I imagine I’ve got the universe cradled in my hands, here within the white porcelain of my coffee cup. Inside the cup is a dark mystery, steam rising hesitantly above it. Everything around the coffee is a blinding white: the gently buzzing fluorescent lights above, the worn and pitted formica countertop, the cup and the saucer it rests in, the apron Lurleen the waitress is wearing, the t-shirt and paper cap Al the cook has on. For a minute, I lose track of where I am and I’m sure I’m in heaven.

Last night I dreamt that I had been abducted by aliens and that I was to serve as the defense attorney for earth and earthlings before an intergalactic council. Our planet stood accused of various crimes against the peoples of the universe, and our continued existence was at stake. I was given a box by the aliens and told that it contained a sampling of the best of our culture, which I could use in our defense. When I opened the box, all it contained were the films of Jerry Lewis. I was plotting my defense around "The Big Mouth" when the alarm rang and I woke up.

There’s no real reason I set the alarm. I’m unemployed and there’s nothing at Al’s Diner that calls me to leave my warm and peaceful bed each morning. But I set it anyway. It’s important to have a routine.

I’ve been unemployed for a while now. It’s summer, and the days don’t seem important enough to keep track of, so I don’t, really. The only way I could keep track of the time would be with a chart showing my steadily sinking bank balance. But I throw the bank statements away whenever they come, along with the bills and the junk mail. I don’t get any personal mail, but I jump to each time I hear the mailman’s thunk at my door, hoping.

There’s a vague feeling of certainty each time I throw the responsible mail away. I know I can’t live like this forever. But I don’t care.

Every day I come in and I order the same thing from Lurleen: two eggs, scrambled, rye toast, bacon and coffee. It costs a dollar-ninety-nine. Al’s is losing money on it, I know. They call it ‘The Hungry Man’ and it’s designed specifically to offer the bare minimum breakfast, the idea being that most people will want something else, too – a juice or bagel or another breakfast meat or something – and that’s where Al will make his meager profit. Every day I order The Hungry Man without adding any profit-items I feel the same way I do when I throw my responsible mail away. Someday, Al will change the menu or I will drive him out of business or my arteries will clog and I’ll die from eating scrambled eggs each morning. But I don’t care.

Lurleen is the reason I don’t care. Well, it’s not really Lurleen – it’s another girl entirely, but Lurleen is the closest I come to women these days, so Lurleen must shoulder both the blame for my current sorry state as well as the hope that one day I’ll meet the perfect woman and she’ll straighten me out and all of the possibilities in between, My current favorite in-between possibility revolves around a vague idea I have that I’ll meet Madonna and start talking with her, which will lead to her idea that we should immediately have sex (which I figure happens to nearly everyone she speaks to), and then, in the post-coital warmth, we’ll start talking, and she’ll realize that I am the man she’s been waiting for and insist that I move in immediately. She’ll fairly imprison me in her swank Manhattan condo and send movers and a team of attorneys to finish my affairs in Milwaukee and there I’ll be – the best-kept man of all eternity.

But the fact is that I can only keep this fantasy alive for about fifteen minutes before I start realizing that there is no practical way for attorneys to bring closure to my affairs – who’ll feed the cat, for instance? So I give up on the idea of meeting Madonna and leave three dollars on the counter and walk back to my apartment, probably just missing the arrival of Madonna and her entourage at Al’s.

So Lurleen and her strawberry-blonde hair and her faint freckles remain the only contact I have with my people. Not much of a contact, true, and she could probably have my order made into a rubber stamp, but I still value it – she is my best friend and my worst enemy, my lover and the pain in my heart. And she doesn’t even know my name.

Once back at the apartment, I slip into a sort of trance. Most of the furniture was Ruth’s and it’s all gone. There’s a pile of broken glass where the kitchen table once stood and where I still think it stands in the middle of the night when I get up to have a glass of water and set the glass down on the table and – crash! I don’t clean up the shards of glass other than to nudge them into a nice centrist pile against the wall with the callused edge of my foot. Now, without furniture or a television or any of the things that had made the apartment feel like anything but an unfinished letter, it is hard to maintain focus on anything. Consequently, each time I enter the apartment, my mind becomes sort of a fuzzy blue straight line that makes a faint humming noise. Nothing enters, nothing leaves. I kind of like the feeling.

