you that a couple days ago, and a couple days before that."

"Sorry. Memory's not what it used to be."

She shrugged. "No worries. Aren't you curious, though?"

"About?"

"About why we're not in there?" She waved at the bus.

He hadn't been, but Ray nodded anyway. He glanced down at Divya's arm, at her tattoo. The front of the bus was too mangled to make out the driver's seat.

He tried to think back. Ray had driven the route for the past five years. Follow Breaker to the wharf, back up Trelaine, cut across through the park to downtown, then up Stuyvesant to the windswept office parks and empty parking garages.

"I think we're dead." She leaned over to look at his shirt, "Raymond."

"Ray," he muttered. "Nobody calls me Raymond anymore."

"Whatever. What do you think?"

"About?"

"Shit, Ray. We're dead! Doesn't that freak you out?"

Ray shrugged his answer. The fight was on TV later. He'd miss that, he guessed.

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"Shouldn't we, you know, call somebody or something?"

"You got a phone?"

Divya reached down to dig in her bag. She didn't have her phone. She didn't have a bag, either.

A bright light caught their attention. A few feet away, a very earnest young man in a soaking-wet, half-untucked dress shirt was talking into a TV camera. "Witnesses say the bus swerved suddenly and broke through the barrier to plummet into the canal. At this time, authorities aren't saying how many might have survived, but the bus was under water for at least forty-five minutes."

Ray noticed it was raining. Cats and dogs. He then noticed he wasn't wet.

"Why'd you drive off the road?"

"I need to walk," he said, and he did. Divya followed. They both followed the canal, twisting through the heart of town, until the reflections of lights from the emergency vehicles finally faded. The rain fell in sheets, sideways. Ray dimly remembered the news before his shift. Remnants of a storm, coming up north from the coast.

"There was a kid," Ray finally said.

"A kid?"

"In the road. I panicked, I guess. Yanked the wheel to the side, and went over."

"A kid? Out in this? It's like, ten at night now."

He didn't say more. He didn't say what the child looked like, didn't talk about her little blue dress he'd given her for Easter.

There was a shout from down below, barely audible over the rain. "What's that?" Divya asked. "It's coming from the canal."

Ray turned and followed Divya's pointing. Coming up the canal was a flat-bottomed, metal fishing boat with a Coleman lantern set on the front. A huge fan-engine dominated the rear, but it wasn't on. A solitary figure stood in the middle of the boat, poling it to the edge of the water. Whoever it was wore a wide-brimmed hat and a red flannel shirt. Nothing was wet. The rain wasn't even filling up the boat.

"Hey!" It was a woman. "You Raymond? Divya? Bus crash up yonder?"

Divya started to ask something, but Ray interrupted. "Yeah. We're them."

"Good. Get in." She poled the boat to an access stairway, and picked up the lantern.

"Get in?" Divya set her hands on her hips. "Who the fuck are you?"

"Sharon. I'm here to pick you up. You got four bits, right?"

"Pick us up? Like hell," Divya said, but Ray dug around in his pockets, and came away with two quarters in his palm. One dated 1938, the other 2010.

"Divya. Check your pockets."

She looked like she'd rather punch him, but she did as he asked, and came away with two quarters of her own.

"What years are they?"

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Read 'em. What years on the quarters?"

Divya sighed.  "Uh, this one's brand new and this one is nineteen eight..."

She looked at him with eyes the size of sewer caps. "Nineteen eighty two." That's when I was born."

"Yeah. Why don't you give those to Sharon, there. She'll take you home."

Divya looked at the woman in the boat, who nodded.

"Ray, you sure about this?"

Ray smiled. "I been givin' people rides most of my life, girl. What you got there is your last fare. Exact change."

Divya looked at him, at the boat, at Sharon, at the rain-swept streets. She started to descend the thin stairway to Sharon's boat. She turned.

"What about you?"

"Ain't goin'."

Sharon adjusted her hat brim. "Only one chance, sugar. I leave you here, you're here 'til the Man comes back."

"I take it that'll be a while?"

"Could be."

He looked at Divya. "I gotta know about that kid in the road. I got some little ones to watch over. You go on."

Divya didn't know what to say, so she handed over her quarters, and stepped aboard the steel fanboat. "Take care, Ray."

"You too. I see you someday, maybe."

Sharon shipped her pole and hand-started the boat's propeller. The city slept on around them.

The old woman saluted Ray. Divya waved at him, and the fanboat roared down the canal toward the river proper.

Ray pocketed his four bits, whistled a tune his granddaughter used to love, and ambled off toward the lights of Trelaine Street.