The waitress — Tabby, her name tag said — leaned over to take his last empty plastic basket away and let her eyes stray to his picture of the by-now famous stonework.
“So, you’re here for the party, huh?” she asked, twisting her mouth to one side.
“I would be, except —” Ambrose shrugged and gestured to the nearly empty diner. “Doesn’t look like there’s going to be one.”
He stirred his coffee around and took a big gulp. “I mean, when does E.T. plan on landing? We don’t have all night.”
“Dawn,” she said.
“Huh?”
“We might have all night,” Tabby repeated, her blue eyes sober and calm. “It happens at dawn.”
Ambrose didn’t know if it was the drinking or the long, surreal waiting, but he felt himself sit up, half-reaching for his notepad with growing excitement.
“What happens at dawn?”
Tabby smiled. “‘They come back’, of course.”
It had to be the drink, Ambrose decided. He shook his head to clear it, watching Tabby walk away as the bored-looking cook dropped his order. She came back, with a laugh hidden behind her painted-on smile, and handed him a fresh mug of coffee. Without a word, she took away his doctored-up one.
Then she leaned against his table, shaking her own head. “You’re not one of those crazy end-timers, are you? You don’t look like one.”
“No.”
“Thrill-seeker?”
“Not even close,” Ambrose answered. He began taking old notebooks from his pack. He’d always kept his notes. In cases where history repeated herself — as she so often did — the story was that much easier to write.
About Amberle L. Husbands