I’m sure that it was more than the fact that I failed to remember what color Ruth’s eyes were one night, when we were in bed and she asked me. But that was what sent her into paroxysms of anger and sent me to sleep on the couch and had men from her father’s company at the apartment the next day, while I was at work, to move her things out and away. I’m not sure what color my eyes are, being somewhere between a brown and dark green that some people call hazel, and every time I thought of Ruth, I thought of her with piercing blue eyes, like every time I thought of her, I saw the wind blowing her bright blond hair, and when I thought of the two of us together, I thought of us making love with perfect bodies in a pasture on a hillside covered with daisies. But the truth was Ruth’s hair was flat and a sort of mousy in-between shade, and we made love in the bedroom only, with the shades drawn and the lights turned off, and Ruth’s eyes are the same color as mine.

So for that one mistake I entered a world where the blue fuzzy humming line became my best - my only - friend when I got home from work, and after a while, when I started hoping the blue fuzzy humming line would come visit me at work, that one mistake kept me from having to go to work by making me get fired for not paying attention to things at work. Which left me as a customer of Al’s, trying in a backhanded way to put them out of business, to release the awful hold they had on me. And that was Monday.

On Tuesday, I woke up with the alarm, put some clothes on and walked to Al’s. At the counter, in the seat I normally sat in, was a new face, a thin but muscular man wearing a plaid button-down shirt with the sleeves expertly removed, a greased-down haircut and a tattoo on his bicep. He had the finest sideburns I had ever seen. His eyes, I noticed at once, were piercing blue, the same color I had always thought Ruth’s eyes were. He had at least five plates and two glasses in front of him – he was single-handedly returning Al’s to the black after my ruinous reign as chief customer. He was leaning back on the stool with one hand idly rubbing the spot where, on my body, the stomach begins sloping outward. On his body, though, it was smooth and flat, like Indiana. He had a faraway look in his eyes and a slight grin fought with his lips as he watched, unabashedly, Lurleen cut him a slice of pie.

I sat down at the other end of the counter, by the pies, and Lurleen stopped cutting his pie, turned around, grabbed her pad and asked "Howdy, sir! Can I take your order?"

Stunned that she had turned so quickly to service me, I stammered. "Uh, yeah, I’ll have a…" My mind floated around in a moment of terror. I had forgotten what the breakfast I had ordered each day for at least the last two months was called, forgotten even it’s spartan components. "I’ll have Eggs Benedict with a glass of O.J." I said finally, pulling the order from some memory of a breakfast long ago and far away.

Lurleen’s eyes rose above her order pad and met mine. There was a pause, then she returned her gaze to the pad and started writing. "Eggs Benedict and O.J., got it. Right away, sir," she said, and ripped the order from the pad and turned to slide it under one of the empty springs on the order carousel.

I looked over to where the new guy was sitting, the grin absolutely gone from his lips now, a sneer and furrowed eyebrows replacing it. We looked at each other for a few seconds, until Lurleen returned to his place with his pie in one hand and the caffeinated coffee decanter in the other. He turned his gaze to her and let the grin and faraway look return to his eyes and said something, I couldn’t hear what, and laughed. I moved my eyes to a spot on the back wall and started trying to make out figures in the greasy wood paneling that covered the wall there. I saw a knight on a charging stallion attacking a dragon, and then my food came.

That night, I dreamt I was Jerry Lewis, abducted instead of me to explain to the aliens why our race and our planet shouldn’t be vaporized. This time, when I reached into the box, I found nothing but copies of Reader’s Digest.

On Wednesday, the alarm went off and I got up, dressed and went to Al’s. Mr. Sideburns was sitting in my chair again, with another small army of dirtied plates and glasses in front of him, in the same satisfied posture that he had been in yesterday. Lurleen was standing in front of him, looking at an open menu in her hands.

I was amazed. I had never seen Lurleen look at the menu before. For all I knew, she had invented and written the whole goddamned thing, because she never had to look at it to see what came with specific dishes or what prices were.

She looked up as I entered, blinked once and smiled, parting her lipstick-covered lips perfectly across rows of white teeth that I didn’t remember ever seeing before. I looked above the lips and saw her nose, perfect and quiet, then her eyes, which, I realized, were the same piercing blue as the sideburned customer sitting before her as well as the same shade of piercing blue that I had once thought Ruth owned.

