By the time they reached the city, the sun had set. The train station was a cavern of yellow light and echoing footsteps. Mr. Ellison stood up, put on his hat, and looked at her.
She said, “How would we get there?”
Clara thought of her mother’s sandwich, now eaten. She thought of the five-dollar bill, folded in her shoe. She thought of the typing class that started tomorrow morning, in a beige room full of other girls learning to be secretaries. alice munro wild swans
And Clara went inside, climbed the stairs to her tiny room, and lay on the bed in her coat. She thought about the swans. She thought about how they commit to the water, how they cannot change their minds. She thought about the man on the train, and how he had offered her not a proposition, but a vision. And that was perhaps more dangerous, because a vision you carry with you forever. By the time they reached the city, the sun had set