What Waiting Really Means is about emergencies that never reach the emergency room. It's about a woman named Mary with no last name who rides buses and smokes cigars and watches the wind blow her bedroom curtains into a frenzy. It's about cities: Detroit, New York and Atlanta. About older men. The kind who will hold you. And killers. And the boundaries they look for. The narrator is sure of one thing: Men who wear Brooks Brothers suits and pretend to read books are a step backward and not far enough back, at that. She's better off with her cigars at the Majestic Grill waiting while the rain beats on the windows.