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T he door of the Moonlight Diner closes behind me with a twinkling of bells, and the night air welcomes me.

Catch the subway, head home, turn on my computer and log on to the forum, then chuckle along while the tongue guy trolls the cab crowd. That’s the plan for the rest of my night. I wish I had found more at this diner than a secret base for sex work and damn good soup, but what can you do? I’m sure there’ll be a new clue at some point, and I’m not going to give up.

On my way to the subway, along a wide sidewalk that’s all but empty at this hour, I can’t quite stop thinking about all those silly posts about the cabs, those far-fetched conspiracy theories, and I blame every single one of those posters, because when I see a cab parked on a side street, really close to the diner and with the lights on and the driver not in their seat, I stop. I think.

Maybe the cab crowd was right. Yes, it’s more likely they aren’t, it’s more likely there is some other business happening in that cab, a john and someone from that diner maybe.

Either way, the logical thing to do is go and check. Either I find something strange that gets me closer to solving the mystery of being alive, or I interrupt a business transaction. I’ll apologize if it’s the latter and jog to the subway if necessary to minimize embarrassment.

So I turn left and head toward the cab. What a downright stupid thing to do, but that’s hindsight for you.