I’m gathering dust at my usual booth, taking a break from the midnight bazaar after reuniting the kid with his parents. I contemplate how long I can keep doing this—saving folks—as I chow down on a combo of onion rings and a soggy mushroom Swiss when a kid bolts past the windows outside. Kid may be inaccurate, but when you’re as seasoned as I am, it fits. The large pane windows are streaked to shit, but I like to imagine the kid is simply moving that fast. I hate to be the one to tell him trouble always catches up. Kids.

    There is no bell, but the grinding of the latch against the sagging door frame interrupts an old Crosby, Stills, and Nash song as he enters the diner. He disregards the please wait to be seated sign and plomps down across from me in my booth, body tilted away from the window. Head down.

    There’re a dozen other seats. All empty. Kid probably figures there’s safety in numbers. Unless he knows. Maybe he’s heard the rumors of the old man tucked away at the hi-way diner booth. 

    “Heard what you did out there. You know, the bazaar.”

    I get a bead on the kid—ripped jeans, worn sneakers, a tattoo peeking from the collar of his band T—and assess he’s the one in trouble, not causing it. Call it a vibe.

    I slide the red plastic basket of onion rings toward the middle of the table. “Go on, have one, and tell me about your woes.”

    Kid no sooner ruins his onion ring with ketchup when a couple of heavy-looking dudes lumber past the windows, their forms blurred into glitchy movements. Soon, they’re through the door. Then, they avoid the please wait to be seated sign.

    And now, they walk to our booth and scooch in next to us, blocking our only exit.

    Well, so they presume. There are exits everywhere. Worlds. My grandma taught me that.

    “You the boy’s dads?”

    The one next to me grunts while the other smirks, and I feel a hunk of something cold pressed against my kneecap under the table. He yammers the same old thing blah blah it’s loaded, blah blah he’ll use it. Like it’s supposed to intimidate me. They call me old timer like it’s supposed to offend me.

    “So what’d the boy do that justifies being pursued by two armed men? Self-proclaimed professionals, I’d assume?”

    The kid appears to have crystallized. His unfinished onion ring is a saggy letter C. He chews in slow motion.

    “Don’t tell me it’s something stupid like drugs or money.” I offer the basket of rings to the table. “Come on, I don’t need all of these.”

    The one next to the kid provides an ambiguous answer; he owes us.

    “Sure, sure.” I pick up an onion ring. “Counter offer. What if I pay you instead?”

    “Some things can’t be paid for in money alone.” This nugget of wisdom pours from the mustached lips of the one with the gun ready to blow me sterile.

    I understand he’s talking about some warped view of justice or karma or whatever intangible half-baked code of ethics he lives by.

    “Perfect.” I hold the onion ring and show it off like a jeweler might hold an engagement ring. “Because I didn’t intend to pay you with money, but information.”

    The kid is sweating, probably wondering why this old man is trying to get himself killed. The other two exchange glances with a get a load of this batshit old man look in their eyes. They laugh, and it’s like two bricks have been tossed into a washing machine.

    “What if I told you other worlds exist—trapped in the contained centers of Os—if only you take the time to look?”

    I squint and stare through the center of the onion ring at the man before me. This violent, careless person only seeks retribution. His face warps subtly. Heatwave-like ripples make his mustache dance and his eyes melt.

    The kid no longer sees me as a potential respite, that much is clear, but I haven’t lost him yet. We’re still tethered in this moment. I feel it. But he needs proof.

    The heavy dudes waste this opportunity to learn something beyond violence.

    The onion ring unwavering—I slam my other hand palm down on the Formica tabletop. “Pay attention!”

    Silverware rattles.

    The kid jerks against the window.

    The dude beside me grips the back of my neck while the other is consumed by his baser instincts at my sudden movement—drawing the gun above the table.

I don’t waver and hang the onion ring on the edge of the seared steel barrel instead, but the heavy dude has already made up his mind.

    He fires—the muzzle flash star-bright—but the onion ring swallows the bullet along with the sharp crack of the report, reducing its scream to barely a murmur. The brass casing tinks and totters on the table and eventually settles into rolling around in a lazy circle.

    When he pulls the gun from the ring, the tip of the barrel is splintered, its makeup no match for the atmosphere of whatever world he’s thrust it into.

    The breading breaks as I pinch the onion ring, forcing it to fit into the silver dipping cup. I inspect it, this broken world doused in ranch dressing, and reduce it to nothing in two bites.

    Neither the heavy-looking dudes nor the kid say a word. They only watch as I wipe my fingers, turning a pile of napkins translucent with grease. Sometimes folks don’t realize they need saving.

    “What do you say? Why don’t you put the gun away and order another round of rings. It’s a hell of a better deal than the last guy got.”