Some thrive on it. Others hasten home and lock their doors. Most people stay home at night, not daring to venture out. I believe they are afraid of that influence that, like the tides, like two glasses of champagne, affects our baser animal natures, and pulls our minds just slightly out of kilter.

Twilight has always been the magical hour, the bewitching time that we dance around, taunting, as we wait for the dark to bend our heads, just a little—please, God, just a little—hoping against all chance of hope that the light will shine one last ray of rationality into our minds and tell us to go home and turn on the lights. But we don’t. We choose the bending of our sensibilities, and soon the bend is permanent and must be fed like any habit. The night people are lovers, loners, readers, romantics. Night people are addicted.

I became obsessed with the notion of coming to this particular bus station and watching the night people in the midst of their environment during the drunkenness of the moon, the madness of the dark.

Every day for weeks I sat in the bus station. Every day I changed my seat and therefore my point of view. And every afternoon, just after the three-­twenty bus disgorged its passengers from Salt Lake City, I would—so reluctantly!—leave my seat and go home, arriv­ing just before Lewis.

I would sit at his table, chin in hand, while he made dinner and chatted on about his day, and I would fantasize about the bus station. What did it look like with the lights on? Who went there, who came in and who left, and how could I possibly arrange to be there to see them?

I never felt indebted to Lewis, nor did I feel entrapped by him. He was as pleasant a person as I have ever known, and because of that, I set careful parameters about how far to stretch his affection for me. I fancy myself to be a relatively loyal person, and Lewis was a gem of a man. He knew I was gone all day, but after the first question—when it was evident I was not interested in divulging my whereabouts, and was less excited about his pushing the issue—he respected my privacy. I believe he only wanted to be reassured that I was not seeing other men, which I found to be quite amusing and quaint. For me to go out on my own at night instead of being with him would stretch the limits not only of his affection, but of his hospitality. He would hurt and that would not please me.