“Sure. He’s not here tonight though.”

“Oh, shoot. I’m an old friend of his. I was hoping to run into him here. Do you know when he usually works?”

There was a long pause. Stacy, a haze with no face or body to read, continued to drift around the box office booth. Diane did not know if she had made Stacy uncomfortable with the question.

“I’m sorry. You probably can’t answer—”

“No no. I’m looking at the schedule right now.”

Diane saw some papers rustling on a clipboard pinned to the wall.

“He’s working tomorrow from eleven to four.”

“Oh, great,” Diane managed. She felt like she was choking, but she was able to breathe just fine. She nodded, as casually as she could. “Thanks, Stacy.”

Diane’s life at work was no easier. No one was talking about Evan. Nobody remembered Evan. She told everyone apologetically that she must have been confused.

“Because of your migraines?” asked Janice Rio, who was assistant director of sales and, more relevantly, whose desk was closest to her lonely outpost near the server room.

“No,” said Diane. “I don’t have . . . no.”

“Hmm,” hummed Janice. It was what she did when she didn’t care what the other person had said but the rhythm of conversation demanded a response. She walked away before more responses might be needed.

Diane did not get much work done, which was not as responsible as she liked to think she was. Instead she spent a lot of time looking at a couple pages of notebook paper she had found on the floor of her car.

The top sheet had a phone number and an address in writing that looked like Josh’s. The address was in Old Town Night Vale and had a unit number at the end. Josh had had a friend years ago who lived in that part of town, but Diane couldn’t think of anyone he might know now who lived there.

On the second sheet of paper, a different handwriting, still by Josh. His handwriting regularly changed depending on the size and shape his writing appendage took. A tentacle and a wing and a human hand, even with the same mind behind them, will wield a pen differently through the sheer fact of mass and shape. Still, like with anything related to his transformations, Diane could always tell Josh’s handwriting. There was always something at the core of it that pinged at the place inside her where she kept all the care she had for him.

The note said, “I want to meet this guy.”

Below it, in handwriting that was not Josh’s and written in a different color ink: “I’ll get you his number, but don’t call him yet.”

Josh: “I won’t. Duh. Does he have a picture? I want to know what he looks like.”

[Who?]: “If he doesn’t I can get one.”

Josh: “What’s his name?”