It’s dizzying, really, the city centre. The more I walk, the more there is to see. I’m baffled by the mazes of arcades, entranced by the stores, slightly put off by the ebb and flow of crowds. Still feeling a little queasy. What a night.

After leaving CJ’s hotel in the afternoon, I don’t know quite what to do with myself. I’ve never been to Cardiff before.  So I walk, down St. Mary’s Street and toward what I hope will be the bus station. In a store window, I catch a glimpse of myself, barely more than an urchin, still wearing clubbing clothes from the night before, clothes with holes and blotched with dirt and other suspicious stains. Definitely not interview material. Through the glass, shiny new suits are draped over headless mannequins. I check my watch. Just after 6 p.m. Should be enough time. I shift my backpack to one shoulder and push open the door.

When I emerge wrapped in blue-gray blended silk from neck to toe, the glare of fluorescence gives way to natural evening light. Excitement tingles in my fingertips as I fidget with my new pants suit. It’s more expensive than anything I’ve ever owned. It glimmers in the light, ahead of me, behind me, owning me as I own it. I strut, cutting through an alley to what I think must be Cardiff Central.

Orange slices of the setting sun flare between and behind buildings. Smog rises from the streets, coiling up around shops. People flow solidly, schools sure of their paths. It must be rush hour. I look for a street sign or any sign of the bus station. Pedestrians behind me cough, elbow me as they pass, the more hurried casting dirty glares at me, the glitch in their well-oiled mechanics of commuting.

Where the hell is the bus stop? I wish I had a map or a smart phone. I sigh in frustration. A woman scarred with crow’s feet carved around her eyes nods sympathetically, her smile scarred. I duck down a less prominent alley with slower few souls smile sympathetically my way. More bump into me as I squint up at the posts, looking for a sign. I feel a hand on my shoulder, whirl around.

“What’s occurrin’?” slurs the figure belonging to the hand. The man may be in his 30s, but his moments etched like years on his face. Spittle around the corner of his mouth bubbles as he hiccups. A drunk. Distasteful, but probably harmless. He’s hunched a bit, with an etched face, a beige jacket draped over his arm. I ignore him and begin to walk again, almost falling in line behind a loud group of Americans.

“I was tryin’ t’be helpful,” he slurs, turning to leave. Then he looks back, “I s’pose you don’ wanna know y’ got somethin’ on yure. Just there on yure shoulder. Somethin’ white.” He taps his shoulder.

I look to my left. He’s right. Oh, no! My brand new suit! I shrug my bookbag from my shoulder, reaching for the white smudge on my jacket.

“Hure,” the man offers, handing me a handkerchief.

“Thanks,” I reply, grabbing the cloth and frantically scrubbing my shoulder. I sneeze, instinctively covering my mouth. As I release my hand from its shielding, I notice it is white. Not wet white, from my sneeze, but powdery white, like my shoulder. I look at the handkerchief.  It is coated in white powder.

I reach toward my feet, gasp. My bag is gone.

So is the drunk.

No. No. Nononono. I have not come this far just to turn back now!  I take a deep breath. My ears fine tune themselves, amplifying noise. My eyes make sense of the currents of people nearby, notice the motion against the grain, a figure running. A flash of black hair, a grayish sneaker.

I run after him. He turns into an alley, out of my sight. I follow. With every footfall, anger coils in my muscles, pulling them taut like a bow. I know this tensing, the hum before I lose control. I leap from a few feet behind him and slam him into the side of a building, recoiling into an attack stance. I am frantic, primal, bursting with the power of desperation. I pause before releasing my fist into his face, simultaneously lifting my knee to his crotch.

Kfzzzz.

My pants split.

With them, the confidence gleaned from the camouflage of my new suit expires. Suddenly, I’m scared. Not only am I alone with a drunken robber in a strange city, but my knickers are literally hanging out.  With my suit in shreds, it’s back to just me, and who the hell is that? My backpack knows. It’s got my passport, ID, credit cards – my bus ticket! – wallet, everything.

At this moment, my brain realizes that my bag’s not in the drunk thief’s hands, even before my eyes can process the fact. I scan his hands. Empty. Empty and white, coated with the chalk he used to trick me.

 Sinking forward into a fighting stance, I hiss, “Where is it?”

“What?” he asks, slovenly smudging a fleck of blood on his lip, then dropping his hand to nurse his crotch, a delayed response. Vodka douses the air near him, and when he speaks it is sharp and mean: “Whey-ayre is whahht?”

His alcohol twisted face is just begging to be punched, and my fist itches for pounding his lying, stealing, stinking, horrible mouth. Instead, I ask in a voice not unlike a tea kettle about to scream, “Where is my bag? I will wring it out of you!” My hands even begin to reach for his neck.

