I could see other Dylans coming and going, hundreds of them shuffling back and forth in front of me, but they were in a different place, separated from me by a window. I tried to get up from where I was, but I was paralyzed. I couldn’t even feel myself breathing. Glancing down, I saw the sleeves of a navy-blue suit and the brim of a fedora dipped low on my forehead just above my eyes. My arms leaned forward against some kind of counter. But I couldn’t move at all. All my limbs felt frozen.

“More coffee?”

I saw another Dylan. He wore a white uniform, a paper cap on his head. He leaned over the counter where I sat motionless.

“What?”

“I said, more coffee, buddy?”

There was a white mug in front of me. “Yes. Sure. Okay.”

He took the mug and went to a large coffee urn near the wall and refilled it. Then he put it in front of me. “How about the lady?”

I couldn’t turn my head, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw a beautiful woman in a red dress sitting next to me on the adjacent stool. Like me, she sat stiffly, not talking, not moving, as if she were some kind of mannequin. Her face was intimately familiar to me. Pretty. Vivid red hair to match her dress. I knew her well, but I had no idea what her name was.

Then I understood.

I was inside Nighthawks.

I was trapped inside the painting. The man I’d dreamed of being for years, the one sitting next to the woman in the red dress, was me. All the other Dylans were outside, in the museum gallery, moving back and forth on their way to their next destination. I had nowhere to go.

Then I heard a laugh.

My eyes shifted. To my right, I saw the other man in the painting, the one whose back is always to the watcher. The mystery man. It was another Dylan. It was him. Instead of a suit and fedora as he should have been wearing, he was dressed in my father’s leather jacket, stained with blood. His blue eyes, appropriately enough, were the eyes of a night hawk, out for prey. He sipped his coffee and chuckled.

“You don’t give up, do you?”

I heard myself saying, “I’m going to kill you.”

“Yeah? Well, we’ll see about that.”