This is a cold fried chicken and tart mushy apple kind of night and autumn is a leaving season.

Keeping the shop door closed keeps the cold out. The shop is a ship of curiosities, a memory palace full of one-liners. (The punch lines left with the people who told the jokes over coffee and the memory of what cigarettes taste like.)

The heater kicks on and I hear it again: that vaguely unintelligible song. The music of metal and heat and squeaky parts. The city is a battle of the bands: there is a song in the interstate overpass rattling as loaded semis storm by at 2 in the morning. Then the fupa-fupa-fup-thump of a tire going flat. The echoes of couples conversations and the lone man in a red hoodie arguing with his demons at 3 am.

We sing, one and all, unaware of the melody. It’s just some tinny tune we heard as a baby. A lullaby or a military march. The memory of a plague whose name is forgotten.

And then? Sunrise.