The piston gave a hiss, letting the diner door close behind The Troubadour at a gradual pace. Each boot hit the faded linoleum with a cloud of dust.

He knew many a miracle graced god’s green earth, but no father above could match that first wave of breath from the icicle-faced box growling in the corner of Tubb’s Greasy Skillet. Air conditioning, praise be unto Frigidaire.

The windows lining the restaurant let in a beige glow, the light dimmed by the dust that glazed them. Patrons could watch the world outside cook through the small oval of transparency at each window’s center.

Inside, he found himself met with other broiled and dirt-smeared faces, along-side an older couple– both the color of a cloud, and a couple of curious waitresses. The older of the women stood near him, at the door, with an empty tray propped on her shoulder and the jagged curls piled on her head and bound in a green scrunchie.

“At’s probably not good for your guitar,” she said, working a piece of gum like it was cud. She wore the standard diner waitress attire: a pastel dress that ended above her knees and a name tag that read Launda. “Sand is murder on electronics.”

”So is heat,” he added.

“Sit where you like,” said Launda, “Someone’ll be with you.”

He noted the absence of haste in her promise. Right with you managed to be avoided. Booths lined the windows to his left and he saw an inlet with a big table and a small table to his right. 

Three men, who he assumed were truck drivers, sat at the big table. They were on brand with their workman-like appearance, but the comforts of their air conditioned cabs had left them cleaner than the other Carhart-clad and bearded diners.

Two wore artfully beaten up hats. He couldn’t read the print on one of the smudgy ballcaps, but the other one challenged him to count the guns on the man who wore it.

 The third man didn’t have a hat, but otherwise looked the same. The Troubadour had only seen two big rigs outside, maybe this was their “guest”.

They stared at him like he was unfinished roadkill and they were in high gear. He decided the little table in that corner could remain abandoned.

The hollow of his large intestine roared, but was largely muted by his incredible thirst. He turned to his left. Opposite the booths and the murky windows was a bar with red-topped stools facing the kitchen and coffee pots.

Every soul on each side of the aisle directed itself towards him, surfacing all the enmity their tired faces could muster. Eyes narrowed. Chewing slowed. The cloud-colored man looked up from his baggy, khaki, cocoon and out from under his hat, a navy blue topper announcing that he’d once served on, or visited, the U.S.S. to Far Away to Read in gold stitching.

His wife didn’t move, her perfumed globe of hair tilted over her plate. The elderly man put more energy into his scowl than every other tired soul combined. Most returned to their plates or coffee, but his eyeballs cast a hostility that the Troubadour didn’t know skim milk could project.

Must be a long drive to Palm Springs.

The Troubadour walked by, kicking up more clouds of dust. He sat in the next booth, just for fun, sliding his bag and instrument against the window before letting his own ass fall to the welcome support of glittery upholstery with mangled springs.

The elderly man grumbled, a whispery sound that made no sense aside from the word “freeloader”. The woman whined: “Arthur”.

“Hail to the king,” mumbled The Troubadour, removing his sunglasses and wiping the dust from them with his dusty shirt tail.

A menu slid in front of him.

“Looks like someone died,” said a woman who did not sound like Launda. The voice didn’t lilt, but he sensed youth.

He looked up and smiled, feeling the grit in his teeth. “Certainly true somewhere, but it looks like I’m going to make it.”

“I’ll say a prayer anyway,” said the waitress, flipping the page on her pad. She had an easy stance, with one heel off the ground, but her forearms had bruises and her abandoned highlights hardly respected the rubber band meant to hold the strands they tried to escape.

“Don’t waste your votives on the dead,” he remembered aloud, a song from a friend. His voice trailed, “they aren’t gone, just traveling light.”

“Kinda like yourself,” she nodded toward his bag. The buttons holding the flaps looked ready to fly across the room.

“Kinda,” he said.

“What’s in there, you’re stuffed to the gills?” she asked.

“A song, but it’s not finished.”

She looked perplexed, but dismissed him with little thought. “What’s your order?” she asked.

“How many cups of water can you hold?” he asked.

She grinned. An honest dimple popped on her left cheek. She’d done her eyes in a dark shade, but her lips were natural. “I got a tray,” she said and twirled away. “I’ll be back for your order.”

