The Fall of the Fancy Lobby was hosted but never sat down, a booth or a high top with a view of the number one modern attraction for international visitors – the Magnificent Outdoor Fountain, made from granite, plumbed by the descendants of Founding Fathers, run with glacial water sourced from Mount Denali and inhabited by a family of pratfalling kois hopeful one day to evolve to take oxygen and finally be able to perform their gift the way slap was meant to be seen. The Fall of the Fancy Lobby was witnessed by only one living thing, a small girl who had stolen a cigarette out of her mom’s purse, snuck out to try it in the dark, and did not cough once like her older cousin said she would. There were no bugs and no eagles. Not even a leaf saw the end of the long, long, glorious time. The Fall of the Fancy Lobby was written up on a schoolroom chalkboard in slag writing with nothing else written underneath and at the end of the day it was erased with a dry piece of paper towel, and the substitute who had written it necked the nurse beneath the bleachers while the quarterback’s dad played footsie with the quarterback’s mom just a few feet above. These things happen to people. We want to be happy and cured. We want to order Domino’s but suffer badly from lactose intolerance, a gluten problem, a fear of delivery drivers, and self loathing the breast of which is a fat guy in a narrow tub. People are on a long, dark road. And there’s the turn off. Too fast to take it or too slow to care. The Fall of the Fancy Lobby, a golden retriever waiting to be untied from the fire hydrant outside the coffee shop. Molly comes out with a little espresso cup and a butter croissant and a local paper under her arm, and unties the dog whose name is Todd and they sit together on a bench in the park and do nothing, nothing like whiskey, until a possum plays gunshot wound out of the lowest bough of a Live Oak and a man runs by who used to be Mayor of Big Hot and who Molly went to middle school with and once or twice or for the rest of their lives they would sneak out of a 5th floor bathroom window, climb a drain pipe, and smoke cigarettes on the roof and look at the view of the very low town they grew up in.

“That wasn’t the best way to get up there,” says the ex-Mayor of Big Hot, whose name is Luis. “I don’t know why we did it like that.”

“I don’t know where we got the smokes,” replies Molly, who likes to dip drags of her butter croissant in a little tuppet of honey she brings from home.

“They were yours,” says Luis, smiling and laughing and moving his knees. “You always had them.”

“I did? Huh. Maybe. . . Maybe I did. . . I guess you’re right. I loved to smoke ‘em. I remember my first. I was pissed off and angry at my mah for somethin’ so I stole one of hers out of her purse and smoked it. . . I remember really not likin’ it but also thinkin’ it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as people made them out to be. I remember thinkin’ ‘this would never kill me. It just tastes bad.’. And then I remember cravin’ something sweet.”