Tomorrow is Crying for You, Part 2

            In this endless sunset that enveloped the restaurant, no customers ever came.  Instead, my friend Marietta, the hostess, usually sat at one of the perfectly made tables by herself, doing paperwork of a kind we never discussed.  Only the fading light that rippled through those whispering trees dared enter the large T-shaped room.  Why were there no customers?  On my previous visits I’d only seen Marietta in that hushed hour of solitude.  Like so many other questions I must have forgotten to ask her this one, too.

            Now, in the pantry, I stretched myself and without thinking remembered how to fly—I began running until suddenly my wings caught air and lifted me off of the hardwood floor.  From the kitchen I turned down the narrow, artificially lit hallway that led into the dining room.  No one waited for me; not even Marietta sat at her usual table.  Only I existed, passing through, a lightning bug in disguise. 

But while the restaurant was familiar, it was not safe.  I would need to find some other shelter, to clear my head, maybe to sleep and wake up again as something else.  In the lobby I held my breath and squeezed through the narrowest of gaps between the locked double doors.  When I exhaled again I rolled, tumbleweed style, into the magnificent hall that joined the restaurant to the great corridor.