It

I walk. I look at people. I say hi. When my friend came out to Silicon Valley for a job interview, I met him at the airport, showed him around, introduced him to people.

I stayed overnight with him in his company-provided hotel room. In the morning, I set out to find breakfast down El Camino or Stevens Creek or one of those long, six-lane, Silicon Valley avenues lined with liquor stores, taquerías, and 25¢ movie houses.

Eventually I found a Carl's Junior, where I enjoyed deep-fried french toast with coffee and a newspaper. At the liquor store across the parking lot, I got an apple for me and some mini-donuts for my late-sleeping friend, and started walking back, my mind now unclenched after a dose of caffeine.

"Excuse me," said a woman sitting on a bus-stop bench at the first cross street. "Did you come from the hotel?" I had come from a hotel, but I followed her point to a single-storey motor hotel set back from the street.

A chubby, middle-aged white woman in brown slacks, blouse and sweater. Nothing in particular stood out about her to me. I said no, I hadn't come from that hotel. I was filled with a mixture of indecision, curiosity, and fear of being sucked into her life. I waited for her to continue.

She looked into my eyes and paused. "It came out," she confessed. "I didn't want it to, but I started coughing, and it came out."

I think I stared blankly for a moment, trying to parse what the antecedent of "it" was.

"I was hoping I could go in your hotel room and clean up." She looked at me like I really was from the hotel indicated, and was holding back on her.

I thought: Our room is too far. My friend is asleep in there. A bathroom, she needs a bathroom. Now I used my point: "Carl's Junior. If you buy a cup of coffee, they'll let you use the restroom."

"I'll miss my bus," she said.

I felt my mind strike an underwater barrier and flood with an urge to move on.

"They must have a bathroom wherever you're going." I secured the newspaper under my arm and turned. "Good luck!"