You remember a rundown bookstore at the corner of 3rd and Boulder. It was a quiet building, attached to a restaurant on one side and a larger restaurant on the other. You've been traveling for some time, probably forty-five days when you stopped counting, and all these cities are beginning to look the same: islands of activity. You move between them at night, drifting through the darkness. The nearest point of light is the moon. A new city every few days feels like a dramatic reboot following a catastrophic software failure. At least that's how you view them later from the rearview mirror. You add the flames in your imagination. Ahead is the next mystery.

But anyway this bookstore, sodden with the smells of a couple of domestic cats and old ideas, customers roaming the aisles like animated but sleepy statues. You make a point to visit one of these on the first day in each new city. It's some ritual. They're like access points to the dream world. You just check to see what's in there, what's changed, what's shifted. All bookstores feel like this but are reflected through a different shard of the same prism. You don't know what that means but it seems to make weird sense.

"This city's getting old," you mutter over coffee with Shéra, a woman you met yesterday. She is your impromptu guide and seems totally uninterested in your fascination with bookstores so you drop it. She just likes that you're here. She has red hair and her sharp eyes narrow when she asks you questions. She alternates between withholding too much and admitting too much. That's how you know she likes you.

"But you just got here," she objects.

You gaze with her at the horizon, the sharp line that divides ocean and sky. Tinted clouds streak above you. The reds are like blood, the oranges like a nova. Metallic jazz drifts up from underneath. Its complicated noises are too much for you to follow so you leave it there and wander up the stairs that snake up onto the viewing platform. You have an elevated view of the beach. Tall palm trees rise up to meet you and quiet, gentle traffic illuminates the parkway. It fades into the distance. Thirty dollars for fifteen minutes is not a bad deal, nor is it a bad idea. Other revelers remain below, trapped in the prison of a confusing music.

“It’s nice up here,” you comment. You have nothing else to say because you are a person of clashing thoughts. She convinced you to stay last night and now you don't know what is going through her mind. When you travel you are usually in control of your time. That's why you like traveling. Now someone has interfered and it doesn't bother you as much as you thought.

“The sunset is beautiful,” she replies, not staring at the withering sunset but instead down at her hands, gripping the railing. You notice. All her subtle gestures register with you, and you wonder if she picks up on yours.

“What's your favorite part of this city?”

“So far?”

“Yeah so far.” You feel good.

"Probably saying goodbye to you last night, and knowing I would see you again today." She is smirking, and mischief is in her eyes.

"Oh you knew, did you?"

"But you didn't yet. That's what I liked."

"You're a tricky creature." You feel great.

Your time on the platform expires and the multi-colored jazz below has ended. As the night starts and the moon brightens you realize this is when you would be leaving town.