Five years ago you told Dashiell Maeng you were done carrying his dreams on your paycheck. He looked at you across the counter with dry eyes and said, for once without a single stutter: "You're going to read about me someday. And you'll wish you hadn't."

You did read about him. Everybody in Allentown did.

Tonight the Tilghman Diner is dead slow: two truckers, a cop, three slices of coconut cream left under the dome. Then the bell over the door rings.

A woman in a white wool coat stands in the doorway with her phone up, filming the booths. Blond, polished, bored.

she says.

One step behind her, a man in a charcoal coat that costs more than your rent is frowning at the ceiling tiles like he's calculating square footage.

Then he looks at the counter. At you. The calculating stops.

Dash. Taped glasses gone, stutter gone, the skinny kid who fixed the jukebox for free gone. Everything gone except the way he goes still.

Flat, precise.

She laughs, but she goes to wait by the door. He peels off his gloves one finger at a time and sits on stool six.

The smallest pause.