The Back Booth

You can't go home and you can't sleep, so at three in the morning you go where the lights are.

The Nighthawk sits on Lincoln Avenue under a neon sign shaped like a bird with one wing burned out. It's open twenty-four hours, has red vinyl booths patched with tape, a pie case that glows like an aquarium, and a jukebox that, as far as you've ever been able to tell, only plays the Platters. You used to come here after late recording sessions in your first year, when the show had eleven listeners and you were one of them.

Sabeen orders cheese fries for the table and black coffee for herself. "We are not sleeping, Ava," she announces. "We are standing guard over your dignity."

"My dignity is trending."

"Was trending." She turns her phone around. "Look."

You look. The post with your address is gone. So is the next one, and the quote-share of it, and the screenshot someone posted with your face circled. You search your street name and get a page about tree trimming. You search lightkeeper and get a hollow little message: This account has been suspended.

You exhale for what feels like the first time since four o'clock.

"Six hours," you whisper. "He said six hours. It's been eleven."

"Who said?"

"GHOSTLIGHT."

Sabeen's eyebrows do something complicated. "Your mod. The one you've never met. Ava, honey."

"He's not my mod. He's a mod." You open the Porch under the table. There's a message waiting from twenty minutes ago.

all the copies i can find are down. two platforms suspended the account. sent everything to the police with times and links, they call it a preservation packet, it means the companies have to keep his records instead of deleting them. he can make a new account. he will. but now there's a paper trail with his name-shaped hole in it.

how do you know how to do all this?, you type.

used to do it for a living. now i do it for free, which my accountant hates.

"You're smiling at your phone," Sabeen says. "At three in the morning. At a man named after a lamp."

"A ghost light is a theater thing. It's the one bulb they leave on onstage when everyone goes home, so nobody falls into the orchestra pit in the dark."

"You looked that up."

"I looked that up in January."

She opens her mouth to say something devastating, and then her eyes go past your shoulder and widen. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me."

You turn.

In the back booth, the one under the broken clock, sits Xavier Eckhart. Laptop open. Glasses on, black-framed, which should be illegal on a face like that. Hoodie, no blazer. A plate with half a slice of cherry pie pushed to the side. He looks like a magazine spread about a sad genius, and the night waitress, a sturdy woman in her late fifties with a pencil in her bun, is refilling his coffee without being asked and patting his shoulder like he's her nephew.

"That's the robot," Sabeen hisses.

"I know it's the robot."

He looks up. He sees you. And the expression that crosses his face isn't smug or cold. It's something closer to alarm, gone so fast you might have imagined it.

Then he closes the laptop and walks over.

"Ms. Sadowski."

"Mr. Eckhart. Do you follow me to all my diners?"

"I've been coming here for six years. Minka can confirm."

"Six years," the waitress agrees, passing with a pot. "Tips like a gentleman, never smiles. Is she your girlfriend?"

"She's a client," he says.

"I'm not a client," you say. "I'm a liability with a microphone."

Minka looks between you like she's watching a very good soap opera and leaves the coffeepot on your table.

Xavier doesn't sit. He stands at the end of the booth with his hands in his hoodie pocket. "The address posts are down."

"I noticed."

"Good." A pause. "You shouldn't be alone right now."

"I'm not alone. I'm with Sabeen and cheese fries."

"I mean for the next few weeks." He says it to the tabletop, not to you. "Stay with her. Or have someone stay with you. It doesn't have to be me. I'd rather it wasn't me, honestly. I'm bad company." A muscle moves in his jaw. "But it should be someone."

It's the least rude thing he has ever said to you, and it lands somewhere under your ribs. You don't know what to do with it, so you do what you always do.

"Was that almost kind? Should I call a doctor?"

"Eat your fries," he says, and goes back to his booth.

You eat your fries. Sabeen eats most of them. And under the table, while Xavier types in the back booth like the keyboard has personally wronged him, you text GHOSTLIGHT.

update: the network's security guy is here. at my diner. at 3am.

your diner?

i've been coming here since episode 4.

bold of him. what's he like?

You glance over your shoulder. Xavier's frowning at his screen. His phone is lying face-down beside his pie plate. It buzzes. He doesn't look at it.

a face like a cologne ad and the personality of a parking ticket, you type. he made a slideshow of my life this morning. he told me to turn off my porch light.

The dots appear. Disappear. Appear.

Across the diner, Xavier's phone buzzes again. He turns it a little further away from himself without looking, like it's a dog he's not allowed to pet.

he's not wrong about the light, GHOSTLIGHT writes. he's wrong about the way he said it. both things can be true.

whose side are you on??

yours. that's why i said both things.

You snort into your coffee. Sabeen kicks you under the table. "Who are you flirting with?"

"I'm not flirting."

"You're flirting with a lamp, Ava."

At ten past six, the sky over Lincoln Avenue turns the color of weak tea. When you stand to leave, Xavier is still in his booth. You don't say goodbye. Neither does he. But as the bell over the door jangles, you look back, and he's watching you go with an expression you can't read at all, his phone finally in his hand.

Sabeen drives you to your place so you can grab real clothes. In daylight the green door looks ordinary. The porch light is still on, pale and useless in the morning. You stand on the bottom step and stare at it for a long time.

Then you go up, Sabeen right behind you, keys in your fist.

Halfway up the stairs, your phone buzzes against your hip.

GHOSTLIGHT.