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The one-armed cook cracked a brown egg spreading it thinly across the griddle, took a check down from the spinwheel and slid it under a plate, lifted the weight off the bacon and pressed it down on the hash browns. It is suspect he intrigued you—his keeping one hand free to adjust the knob on his radio. "Like nobody's business," he would complain when the station drifted or got staticky in the middle of a BeBop tune.

Even so, you were casually the all-night waitress at Shirley's 66 Cafe and left it at that. It was no surprise. It was eggs and bacon. All the truckers agreed you had the best legs on the route. But you didn't see it that way. They were just men.

In Arizona, in the first heat of spring in 1954 the Wyman B. Glaser Memorial Library housed eighteen thousand five hundred and fifty-two volumes with no two being the same. And it was on the way home. It was always cool inside with the dust lying undisturbed. There was a cheeky librarian in horn rims forever ready to show you his books, his Abrams from New York City. You often would stop and sit for a while, listen to his quiet chatter—new pages turning.

It was easy to see how a horse could be orange, the dog red.