right.
Peacefully anchored along the shoreline of a gravel sea was a solitary diner. It was average in size and structure, and nameless but for the pale blue neon of a generic diner sign mounted above a level rooftop and between two rotating air vents. Its interior was brightly lit, a beacon in the midst of consuming shadow, disclosing a view of the scattered occupants within.
So enticingly welcome was this sight that I made it a necessary destination at once. My appetite had swollen in painful succession to each moment of anxious starvation as I neared. It occurred to me that the letter’s mention of hunger was a riddle to be understood only at a specific point in time.
This point in time.
It made complete sense to me then that hunger was a predetermined reference to this diner, a reference both puzzling and vague to any who should happen across the letter’s contents unintended. Contrarily, I thought it to be outright silly that I should meet an entity responsible for timeless universal mystery over a cup of coffee and a bagel. Surely I was not drawn here for vain disappointment, bewitched by some hi-tech subliminal publicity stunt pushing midnight meal specials to superstitious nitwits.
I veered onto a driveway of broken asphalt which tapered into the diner’s parking lot, its gravel crackling beneath my Mustang’s tires like crispy toasted rice in milk. The fact that mine was the only vehicle in the lot alerted me to a sudden self-consciousness. An imaginary vigil of countless hidden spectators gazed upon me in simultaneous fixation, their heads extended like a herd of gazelle startled from my mind’s whimsical waterhole. I felt like a first-time courier of drugs for the mob. I wondered what might be watching me. I wondered if this was a mistake.
I crawled into a halt a few yards from the entrance. I silenced my car’s engine and pocketed the keys, and killed my headlights. I regarded a wooden sign suspended into view beyond my windshield, held by chains descending from a looming archway:
“ We’re never close.”
Behind this, in the window, was a poster board declaring midnight meal specials.
Tonight’s was Malibu chicken.
I snatched the notorious letter from my side, along with the organizer notebook and micro recorder and gathered the blank cassettes which slid between the seats during the drive. Without further delay, I abandoned the familiar comforts of my Mustang to the rush of bitter canyon air. My emergence from the vehicle was like a bold step into a foreign world. I felt myself an adventurer suddenly, a discoverer, an astronaut, a visitor to a place which should not ordinarily exist and which perhaps would vanish like a dream into the earliest morning light.
I shut the car door and surveyed the property and I was reminded of my view of the starlit coastline from the Malibu highway before. I breathed in deeply the frosty air, enraptured for the moment by its relaxing freshness until my skin grew numb against its chill. I cast a curious gaze into the dining room windows and spied an elderly man stabbing salad greens with a fork at a corner booth. Before he could catch notice of my scrutiny, I proceeded across the gravel towards the entranceway’s glass double doors.
The glass door to my right hung invitingly open as I arrived beside it, extending its patient courtesy to not only myself but to the coldness I now sought to escape. In passing I thought to shut this door, and I shuffled the belongings I held for a free hand. I reached for its handle, the horizontal bar kind common to emergency exit doors, and I shot a quick glance to the empty vestibule and vacant counter for a self-conscious acknowledgement of approval. I was actually somewhat relieved to find no one there and I cringed to myself as I realized I might not yet be fully prepared to face what I had come here for. As much as I longed for my wife, I feared her confrontation as well. Up until now I had been alone in this and in
Peacefully anchored along the shoreline of a gravel sea was a solitary diner. It was average in size and structure, and nameless but for the pale blue neon of a generic diner sign mounted above a level rooftop and between two rotating air vents. Its interior was brightly lit, a beacon in the midst of consuming shadow, disclosing a view of the scattered occupants within.
So enticingly welcome was this sight that I made it a necessary destination at once. My appetite had swollen in painful succession to each moment of anxious starvation as I neared. It occurred to me that the letter’s mention of hunger was a riddle to be understood only at a specific point in time.
This point in time.
It made complete sense to me then that hunger was a predetermined reference to this diner, a reference both puzzling and vague to any who should happen across the letter’s contents unintended. Contrarily, I thought it to be outright silly that I should meet an entity responsible for timeless universal mystery over a cup of coffee and a bagel. Surely I was not drawn here for vain disappointment, bewitched by some hi-tech subliminal publicity stunt pushing midnight meal specials to superstitious nitwits.
I veered onto a driveway of broken asphalt which tapered into the diner’s parking lot, its gravel crackling beneath my Mustang’s tires like crispy toasted rice in milk. The fact that mine was the only vehicle in the lot alerted me to a sudden self-consciousness. An imaginary vigil of countless hidden spectators gazed upon me in simultaneous fixation, their heads extended like a herd of gazelle startled from my mind’s whimsical waterhole. I felt like a first-time courier of drugs for the mob. I wondered what might be watching me. I wondered if this was a mistake.
I crawled into a halt a few yards from the entrance. I silenced my car’s engine and pocketed the keys, and killed my headlights. I regarded a wooden sign suspended into view beyond my windshield, held by chains descending from a looming archway:
“ We’re never close.”
Behind this, in the window, was a poster board declaring midnight meal specials.
Tonight’s was Malibu chicken.
I snatched the notorious letter from my side, along with the organizer notebook and micro recorder and gathered the blank cassettes which slid between the seats during the drive. Without further delay, I abandoned the familiar comforts of my Mustang to the rush of bitter canyon air. My emergence from the vehicle was like a bold step into a foreign world. I felt myself an adventurer suddenly, a discoverer, an astronaut, a visitor to a place which should not ordinarily exist and which perhaps would vanish like a dream into the earliest morning light.
I shut the car door and surveyed the property and I was reminded of my view of the starlit coastline from the Malibu highway before. I breathed in deeply the frosty air, enraptured for the moment by its relaxing freshness until my skin grew numb against its chill. I cast a curious gaze into the dining room windows and spied an elderly man stabbing salad greens with a fork at a corner booth. Before he could catch notice of my scrutiny, I proceeded across the gravel towards the entranceway’s glass double doors.
The glass door to my right hung invitingly open as I arrived beside it, extending its patient courtesy to not only myself but to the coldness I now sought to escape. In passing I thought to shut this door, and I shuffled the belongings I held for a free hand. I reached for its handle, the horizontal bar kind common to emergency exit doors, and I shot a quick glance to the empty vestibule and vacant counter for a self-conscious acknowledgement of approval. I was actually somewhat relieved to find no one there and I cringed to myself as I realized I might not yet be fully prepared to face what I had come here for. As much as I longed for my wife, I feared her confrontation as well. Up until now I had been alone in this and in
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