Without a car, I keep falling into the cracks of San Diego’s public transportation.  Stuck waiting at bus stops until my watch doesn’t make sense anymore, until I’ve memorized all the graffiti and store windows and people memorizing me.  Chasing after the butt end of the trolley and its clack-clack-clack acceleration away, my arms flapping in despair.  Trapped in the arcane transfer rules, fumbling in my purse for money I didn’t plan to spend, impatient harrumphing and “oh-my-GOD” voices at my back.

And the largest cracks of all – the white blankness in between the colorful bus and trolley routes on the Metro Transit System maps.  That’s always where I’m going.  Someplace the bus or trolley doesn’t serve.  A destination ultimately reached by me and my Nikes.

This afternoon the closest I can get is the bus stop on Otay Lakes Road, a corner intersection tilted across a sunny hillside with the upscale part of Chula Vista sprawling away.  Looking east I can see the small boulder-strewn mountains that hide Upper Otay Lake and Lower Otay Lake.  A great place to dayhike, except I didn’t ride three buses for two hours so I could dayhike.  I’m here because I need money – need it – in a sick fearful way that I’ve never experienced before.  A week ago I had $1,000 from pawning my wedding ring.  Now I’m approaching broke.

I sling my backpack over my shoulder and begin trudging into the white blankness of the transit map, up the squiggly line called Telegraph Canyon Road.  The street is flanked by a sidewalk and bike trail, all rising toward the swimming-pool sky.  Traffic hums by, so fast and close that my hijab gusts.  The exhaust fumes become visible when I look down.  Their shadows boil around my silhouette as if I’m slowly burning to death.

My attention wanders to the landscaping I encounter – fescue and bermuda grass, daylilies and bird-of-paradise, hibiscus shrubs and fern pines.  Their verdant colors and textures are a blur from a bus window, but up close they become my own private arboretums, one lawn after another, and –

An automatic watering system clicks on, drenching the lilies-of-the-Nile I’m admiring – and me too, within reach of a misaligned sprinkler.  I shriek and try to evade and almost break an ankle when I step into the street.

Waiting for the walk sign at the next intersection, a Hispanic man watches me blithely.  He seems completely unsurprised that I found rain on a day like this.  I get the impression he wouldn’t bat an eye if an airplane fell out of the sky on me.  Just more proof of my bad luck.

TSA International is the building on the corner, a plain one-story brick office complex of the kind usually occupied by attorneys and chiropractors.  The sidewalk follows the road to the parking lot entrance, winds around the periphery of the almost-empty asphalt, and finally ends at the glassed-in entryway.  I step over a low hedge of Japanese boxwood and beeline directly across the parking lot.

The entryway door rattles when I pull on the handle.  I try pushing instead.  More rattling.  I knock on the thick glass, a vague thudding noise.  Past the deserted lobby I can see a room with folding tables stacked with cardboard boxes.  Hispanic and Asian women, maybe 20 of them, are taking things out of the boxes and stuffing them into plastic bags that say WELCOME TO THE NATIONAL SALES MEETING in enthusiastic block letters.  None of the women hears me knocking.  I go back to rattling the door handle, a louder noise.

A tired-looking Asian man in a ponytail emerges from the room.  He crosses the lobby with brisk annoyed strides, a clipboard tucked under his elbow.  This time it’s him rattling the door instead of me.  The shiny glass opens a little.  “You’re too late, sorry, go home now.”

“Wait!” I stop the door handle from closing again.  “I know I’m late, but it wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t get here any earlier, the 709 bus – ”

“It doesn’t matter, all the positions are taken, go home.”  He’s talking through clenched teeth now.

“What do you mean, all the positions are taken?  The temp agency said – ”

“They send more than we need, in case some don’t show up, today we already have all we need.”

We’re tugging the door back and forth between us, him trying to close it, me trying to keep it open.  He escalates to a yank.  The door bangs into its frame – but then his clipboard clatters to the floor, scattering papers everywhere.

“Can’t you use me?  Please?  Please!”

He’s simultaneously holding the door closed and turning the lock with angry movements of his shoulders.  His gaze is a knife through the thick glass, through my reflection in it.

“Please!  I came all the way out here!  It cost me $10.25 in bus fare just to come all the way out here…”

The Asian man finishes gathering up the papers and jams them messily into his clipboard.  I watch him march across the lobby and back into the room with the women, the temporary work, the money I need to make.  Then the room vanishes behind an oak-veneer door hung with a CONFERENCE ROOM plaque.  The transparent Nooshin in the glass is squeezed uncomfortably tight within herself, until tears begin leaking out.

After a while my phone rings.  I wipe my cheeks with a sweatshirt sleeve and dig the phone out of my jeans pocket.  It’s Nick.  Calling when he knows I’m supposed to be incommunicado, working this temp job.  Checking up on me.  Suspicious, but in a gentle way.  Somehow he unwinds all my words, catches every quiver in my voice.  I can’t even be silent without telling him something.

The ringing quiets, then starts up again, then finally stops for good.  By this time I’m back at the intersection, looking up at the crest of Telegraph Canyon Road.  Traffic is disappearing over the hill in the general direction of the ocean.  I run my fingertip over the transit map, tracing a depressing length of different numbers.  Three bus routes away is National City and the flickering Super 8 sign that I call home.  I’m wondering if I can walk all the way back to the motel and save myself another $10.25 I don’t have.