Welcome to Night Vale

Chapter 21

Diane was sitting in a corner booth at the Moonlite All-Nite Diner without any clear idea how she got there. She glanced to her right and saw her car parked in the lot.

“Don’t turn your head.”

Across the table sat a man wearing a tan jacket. He looked familiar.

“Keep your eyes on me, Diane.”

In her lap were some notes in her handwriting. One said “Evan McIntyre.” One said “King City?” The second one was circled twice and underlined.

How had she ended up here? Think back through it. What had been done to her? Or what had she done to herself? She felt like she was outside of herself, looking at her life through a stranger’s eyes, and she didn’t love what she saw.

She looked back across the table, and the man was not there. She blinked for a second, and he returned.

“Keep your eyes on me,” he said, “or you will forget.”

“Evan,” Diane said uncertainly.

“My name is not Evan,” said the man whose name was not Evan. Then he said his name.

“Evan,” Diane said uncertainly.

He repeated his actual name.

“Evan, I don’t care what your name is. I’m sorry, I don’t. Why did you disappear from the office?”

She wondered how long she had been at the Moonlite, and if Josh was worried about her. She worried more about his worrying than she worried about him. At the same time she felt a victory inside herself that Evan was real, that he was sitting in front of her, that there was some confirmation that he had existed and had worked at her office.

The man sat up straight, widening his shoulders, a gesture simultaneously receptive and defensive.

Laura came by the table and poured them both coffee. Diane ordered lunch. Laura drew a picture of a cow skull on her notepad, using her finger and a small pot of ink clipped to her pad. It was a detailed picture that took her a few minutes, while Evan and Diane patiently waited for her to be done, and when she showed them, they both agreed it captured the beauty and impermanence of physical life.

Before heading back to the kitchen, Laura said, “I’m sorry, dear, what did you order again?”

“Just the coffee,” Evan said. “Thank you.”

“You have pretty eyes,” Laura said. She didn’t know why she had said it. She also did not believe in free will, but that is not important to mention.

“Me or him?” Diane said, jokingly, although she did want to know.

“What, dear?”

“Which of us do you mean?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Did you mean me or Evan?”

“Who’s Evan, dear?”

Diane looked back to Evan, but he wasn’t there.

“You came here alone, Diane. Just a few minutes ago.”

There was only one coffee cup on the table. Only one place setting. The Naugahyde chair across from her was empty and pushed snugly under the table.

“Never mind. Thanks,” she said.

Laura turned to leave, her branches swinging through the empty air where Evan had been.

Diane breathed with effort.

She looked where Evan’s eyes would have been. She could not recall what they looked like, but she could guess their approximate location. She did not see him appear. He was just there again, matching her gaze. She wanted to look away.

“Focus,” he said, visible again.

“This is hard for me.”

“This is hard for me too. Almost no one remembers me. Not even back where I’m from. But you do. You remember me. I need your help, Diane.”

Diane gripped her coffee cup hard. She thought of the last time she’d talked with Josh, and she let that anger carry her through the strangeness of the conversation.

“You don’t just get to ask me for help. I don’t know you. You show up at my office. You insinuate yourself into my memories and then you vanish from my life. You keep vanishing even now.”

“It’s not something I can control.”

“I don’t want excuses.” She slid a pen and a piece of blank paper across the table, her eyes still on his. “I want you to write your name down.”

He opened his mouth.

“Do it quickly. No talking.”

Diane is a nice person. Nice people are not good at being direct. Nice people do not like to make others feel rushed or indebted or insulted. Nice people like to make others feel nice. It is difficult to maintain niceness while being assertive. You can be respectful and assertive, of course, but that has nothing to do with being nice.

“And while you’re doing that I’m going to take pictures of you. I’m not going to be put in this position of ridicule again.”

She held her phone up.

“I’m not trying to ridicule you, Diane. I’m happy to help you in whatever way I can,” he said, writing out his name on the page. Diane looked at the name, nodded, and immediately forgot it.

“Help me? Evan, I don’t remember how I got to this diner. Do you know how uncomfortable that makes me?”

Laura returned before he could reply. She placed a bowl of fruit and a pile of pumice stones in front of Diane. She refilled both coffees.

“Here’s your Greek salad,” Laura said. “And here’s more coffee, handsome.” She glanced at the man and raised her eyebrows at Diane, grinning. Diane did not move her eyes from the man. Laura shrugged, walked away, and forgot what had just happened.

Diane took several pictures of him.

“It’s hard to expl——,” he said.

“Try,” she interrupted.

The man in the tan jacket holding a deerskin suitcase explained. Diane understood. She nodded. She protested. She decided she would never do what he said, and then she agreed to think about it.

She took a sip of coffee. She had no memory of what he had just said.

“You’ll need this.” He handed her a slip of paper that said “KING CITY.”

“What is this?” she said.

Instead of answering, he pointed at the man in the white apron with blond hair walking past their table.

“That is who I mean. That is who I mean,” the man in the tan jacket whispered in Diane’s left ear even as he sat across the table from her, his mouth not moving.

“Troy?” She followed Troy with her eyes. “How do you know him?”

She turned back to where the man in the tan jacket had been sitting. He was, of course, gone. His chair was pulled out, his coffee half empty. Some currency that was clearly marked as American but that she did not recognize lay on the table.

“I already explained that to you. Remember?” came his whisper in her right ear. “Give that paper to Josh. I want to meet Josh.”

“What do you want with Josh?” At her son’s name, her bewilderment tunneled into a feeling of intense protection. Like hell would anyone be dragging a child into this mess. There was no answer. She looked out the window.

The man in the tan jacket was running out to the desert. She could just barely see him at the edge of the parking lot’s radius of light. His arms were swinging wildly, his suitcase swinging along. His legs were flailing, great puffs of sand kicked up behind him, his head thrown back, sweat running down his face visible even from where she sat. The kind of run that was from something and not toward. Then he left the faint edge of the light and was gone.

She looked down at the slip of paper in her hand. It read “KING CITY.” She gathered up her things, hiding the pen in her bag, mortified that she’d left a potential misdemeanor out on the table for anyone to see.

She was still uncertain how long she had been at the diner. Had she said good-bye to Josh? Did he know where she was? She would text him.

Before leaving, she scanned the diner for Troy. She couldn’t see him.

Jackie waved at her from the counter. They exchanged pleasantries. There was something odd about the way Jackie considered her. Thoughtful and suspicious. Diane tried to seem completely at ease. They exchanged some words that didn’t mean much. Then things turned. Diane said, “What?” and Jackie shook her head impatiently.

“Never mind. What do you got there?”

She nodded at the paper in Diane’s hand. Diane realized that Jackie was holding an identical paper, but couldn’t get her mind to rest on that fact long enough to become curious about it.

“Nothing,” said Diane, and stuffed the paper into her purse. It stayed in her purse.

“Lucky,” said Jackie, and turned back to her coffee, tapping the edge of her paper against the counter.

Diane still didn’t understand, but Jackie seemed grumpy, and so Diane let the conversation end there. She said some sort of casual good-bye, and Jackie threw it back in her face as a sarcastic joke, which Diane thought was unnecessary and rude.

As she walked to her car, she reached into her bag for her keys.

Her hand came across some crumpled paper. She pulled it out. “KING CITY,” it said. Why did she have that? Where would this piece of paper have come from? She tossed it on the ground and then, feeling guilty, picked it up to carry around to the dumpster. Before she could toss it in, there was a crashing sound next to her, which made her jump.

Troy was there, throwing big bags of trash into the dumpster.

“Oh, hey,” he said, and ducked quickly through the back door.

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.