Coffee at the Moonlite in the morning was part of her usual routine. In about five minutes, she would put down whatever remained of the coffee, whisper into her water glass for the check, pull it out from under the tray of sugar packets, where it would suddenly be, then place it along with some cash back under the sugars, wait for the sound of swallowing to indicate the bill was paid, and then leave the restaurant. The typical diner rigmarole.

Then she would drive to the pawnshop, dig up the doors from where they were hidden, and replace them unlocked at the front just in time for opening time, which was the moment her gut told her the shop should be open. She would sit there all day, doing what she did and no more than what she did, and then she would stop doing that and go home. There wasn’t much else to it, life. A person’s life is only what they do.

But this morning she did not ask for the check. She did not pay it or leave. She stared at the paper in her hand and knew that she would not do any of the things she normally did this day. This knowledge came as a pain in her stomach and a fluttering on her neck. It was physical, this knowledge, as a strong knowing always is. It had more to do with an ache in her bones than a notion in her head.

The paper had disrupted her routine, and her routine was her life. Without it she was just a teenager who did not age and had no friends. She felt helpless before the paper’s power, even as she did not understand what that power was.

“Fine!” she shouted at it.

“Okay!” shouted a man in a nearby booth at a stain on his tie.

In the kitchen, another man, in a floral apron and a hairnet, nodded at a tub of soaking dishes. “Yep,” he said.

People often found themselves assenting to inanimate objects in the Moonlite All-Nite.

Jackie sat back on the cracked red stool that smelled of rubber and sawdust. She needed a plan. She turned to the man on her left.

“I need a plan,” she said.

“What was that?” He looked up. His forehead was long and unwrinkled, and he appeared to be wearing a great deal of makeup.

“A plan, dude. I need my life back the way it was.” She shook the paper in frantic demonstration.

“Ah. Okay, kid.” He flicked his eyes back to the counter where he had been staring.

“I need the man in the tan jacket.”

The man next to her narrowed his eyes. He presumably had two eyes.

“What was that you were just saying?” he said.

“I need to find someone else who saw him. There must be somebody in this town who talked to him and can tell me about him.”