It is late, of course, it is always late, squirreled among stacks of books he stares up over the world's deepest coffee cup, it's darkness darker than any man's soul. He has a thought that will change the way you think about crokuses forever, if only you would think about crokuses forever. The window shields us from the unknown, from that man selling pencils for ten dollars outside. The window is a solid he can see through, a romance novel, a politician. What are we doing here so late when all the world's joy is spilling out like change through a hole in a poor man's pocket? We are here because we ache for peace, for the end of desolation. We are here because every mouth we kiss is full of teeth, every book disaster. We are here because in here we know the other the way we think we know ourselves. He sees the moon as half full, never half empty. Moonlight becomes him. Sometimes he becomes moonlight. Sometimes the evening reminds him that there is more to life than the sound of pidgeons fluttering in gables, that expressionless words are never enough. The man with one arm has followed us, eyes us from the corner. He wants to know what we talk about when we sit spralwed across vinyl seats with elbows planted on linoleum squares. We talk about him, about tomorrow, how too often love disappears before its time. The one-armed man shouts at us from the corner, spinning, sputtering, and if we could just paint a red stripe on him we could cut customers' hair right now. He comes like rain, without message, without urgency, just arriving and staying too long. We are no different, just better behaved, just better dressed.