“Just out of the blue?” I ask him. I still haven’t seen his face. He keeps diddling with the computer keys, sniffling slightly under the long bill of his cap.

“Yeah, it just like came to me.”

“Dicky’s a smart dude,” the fry-cook says as he jabs Dicky in the ribs with his elbow and heads back to his post. Dicky jumps slightly but doesn’t reveal his face. I talk to the top of his cap.

“So, Dicky, did this thought occur to you in a moment when you saw yourself consumed by dreams of the future and realized life was passing you by?”

“Something like that,” he mumbles.

“Did it arrive as a kind of shock; a jolt of awareness where you suddenly saw how far away from reality you actually were?”

“Did what arrive?”

“The thought. The smart thought that life was what was happening to you while you were making plans for something else?” He sniffles again and wipes his nose with the back of his wrist. Now he looks up at me; deep grayish green eyes with dark purple half-moons under them, like he’s been in a recent bad wreck. More rings; one hanging from each nostril and a set of three silver ones in his lower lip that look like they might be starting to fester. His eyes are soft and frightened, darting away from me toward the plate-glass window.

“I wasn’t planning anything really,” he says, almost in a whisper as though protecting himself from being overheard by the others. “I mean I was like dreaming about Colorado.”

“Colorado?”

“Yeah.” His eyes flash past me again, catching mine for a scared millisecond, then scrambling across the computer keys hunting for a place to hide.

“Daydreaming, you mean?”

“Yeah. I was right here. Just like this. I was staring out that window.” The ponytail girl has now retreated back behind the gurgling sinks of hot oil with the two fry-cooks. She’s engaging them in conspiratorial tones, lighting a cigarette and taking paranoid peeks at me over her shoulder. Dicky’s green eyes leap back to the plate-glass window and fix on the dripping beads of condensation. Outside on the street, it looks cold. It is cold.

“How long ago was this, Dicky?”

“What?” he says in a trance.

“That you were having this daydream about Colorado?”

“I don’t know. Like just the other day, I guess. I was just standing here. I was watching the snow.”

“Snow? It was snowing then?”

“No. Like in Colorado. I was watching it snow in Colorado.”

“But you were here?”

“Yeah, I was right here. Just like this. I could see it coming down. Like very soft. Everything was quiet. Like real peaceful. There was this cabin on the mountain behind me.”

“You saw yourself out there in the snow? In Colorado?”