In the corridor outside Lewis's door, last night's orange glow had changed to a sunny yellow. He slung his satchel over his shoulder and set off toward where Jenkins had said the dining car was. He wasn't hungry though. He had a queasy feeling, like seasickness. Maybe from that weird roller coaster sensation last night. But the dining car would be a good place to meet people. He would sit, maybe drink some coffee, write in his journal. At some point, he supposed he would have to get busy with his new duties. Things should be pretty easy-going here. It was a circus, not an engineering company. Anyway, the most crucial part of public relations is knowing the people involved.
    He entered the car after his (second, according to Jenkins's numbering). It looked about the same as his, lumpy carpet, windows on one side, gray-painted doors on the other. The windows were clouded, all of them. In the next one, the three doors were green, white with a rainbow decal near the top, and orange. His was plain wood. Maybe he would paint it. He liked the green. As he progressed through the train, he found himself counting off cars and, like Jenkins, raising fingers to keep track. One interesting door in the fourth car: an intricate scene like a greek vase, with soldiers mounted on elephants fighting spear-wielding foot soldiers.
    The dining car was a long rectangle with cloudy windows on both sides and a floor the color of egg yolks. Beneath the windows were several chrome-edged booths. On the other side of the room was a counter the color of a ripe tomato, and behind it, a man, standing so still that Lewis at first thought he was a mannequin. He was small but broad, with dark hair cut in a bowl-shape. His eyes appeared to be open, but unfocused, and he didn't move until Lewis was about three feet from him.
    "Okay boss, what would you like?" the man asked. And waited, wiping his hands back and forth across the sides of his stained white apron. Now Lewis wasn't sure coming to the dining car had been a good idea. So much food everywhere: sausages, cheeses, and grease-dripping roast ducks hung from hooks, and on the counter, bowls of dried fish smaller than his pinky, dried squid, dried mushrooms, dried fruit. He thought he might faint, and looked away, at the cloudy windows.
    "How about a suicide roll?" the cook asked.
    A blackboard menu hung by the counter. Lizard meat? Must be some kind of circus joke.
    The cook, without waiting for an answer, handed him a cup of coffee and a plate with a steaming pancake-crepe thing wrapped around some sort of filling. Lewis put down his satchel and slid onto the blue vinyl seat of the booth closest to the counter, facing away so he wouldn't have to look at all that food. He picked up a napkin and rubbed the window. The density of the mist reminded him of when an airplane passes through a cloudbank, cloaking everything in grayish-white. This mist probably had something to do with the temperature differential between winter out there and the warmth inside the train, but it shouldn't be so impenetrable. And wouldn't condensation be on the inside?
    Away from the counter's overwhelming profusion of food, he felt better. He pulled up a flap of pancake thing: potatoes, onions, and some kind of meat—lizard? He picked it up and bit into the flakey wrapper. The filling was spicy and aromatic, cumin and cardamom perhaps, but another rumble of that seasickishness shook him, and he lowered the pancake thing back onto his plate.
    Hoping that writing in his journal would settle his stomach, or at least divert his attention, he took out his notebook. He had been keeping an intermittent journal for several years. Since graduating from college. All the long years of school provided an easy identifier for his life: Cheryl Moskowitz—tenth grade girlfriend; fight with that guy he couldn't remember the name of—eighth grade; he had read The Golden Sail his first year of college, finishing it late one night after studying for a history mid-term. But after college things blurred, months, years with nothing to hang onto them. He started the journal so he could attach dates to experiences.
    He wrote November at the top of a new page. It had been the seventh when he arrived at Are No's. How many days ago was that? He shook his head, having trouble grasping the rush of events—one night at Are No's, and not even a full night, then to the train. So today was the ninth.

    The new world,
    Being the onset of a wild new chapter of life, immersion in the circus. Discovery awaits.