He spread his hands over the menu like he’d discovered a priceless artifact. Normally he hated these moments, the awkward in-betweens. This was why people had phones, or whatever phones had become: hand-computers, filling you with useless information and tipping off your every move to the CIA– or worse: a corporate behemoth with no rules at all.

Maybe it was worth it, wearing a beacon, just so you had something to look at while you waited desperately for a glass of water. He didn’t care right now, he read every syllable of the laminated document even though he knew exactly what he wanted. After he’d read the hours of operation (always) he returned to the other side and tapped pancakes twenty times, once for each flapjack he planned to shove into his mouth whole.

Anxiety found him anyway. Putting down the menu, he felt a sudden attack of overwhelming concern. Usually a frequency, or a disruption in the natural rhythm of things heightened his lizard brain… but something else weighed on him, something old fashioned. This was the good old feeling of being watched, not scowled at or monitored on a hand-computer, but being watched by two boring eyes.

Hairs stood at his collar and he found himself looking at the menu again. Most of the eyes in Tubb’s Greasy Skillet had wandered from his spectacle, but he got a heavy presence coming from straight ahead. With a tilt of his menu he caught an unwelcome reflection in the sheen of greasy light, a bald man’s profile sitting straight ahead, at least a booth away.

Didn’t see that. Nope… dammit, did not see that. 

He put the menu down and tapped the juke on the table, knowing the thing wasn’t real, but desperate to be distracted. I knew you weren’t natural…

The pages listed Elvis songs, but all he heard was Lucinda Williams– a mix of Lost Highway stuff. He tried the buttons, but they were so fake he couldn’t even push them down. The whole thing was a soul-crushing tease. He was tempted to check his bag, but it still swelled.

Thinking of the neatly folded skin and how he didn’t dare let it be seen in here, he pushed the bag away and glanced up– questioning what he thought he’d seen in the menu. It took Lazarus four days, and this guy beats me to the nearest diner… and with new skin?

His glance found a man sitting a booth away, black eyes locked on him. He sat unflinching, with the same muscled face and neo-nazi-white palor The Troubadour had seen on the bus.

Five plastic Coca-cola cups of water slide in front of him one by one. He grabbed the first at the moment of recognition and flipped it over his upturned mouth, gulping down both water and ice. His molars pulverized the cubes so he could keep drinking until only drops trickled out.

He slapped the cup down and wiped the water from his cheeks and forehead with his shirt sleeve. “That’s amazing,” he whispered, his lips and the tip of his nose coming back to life.

“Easiest customer I ever had,” said the waitress. “Now, if you’d only buy something.”

He turned and read her name tag, a yellow oval sitting right at eye-level. “Lady,” he said. “Thank you Lady. You may have your doubts, but I’ll drink all of these.”

“If that’s true, I’ll save my prayers. Did you get a look at the menu?”

“Did I?! It’s beautiful… but I gotta ask: what do you prefer?”

“Migas,” said Lady, “but that’s not on the menu and you gotta be Daniel’s friend.” He couldn’t read her smile, the cadence and pitch she spoke with made obvious reference to an inside joke, but there was something heavy laced in her words… appreciation, maybe?

Whatever it was, it wasn’t directed at him.

“Lucky Daniel,” said the Troubadour. “I kind of have my heart set on two-hundred pancakes anyway… but first, I gotta ask a favor.”

“You need more water? To wash down the two-hundred pancakes?” she asked.

“I would, but I’m not sure I have time. You see… straight ahead of me, I’m sensing a vibe… maybe overtures?” He tried to keep his voice down, but knew it was a stupid formality. If he was right, it didn’t matter what he said.

He just wanted his pancakes… and at least two more cups of water.

Lady turned and looked at the man two booths down. “You planning on jumping on the back of a Harley with your new friend?” she asked.

“I did walk here… through a desert…”

“You look like it, but I’m still not sure I’d hitch a ride with this guy. He’s looking at you like you stole his lunch money.”

“Does he have tattoos?” asked the Troubadour.

“That’s what you’re worried about?” Lady laugh-scoffed.

“No. What are they of?”

“Music or something, I don’t know.”

