Troy was eating at his desk today. Salad. He did nothing unusual with the salad. He ate it. She watched him eat it from her car. No one cared about a woman staring through binoculars from a parked car. It was a common sight. There were three other cars with binoculared, watching women just on that block, and that was light by Night Vale standards.

She hadn’t been able to get Troy to stop and talk to her. They always avoided her, most not with the same sprinting desperation as the Troy who worked at the Moonlite All-Nite, but with the same result. Not a single Troy would get close enough for her to ask questions. She had even tried making an appointment with the therapist Troy, but when the time had come a short, balding man in a vest had been sitting across from her instead.

“I’m afraid there’s been an illness going around,” he said. “He’s asked me to cover his clients for a bit. Now tell me, what do you remember, specifically, about your childhood?”

She had gotten up and walked out without saying a word. She would stay focused. No matter what Diane had said, she was old enough to concentrate and do this. It was probably better that she was young. Her body was stronger and faster, her mind was more open. Youth was better than age. It was good that she had been young for so long.

The next day the Troy therapist had been back at work, no sign of an illness. But Jackie knew that, if she burst into the building, the balding man would be back, asking her about her childhood.

There was a Troy who lived in an apartment building near the community radio station.

There was a Troy who lived in the housing development of Coyote Corners and collected windowsill cacti.

There was a Troy who simply vanished for long periods of time, and so she wasn’t sure where he lived. That was the Troy who did lawn care and gardening.

She made notes and intentionally breathed. Troy ate his salad.

“Eating salad,” her notes said. “Still eating it.”

One of the notes was a doodle of a cat. She didn’t know how to be an investigator. All she had ever known how to do was run a pawnshop. She looked up, and stopped writing in her journal.

Troy wasn’t eating salad anymore. He was talking to someone. Or he was turning away and shaking his head while someone was trying to talk to him. She couldn’t see who it was. Troy got up, tossed the rest of his salad in the trash, and walked quickly out of the bank, still shaking his head. Jackie got out of her car to follow, but stopped when she saw Diane approaching Troy on the sidewalk. Of course Diane was here. Who else could it have been?