As I get out of Tomas’s car, the dry desert air funnels through the main street buildings. It is bone cold, and I do not have a jacket but jam my hands in my pockets, hurrying towards the lit diner. A couple of boys and their girlfriends exit the main room and step into the little entry room’s narrow clutter of hanging coats. Their breath fogs. If they would only hurry up and get out of there, I might not have to run into them. Both boys wear plaid flannel shirts and the girls are blond, one with straight hair and the other with curls. The curly one is the prettiest and scares me the most, and it is her boyfriend whose eyes I evade as I near and enter. In my rush I bump into the pretty girl: even in my confusion I pick up the smell of her perfume amid the rich scent of hamburger grease. It is crowded like a closet in this room and probably I should have waited outside.

I’m sorry, I mumble.

Lifting my glance, I am surprised to see no hostility in her frosty blue eyes, only that she and her boyfriend seem curious, though her attention lasts only a few seconds before she rushes after her friend to tell her something. As they go outside clutching arms and laughing, none of them looks back.

Inside it is warm, like a bathroom after a long shower. The thick smell and sizzle of food is in the air. My glasses fog, and the room becomes a blur: the counter with men hunched over coffee and plates, talking to the waitresses; the booths so close together the families seem shoulder to shoulder; some tarnished plaques on the walls. There are no empty booths and I get the feeling a lone customer should take a stool by the counter. There is no sign telling a person whether they should seat themselves—probably everyone here knows already—so I wait around for a waitress to seat me, but neither of the women approaches. One seems in a hurry, but the younger one with a long rope of wavy brunette hair that sways against the small of her back stops by a booth. Although she holds an order book, she doesn’t write anything down but talks to the man with his family. She doesn’t seem to be in any hurry, her head tilted towards her shoulder as she laughs at what they say. Several minutes pass. Maybe you are supposed to sit yourself down, but it would seem foolish now to sit after standing all this time, so I do not.

I wipe my glasses, trying to busy my hands. Through the streaked lenses everyone looks mildly alarming, and they seem aware of me.

A woman seems to be glancing my way from the counter where she sits with her husband, but I pretend not to notice. Finally she calls out to me.