The Troubadour pulled a roll of hundred dollar bills out of his coat pocket and put one on the table. “Can we make those pancakes to go?” he asked, realizing how desperate he suddenly sounded. “And maybe I only need twenty, to tide me over. Do you have hashbrowns?”

She searched his face, hazel eyes with a hint of green, then something broke in her demeanor. She recognized something. “I’ll get on it,” she said, turning to go behind the bar with sudden haste.

“What’s the best way out of here,” he called after her.

“Degenerate,” muttered the old man behind him.

Mabe his car, thought The Troubadour.

“Let me ask,” said Lady. He heard it in the music of her voice: opportunity. She kept inside the professional scales to that point, her tone like a boring pop song, the kind you can sing along to even when you don’t know the words. Now, she was saying he had a window out of here that wasn’t a dubious confrontation.

He scooched to the edge of his seat and made to stand, only to feel the man two booths down shift in his seat also.

The Troubadour reached for his guitar and pulled it beside him, turning to look squarely at the man who’d been staring at him.

What he saw didn’t surprise him, but the sirens on the submarine in his brain swirled with deafening sound, filling everything behind his eyes with red. The man sitting opposite had as bald of a head as he’d expected, like there’d never been a hair on it. He wore a black leather vest, slightly different than The Troubadour remembered, but similar and with the same bulging shoulders stacked beneath it.

Not shy anymore, The Troubadour stared back, wondering how we was supposed to decide that this wasn’t the same man. Logic?

He had half the other guy in his bag, how could it be? Except that the second half of the guy disappeared into a river of scorpions and now this guy, staring back at him, looked exactly the same. Have you ever been able to tell bald guys apart? Wasn’t Jeff Bezos in R.E.M?

“Here,” came an abrupt voice from above him. He found himself staring at a yellow oval that read Launda. She dropped a styrofoam box on the table with a receipt on it. “You can grab your real food on the way out, follow me through the kitchen when you’re ready.

Scrawled in Sharpie on the receipt paper was: 

Meet me in the parking lot when you’re ready, and bring your benjies.

• Lady

He grabbed another cup of water and gulped down half of it. He pulled his guitar satchel and guitar straps over him and reached for a full cup before standing, ignoring the movements of the bald man– even after his guitar knocked over the remaining waters. 

The old woman gasped from beneath her dome. Her husband hollered: “I knew it!”

The Troubadour passed them and jackknifed for the gap in the bar.

“He’s going to rob the place!” yelled the old man.

The Troubadour kept going, ducking into the kitchen and spilling half the cup of water. “I need a water bottle,” he muttered.

The back door was open, but Launda stood between him and the sizzling light.

“That’s the parking lot?” he asked, nodding towards the door behind the woman and trying not to knock over the oils and seasonings with the belongings hanging from his shoulder.

“You got anything for me?” asked Launda.

“Sure, Lucinda’s great, but this shit gets old. Happy Woman Blues is sublime if you want an artist at her best.”

“Spotify picks the best songs, prick. I mean money,” she stretched her arms out like she could stop him.

He felt the boots hit the ground in the restaurant behind him. The weight crashing on their soul was both immense and familiar. They stormed his way and he shut the door behind him, a flimsy curtain of rubber. “Does this lock?” he asked.

A man shoved a styrofoam container in front of him and reached to pull the dead bolt.

“Thanks Daniel,” said The Troubadour, pulling a hundred from his roll and placing it by the grill. “I really appreciate it.”

He heard honking from the parking lot, but Launda still stood in front of him, in the stark shape of a demonic snow angel. “What about me?” she asked again.

“I think I have some change,” said The Troubadour, walking towards her and twisting the knob on the amplifier at his hip. He placed his fingers on the frets when he was a nose away from her narrow snout and strummed. The door to the kitchen banged, a boot kicking at its rubbery bottom.

The sound that wafted from the amplifier shivered through Launda’s joints and sent her to the ground in a pile. It looked like someone dropped their marinette. He stepped over her, pulling what was in his right jeans pocket out and dropping it on her. It looked like a five and a one, and maybe a few quarters. Everything else was dimes and pennies.

Where do the pennies even come from?

“Never trust playlists,” said The Troubadour, stepping out into the light.

This Chapter was written to the album Transformer, by Lou Reed