Then Lurleen turned back to Mr. Sideburns and the smile fell from her face like an otter returning to the water. I walked to the back and took my new customary seat and began looking at the menu, past the breakfast section and into the lunch specials. When Lurleen got to me, order pad at port arms, I was ready.

"Open-faced roast beef sandwich, please," I said, "mashed, not fries, plenty of gravy, dinner roll on the side, and coffee, please."

Lurleen had started writing before I started speaking. She stopped now, shook her head almost imperceptibly, scrunched her face up for a moment, then crossed something out violently, wrote some other things down, then looked up. "Open-faced beef, mashed, roll, extra gravy and coffee," she smiled, "got it." She swiveled to put the order up and walked away.

The blue line in my head moved to my stomach, leaving my head empty and dizzy and my stomach jerking around like it was on a live wire.

When I got back to my apartment, I found a broom and pan and swept up the small mounds of glass in the kitchen. When I finished, I looked across the kitchen floor for a minute, admiring the white and gray linoleum, looked over to the dining room and began sweeping the rest of the apartment.

That night, I dreamt that Marlon Brando and I were piloting an American space fighter, fighting off wave after wave of alien ships.

Thursday, I turned the alarm off and slept for another hour. Then I got up, put clothes on and walked to Al’s. When I arrived, there was no one in my seat, but a pile of dirty dishes and a five-dollar bill tucked under the coffee saucer. I sat down, looked around to make sure no one was watching, and grabbed the five and slipped it into my pocket. All’s fair, I figured. Lurleen and her pad came over and asked for my order as soon as I removed my hand from my pocket.

"Hungry Man, Lurleen," I said, watching her as she started at the sound of her name, foreign here even though it was engraved on her plastic brown nametag, "nothing else, thanks." She didn’t repeat the order back to me, just scribbled it on the pad and walked back to the carousel. There was no smile and there were no glances.

My breakfast came and I ate it. I was loudly slurping the last of my coffee and watching Lurleen when she started walking back towards me, check held in front of her, like a talisman.

I held up a hand, coffee cup still to my lips, stopping her. I swallowed, carefully set the cup back in the saucer, then said, "I believe I’ll have another Hungry Man, Lurleen. This time, though, I believe I’ll have the eggs…" I rolled my eyes toward the ceiling to indicate how I was expecting divine assistance with my order, "…over easy. And make the toast white." Finished with my order, I picked up the coffee cup again and pretended to be surprised that it was empty. "And maybe you could give me a refill, huh?"

Lurleen stood, eyes not really seeing, for a moment, then turned on her heel toward the coffee machine, then returned and refilled my cup. She stood over me for a minute, during which I made a show of carefully tearing the top from a sugar envelope and emptying its contents into my cup and thoroughly stirring. Then she asked, "Bacon or sausage?"

I stopped. I hadn’t thought of this possibility. I stammered, as I had the day I had first sat on the other end of the counter, "uh, uh, sausage. Patties!" I closed strongly. Lurleen made a few notes on the order pad and turned on her heel and was gone.

Something inside kept making me feel like I had kissed my sister. When I had planned the two-breakfast trick on my walk over, I was sure it would end with Lurleen slugging Madonna outside the door to her condo and heaving me over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry and taking me away. Now I had to admit I had been played to a draw by someone who didn’t even realize she was in the game.

The second breakfast came and I ate it, and then left Mr. Sideburns’ five as a tip before leaving the diner for my apartment.

When I returned, I reached for the light switch, then stopped. Since Ruth left, I had left the curtains drawn and rarely used the lights, preferring to spend my time huddled in the smoky-smelling spare blanket left behind and which I had made into my bed in a corner of what had been our bedroom. Now I walked to the living room curtains and forcefully moved to pull them open. A little too forcefully, as it turned out – with a loud noise I ripped the curtain from the rod. I stood processing this visual information for some time – unable to understand immediately the odd sight of something that ordinarily looked warm and fluffy and hung on the wall now lying lifelessly in my hand. Then I dropped it and reached for the next curtain and ripped it off the rod as well. I started to laugh and I felt the blue line scatter out of my head towards a dark corner of the room. I half-walked, half-skipped to one of the bedrooms, where more curtains covered the windows. "Look through any window," I sang as I ripped those curtains down.

When I finished, I piled the curtains in the corner of the bedroom I slept in, taking time to make something of a nest where before I had slept on the floor with only a single blanket to cover me. Then I left the apartment without a destination.

