Jackpot

Polly paid sixty-five thousand dollars to leave China and come to New York, and four years later she still owed the loan shark more than half that. To leave New York, all she had to do was pay forty dollars for a paper stub from a storefront window beneath the Manhattan Bridge, after Leon had gone.

So many buses lurked and huffed beneath the bridge. Men and women with the voices of military generals flanked these six-wheeled animals, shouting at anyone carrying a bag who dared to cross, announcing the names of destination cities like horses at a racetrack.

Wa-shing-ton? Philleee? Bossiton? Atlanta?

Chicago! Cleveland! Richmond! Balll-ti-more!