In the warbled dawn of a coming hot summer day the crypto man wiles away in a labyrinth of enigma. The staircase to the pancake house was long and winding. He burst through and there were the smells of syrup and broiling butter. It was the essence of Isis, the corrugated dreams of a running kite, and he took a seat in a silver, translucent booth. He pawed the menu open, read a few lines, set it aside.

The waitress ghost floated over. She was blue and beautiful. He looked into the mirror of the street, a cacophony of visions, dreams and illusions. Lamp shades littered like tattered doves, the human motion beating against the breath of God.

He wanted to know if magic was on the menu. He wanted to know if she could pull a short stack out of a top hat. She laughed and bent, scribbled on her periwinkle pad.

“And a pot of coffee, a cradle of sweetener, and one of those little silver pitchers of cream.”

His voice was like raw diamonds, a gallant sweep of the clock across highway sands.

Someone slipped a couple of coins into the 4-dimensional jukebox and the song Free Falling by Tom Petty came spilling out. He suddenly recalled the stain of polluted mountains, elaborate shopping malls, the smell of man in the ocean.

“This one always gets me right in the guts,” he said to her. “Memories can be like knives.”

Her electric lips were stretched by a mile-wide smile. “You must be 110 years old,” she said. “That song is so old.”

“One-hundred and eleven,” he replied.

“You keep yourself plugged in nice and tight every night?”

“I dream of electric camels and wide expanses of desert… How about you? What unfolds in your dreams?”

Her eyes popped skyward as she thought about it. “Despite taking my sleepers, I dream of mountains made of pancakes and syrup is lava and a ball of butter is a golden Buddha.” She frowned. “I suppose it’s a hazard of working in this place.”

He looked around the place. It hummed of life, or at least a comforting pause within it. “I like it here. I enjoy the clinking of cups and plates and the blended din of voices.”

“Well,” she laughed. “That makes one of you. It’s easy for you to say. You can just get up and walk out of here and enjoy the rest of your day out in the beautiful world. I’m stuck like stink on a skunk.”

“Why don’t you just duck out. We can go to the library and read.”

“Library? Read? Is that your idea of fun?”

“Yes.”

Someone tapped a little silver bell. “Sheila! Order up.”

“I’d like to, but I can’t. Life calls.” She floated away, did her rounds of drudgery, and then returned with his coffee and magical short stack as he requested. She set the things down in a calm and orderly fashion. Her visage was of embers. She walked away eternal, and he sat alone and ate and drank, a forceful empty ache rising somehow. He tried to wish it away, but his wishes rarely came true.

Cherry blossoms blew up in his face, a memory bloom, rain, a long walkway left polished by the wetness from the sky. He looked up at the white obelisk, the markings from space. His face tilted toward the window and he suddenly longed to go homeward.

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