At my car, I pressed my nose against the cold driver-side window. Could the keys be in there? It was too dark to tell. I went in my wallet to find my Triple-A card. They’d tow it somewhere, I supposed. To my mother’s house. I’d get a new key. Life would trundle unhappily forward, making many bureaucratic stops along the way. Maybe Jordan would call me tomorrow—that little rascal Eli had found the keys, and he’d been caught ghost-riding my whip in the dawn’s early light. Maybe that faint possibility was reason enough to leave the car behind.

Across the parking lot, I could see the corporate pizza outpost, lit up and empty, where I’d spent a lot of time over the course of a particularly tedious summer. The food it served was nearly inedible, but the bar was suspiciously well stocked with local beer. One suspected that someone was getting away with something. It felt like a long time since I’d gotten away with anything.

I crossed the frozen concrete, made it through two sets of doors. A late-period Red Hot Chili Peppers song was playing over the sound system, always a sign of excellent things to come. The restaurant was nearly empty, but there were a few bodies scattered through the bar area.

I ducked into a table at the window, out of which I could mostly see my own reflection. At the bar was an elderly white man wearing a Knicks Starter jacket, maybe over a hospital gown, and a very thin woman sitting as far from him as possible, both of them drinking from short glasses and craning their necks toward a sports recap program playing silently across three TVs above the bar. When I was young, I had prayed, without having the words for it, not to be one of these people. And I wasn’t, I told myself, not really. A waiter noticed me and swooped over, making big strides on his long legs.

“You all set here?” he said, glancing down at the laminated menu that had apparently been in front of me the entire time. He was tall and balding and radiating what felt like actual generosity, unless my disposition was simply softening with the promise of alcohol.

“I think so,” I said. I smiled at him searchingly. I hadn’t looked at the menu. He smiled back more warily, probably wondering whether I was going to tackle him or start bellowing obscenities.

“So what can I get you?” he said.

“Oh,” I said. It seemed important to get it right on the first try. “I just…”

“I’ll give you a minute,” he said.

“No, no,” I said. I was crying a little bit, enough that I couldn’t really read the menu, but I hoped he wouldn’t notice. “I’ll just have the, um, let’s see here … Hop Head? Hop Head presents Hops and Dreams?”