He laughs, hollow, tinny. He turns his face to make it easier for me to hit him. He could level me with one good punch, which means he wants me to hurt him; he has nothing to lose.

Maybe I can work with that. I try reasoning with him. “Look, I gave everything for this suit that I ripped chasing you. I have an interview. Please, I just need my bus ticket. Please. Where’s my bag?”

When he doesn’t answer, I turn to leave, shoulders heavy, fist aching, stomach writhing. It’s turning dark, but the streetlamps are still off. I am losing myself in the darkness, shadows stretching out to me as I walk defeated, no longer even desperate.

“Hey.” It’s barely a whisper behind me. I pause, then turn back to face him.

He is still leaning against the wall, but now he points beyond me, to where there might have been a garbage bin. I don’t look, I just glower into his eyes. I see hunger. Pain. The need to forget. The glaze dimming. An almost-tremble of defeat. No remorse. Just defeat.

We are survivors, he and I. Made of the same thread. His head shakes a little, or is it a nod? I think he wants me to have my bag. At least for right now. He is a drunk, after all; he could change his mind. He could jump me when I’m retrieving it. I don’t know. Everything in this alley is so very dirty, splattered with red and browned residues, reeking of piss and curry. Even the shadows are like bruises. But there’s the possibility of my bag, at least, a bus ticket out of here to a new life in London.

I back up, eyes fixed on him as he slouches to a sitting position against the wall. He pulls something out of his pocket, a silver flask, takes a deep swig. When I reach the dumpster, I open the lid, begin a dance of glancing away from him into the trash, grappling around, looking back at him. He raises his flask in mock salute, takes another swig. The trash is piled high, almost full, so I need only grope with my arm. I pull out a few trash bag grips, the arm of a beige jacket, my shoulder strap!

Oh, his blessed, stupid mercy. There was the bus ticket, yes, but I didn’t tell him the wallet was in there, with a slew of credit cards, a few pounds, an ID and a passport. I know without looking that the time stamp on the bus ticket is 7:30 p.m., probably less than ten minutes away. I don’t bother looking back at the thief. I start running. London, here I come.

As I run, something is very, very wrong. I stop, just short of the end of the alley, where a group of rowdy footie fans was weaving. Something isn’t right. Something is very, very cold. Oh, no. Of course my rear is cold. It flashes back: My suit. Ripped. My ticket to a smooth interview, torn apart, leaving me traumatically exposed. Exposed, my arse; I don’t have time for insecurities, so my muscles take over, and I bolt into a brief respite in the pedestrian flow, rushing through the slow-moving people, hoping I am such a blur that the hole on my ass is invisible. Hoping I’m going the right way. I’m already running on borrowed time. I have to move on before my luck runs out.

That’s the thing with, well, things: they’re replaceable. I can get new pants later. I can get anything I want except for the stubby orange bus ticket pressed tightly between my fingers. This ticket is a “cash-in right now or forget-about-it” type of thing. I hear some Poe-doomed bell chiming, 7:30. Seven thirty. I see the street sign! There, down the road to my right, is the Kingsway terminal with its rows of buses. Even bright blue and plastered with neon posters, the Megabus to London is barely visible beneath the still-dark street lamps. I stretch my legs out, increasing my stride, finding myself thankful for the seam already ripped in my pants. It lets me move faster.

Headlights turn on, illuminating the world before the bus. The rumble of its engine is like an earthquake. My heart shakes with it, my backpack thump-thumping against my back. My hand touches the bus – the doors begin to close. I slam my fist on the side of the bus. I curse. I pray. The bus grinds, prepared to move forward. Then it stops, settling back into itself. The doors creak as they open again.

The lamplights come on overhead as I climb into the bus and hand the driver the ticket.

She doesn’t so much as look at me as I shuffle toward the back of the bus. There are only a dozen or so passengers, some already sleeping, so I nestle into a window seat two rows from the back, cradling my backpack in my lap.

Cardiff lurches and slowly slides away. I feel no expected relief, only a small, fragile coil of remorse. Inside my backpack is a wallet, the wallet that brought me here. The wallet that bought my pantsuit. The wallet of Cynthia J. Pierson, the reformed street urchin with a job waiting for her in London. Cynthia J. Pierson who, as I nestled into my bus seat, was probably being found by room service, naked and blue and very, very dead in the hotel bed we’d shared last night and this morning. Cynthia J. Pierson, who apparently was very, very allergic to Acid or Xanax or both. Cynthia J. Pierson, who was missing one wallet, one bus ticket, and now one life in London. Cynthia J. Pierson.

Me.