we studied maps over stacks of pancakes at midnight and squawked above the humming industrial fans. fuck. we'd passed the exit some thirty miles back, but neither of us wanted to get back on the road before morning. we asked our waitress where we could find an overnight motel. she poured us two coffees and pointed at a spot about four miles down the county road. there, she said, and laughed at something in her head.

when she wasn’t freshening up bottomless decafs or fetching the little pink packets, the waitress would lean heavy cross the counter and ask the old truckers where they’d been lately, the names of their hometowns, what brought them first to the road and then to her. she’d listen like she really needed to know, biting the soft edge of her pencil, sweeping the hair from eyes. i wondered aloud to you: what kept a woman like that in a town like this, where the nearest motel is four miles down an unnamed dirt road, parallel to an old salt mine.

we paid our bill and made a show of leaving the woman an outsized tip. maybe she was tending for a bed-ridden old mother. maybe she married the guy who ran the tackle shop, the one on the sign we saw coming into town, the sign with the cartoon fish who smiled and wore shoes and little white gloves like mickey mouse. you asked why they drew the fish so happy, and i said it was to make us feel better. if they’d drawn the reality of it all—a bleeding leech twisting on a hook—no one would fish and the store would be forced to close. you have to make people feel like what they do in this world is good and makes others happy. without that, there’s just too much truth going around and we’re likely to catch cold or start smoking cigarettes.

i thought of that sign and of the waitress as we got in the car and started down the road she'd pointed us to. i’m not gonna lie: i talked about her the entire way. the tag on her little blue uniform said ‘iris,’ but we both agreed that couldn’t be right. that’s too old a name for a woman like that, you said. the name tag must be a fake. maybe she drifts from town to town, moving from one greasy spoon to the next. maybe she grants wishes to the local regulars like a genie or maybe she helps them find jobs or true love. maybe she tutors the kids at the local middle school. the variations on iris were infinite, and we soon exhausted ourselves in naming them.

the road led straight to the motel. just as she promised. but the salt pit was empty and dark.