Ben kept walking. Eventually, he rounded the corner in the direction of the drunks who’d taken the girl’s dress. He kept going until he came to a diner. It was one of those fluorescent establishments that glowed like a bug lamp after midnight. Ben thought of the framed Nighthawks print above Alana’s kitchen table. She said it made her feel cozy, despite having learned in an art history class that it was meant to convey loneliness, isolation. Ben stopped and watched through the diner’s front window as a man in a suit brought a forkful of pie to his mouth.

It was not until the man turned his head to cough that Ben saw it was Freddy. What was he doing at a diner? Ben looked to see if Freddy had at least gotten a beer, but where a pint should have been there was only a frosted glass of milk, inside of which stood a neon pink straw. He wondered where Samantha was—had Freddy left her in the room? But then the door to the bathroom opened and out she came.

Ben went into the diner, which smelled of fried potatoes and cleaning solution. He came up behind Freddy, who looked up from his pie, startled. “Ben,” Freddy said, his face reddening. “What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?”

Freddy looked to Samantha, who was working on her own piece of pie. “Samantha was hungry. She didn’t eat dinner.”

Ben stared at their pie. Key lime. It seemed an odd choice. He’d always thought of key lime as a summer pie.

“Where’s Kristin?” Freddy asked.

So, his girl had a name. Ben fidgeted in his coat. It was warm in the diner, but he could not simply set the coat on a stool—it would get dirty. “She had a headache,” he said. “I was heading to the QuikTrip to get her some Advil.”

“How sweet of you,” Samantha said, smiling. “Hey, you want some pie?”

Ben looked at the pie and realized that somehow, despite the big meal, he was hungry. “That’s okay,” he said. “But thanks anyway.”

After a moment of silence, Ben wished them both a good night. “Enjoy your pie,” he said. On the way to the door he heard Freddy say, “You too,” at which Samantha began to laugh. And that was that.

Ben wasn’t sure what to make of this encounter. How long had Freddy and Samantha been at the diner? And why hadn’t he thought of it—pie instead of whatever was supposed to happen in the hotel? Outside of the diner, he watched as Freddy set his fork down and drank the rest of his milk through the pink straw. Samantha had taken off her stilettos; her long toes gripped the stool’s metal footrest.

Ben looked toward the hotel but began to walk the other way. He made it two blocks before he saw the dress. Someone had placed it over a parking meter, so that it took on a vaguely human shape. He touched it—the fabric was cold and wet. Suddenly, he couldn’t stand the sight of it. He peeled it from the meter and chucked it as hard as he could into the limbs of a nearby Bradford pear tree. Alana hated Bradford pears—she thought they smelled like lady parts. Alana. He was, for the moment, relieved to think of her. Better her than the girl in the room—what was her name again?—whose dress now hung like a flag from the boughs of the tree. He liked seeing it there, far away from him, surrendering to the city he would soon abandon for a better life. And it would, he was certain, be a better life. A life that would fit him, that would not be muddled with people who did not fit him.