She seemed to be holding a piece of paper. She did not know what it was or where it could have come from or how much she would later regret keeping it. She put it in her purse.

22

Jackie was at a dead end, investigation-wise. In terms of tacos, she was doing fine. Judged on her ability to never be able to let go of a slip of paper with her left hand, it was all going great. But trying to figure out what the hell was going on was not going well at all.

She had spent the night with open eyes, trying to will her mind to be just as open. There had to be something she had missed, some connection to be made in the events and individuals moving about in the memory of her day. But if there was, she couldn’t see it. Maybe she wasn’t smart enough. Or maybe the world wasn’t. Maybe the world wasn’t smart enough to put together a story that made sense. Maybe it could only stick together random elements randomly, forming, as Shakespeare had famously written, “a show of senseless movement and circumstance that ultimately doesn’t amount to much at all.”

The next morning found her with only one lead left. She had seen that blond man at her mother’s house. And she had seen him outside of the mayor’s office. And she had seen him at the Moonlite All-Nite Diner. It was time to talk to that man and to find out how he was involved in whatever it was this whatever was.

She drove to the Moonlite All-Nite. It was the same crowd as always, which is to say that there were many of the regulars, and also to say that certain people were always in the Moonlite All-Nite, always at the same booths, always working on plates of food that never seemed to go away. It’s a sign of a good diner to have customers who are stuck in time. A well-known rule of eating is that if there are no time-loop customers, the place probably isn’t worth even ordering a plate of fries.

Jackie sat in her regular spot at the counter.

“Hiya, Jackie,” said Laura, moving with difficulty behind the counter, her thick, woody branches scraping against it. “You hungry?” She bent a fruit-laden branch toward her invitingly.

“Thanks, Laura, but just a coffee.”

Laura pushed her way toward the coffee machine, her branches knocking over tubs of ketchup and mayonnaise and stacks of empty water glasses as she went.

Jackie watched the kitchen. There was no blond man.