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She drops her weight against the back of the booth.

“You’ll notice I’m not laughing or mad. Guess why.”

“Why?”

“I believe you.”

I look out the window. A day ago I thought I’d never see Hollywood Boulevard again and here I am now eating donuts with a nice alien.

I say, “It’s okay talking like this.”

“I think so too.”

“But you should know that I’m involved with someone.”

That gets her attention. “Boy or girl?”

“Girl.”

“Where is she?”

“With a friend.”

“It’s three in the morning. Kind of late to be out with a friend.”

“They’re really good friends.”

She pushes some powdered sugar around on the table with her fingertip.

“I’m friendly. Can’t we be friends?”

This is nice and I come up with four thousand reasons why I should leave right now. But I don’t. Instead of saying “Good night,” my mouth says, “Sure. Why not?”

Janet is friendly, and at least for the moment, I’m pretty alone. We drink coffee and talk about nothing. She’s older than I thought.

“I’ve got one of those faces,” she says. “I get carded all the time.”

We talk until the place starts to fill up with people on their way to work. After everything that’s happened, it’s nice to sit and talk to someone who doesn’t know about the awfulness of it. And someone who isn’t scared of my real face.

I look at the clock.

“It’s getting busy. I should give you your booth back.”

“Yeah. I should get going too.”

Before I get up I say, “Let me ask you a question this time.”

“Go for it.”

“If someone moved into a new place, are movie nights something grown-ups do?”

“What kind of movies?”

“That’s the big question. I mean you could have a bad-movie night or a good-movie night.”

“What’s your idea of a bad-movie night?”

“How about Face/Off and Battlefield Earth?”