I walked all over for the rest of the day, venturing as far as Lake Michigan to the east and as far as Leon’s custard to the West; from the meat packing plants in Cudahy to the Allen-Bradley clock. When I finally reached the doorstep to my apartment, the summer sun was setting and I could barely feel my legs.

That night, I dreamt that I was a homesteader, building a log cabin on a hilltop, with valleys where my cows might graze beneath me and snow-capped mountains rising into the clouds in the distance. In the dream, I felt vaguely concerned that I had no idea of how to raise cattle, and no money to buy some anyway, but still I built the house with a smile on my face. I went to sleep under a roof I had built in my dream and woke up when the alarm went off.

It was Friday. I dressed and left the apartment for Al’s. Mr. Sideburns was there in my old spot when I walked in, so I kept walking from the door to my adopted home, at the back counter. Mr. Sideburns had only one plate and cup in front of him and wasn’t watching Lurleen’s every move, as he had been doing on each of his visits. While I watched, he dropped two singles on the counter, added some change fished from his pockets and walked out the door. I noted Lurleen hadn’t even brought him a check yet.

She appeared now, stepping out of the kitchen and walking over to the vacated stool. She gathered up the money, swore just over her breath and started to bus the dishes. I cleared my throat and she turned with blazing eyes. "I’ll get to you when I’m goddamned good and ready! Okay?" she snarled. I nodded, unable to reply quickly enough, to make any noise with my throat. I began to wonder what sort of relationship Mr. Sideburns and Lurleen had. Had he known her before I saw him here for the first time? Maybe they had met earlier in the week and fallen in love! Maybe the whirlwind affair had ended in trouble, and now he was coming in here like a vengeful wraith, ordering a profit-killing Hungry Man and leaving, without even tipping! My fists clenched as I thought of how he had taken Lurleen for a ride, then dropped her by the side of the highway. I was planning how I would arrive the next morning as Al’s opened and stand outside, out of sight of the front windows, waiting for him to come back. Then, by God, I would–

"I’m sorry, honey," Lurleen interrupted my thoughts, "I didn’t get much sleep last night, and I guess I’m a little snarly. It’s not your fault, it’s mine. In fact, coffee’s on me." She swung around for the decanter and a cup and saucer, picked them both up in a beautiful rhythm, filled the cup as she swiveled to face me again, then set the cup and saucer in front of me. "It won’t do to be pissing off my regulars, huh?" she said and smiled, the third smile I had seen from her this week.

Amazingly, I found I could speak. And even more amazingly, I asked her for a date. "No offense taken, we all have bad days," I said. "Heck, I’ve had a bad month. Or two." Seeing no snarl, nothing but that smile, I pressed on. "Heck, you’ve put up with me all this time, maybe I can get you dinner one of these nights." She didn’t say anything, didn’t move her lips like she was working out a reply, so I kept going. "You must finish up by sixish here – why don’t I pick you up then on Friday?" I ended with the question purposely, hoping to make her speak, to make her respond. And she did, never dropping the smile.

"Okay. Get here at five-thirty, though. That’s when I finish." She smiled more, if such a thing is possible, parting her lips enough to show the tips of her gums. I smiled back, hard. We stood for a long minute, then she spoke again.

"What did you want for breakfast, then?"

I spoke before I thought. "Whatever you think I want."

She didn’t hesitate. She scribbled on her pad for a second, then turned and tucked it into the carousel. "Whatever I think you want coming right up," she said and strode to a where a cop had just sat down by the door, scooping up the coffee decanter and a cup and saucer effortlessly on the way.

After a few minutes, Al yelled "Order’s up!" and Lurleen reached up and set my breakfast in front of me. Pancakes, covered with sliced bananas and whipped cream. Side of sausage. Links, not patties. Orange juice in a tall glass. And an English muffin. I realized I was in love.

That night, Lurleen joined me at my dream homestead, wearing a pretty store-bought gingham dress with a similarly colored nametag. Inside the cabin was a frontier diner, covered in fake wood-panel formica, and she worked behind the counter and smiled wide when I came in, so wide that the cabin brightened, like it was the same white heaven I had found in my coffee cup one day. As I ate my Frontier Man, Lurleen and I watched silently as hundreds of cows plodded up the hill and filled our front yard and our hillside and as far as our eyes could see.