“If we keep looking, maybe we’ll find another curiosities shop nearby. Sometimes when businesses close, it’s because they’re moving to a bigger location, right?”

“Worth a try.”

I drive around, passing through a town called Beaufort, but we don’t wander across anything that resembles the place in Hall’s brochure. We try a couple regular stores, with little success aside from discovering a music album called How to Be a Human Being, which piques Hall’s interest. I see several thousand things I’d want for myself, and Hall sees several thousand things he’d want to give out “as stocking stuffers,” but nothing good enough for his white elephant. He’s putting tremendous pressure on himself. This is going to be the gift of the century. The millennium.

Our trip should be considered a bust: we’ve been driving all day with not much to show for it aside from the indie rock album, finger paints, and Hall’s new books. I glance sidelong at Hall as he pages through one of them, which he’s angling away from me because It contains too much magic for mortal eyes, and I’m hit with a pang of disappointment that the day is drawing to an end.

Hall fiddles with the radio, trying to retain Christmas music stations as we move out of range. “You were right, we should have gone into that restaurant back there,” I lament, my stomach grumbling. “I’m starving.”

“Can I pick where we go? I love trying new places.”

Hall wants to go to White Castle, because it’s “majestic, don’t you think?” but changes his mind at the last second. “Let’s try Rally’s.” So I drive to Rally’s, but right as I’m about to make the turn, he cries, “Little Caesars! Please? Sorry. I won’t change my mind again. I just love that Little Caesars commercial, the one where the two people lay their heads flat on the table to look at how thin the crust is. It’s so thin.”

But the Little Caesars sign reminds him, somehow, that Dunkin’ Donuts exists.

“Hall!” I snap through clenched teeth, switching my turn signal off. The car behind me has watched this happen twice, and honks.

“I know, but it’s Dunkin’ Donuts, Bettie.” He gazes pleadingly at me. “I swear on my life, all I want is a donut hole. Give me a pile of donut holes, and I’ll die happy.” He pauses. “It’s dawning on me that I might be able to die now that I’m in a human body. A beautiful human male body.” Another pause. “I believe I am having an existential crisis.”

Dunkin’ Donuts is closed. His crisis escalates.

Hall is so heartbroken that he can’t bear to commit to any other fast-food establishment but is somehow of sound enough mind to reject my suggestions. Ultimately we drive by every restaurant, blood sugar plummeting, barreling toward the outskirts of town. Then the outskirts of the outskirts.

Over the next forty-five minutes, snow steadily picks up (“I promise I’m not doing it this time. I was lying about not doing it last time, but this time I’m not lying”), making it difficult to discern roadside signs for food exits. “Hall, if you don’t conjure me a burger right this second, I’m opening your door and kicking you out. Right into the road. We’re lost somewhere in Wisconsin—”