There's a new guy in the Diner. That's normal, and so is the guy, mostly: he's profoundly average-looking, brown-skinned and skinny, probably thirty-something. The outfit is a little much, but that's probably not his fault.

It's the eyes that stand out, when he turns to look at you. Black-on-black with a luminous ring, burning like an event horizon. He's been scanning the crowd as though looking for someone, frowning faintly, but now he rallies to a smile and raises his beer in greeting.

"Having fun?"

The new guy is trying, with painful earnestness, to befriend every horse in town. Someone's deigned to hand him a fistful of sugar cubes, and he's outside the hotel with the tied-up steeds, cooing and petting their big soft noses.

Then he stops. He turns, as though drawn by a magnet, to stare out into the desert. There, a skeleton horse walks among the scrub, its bones gleaming bare under the sun.

"Who is she," he whispers, faux-reverent or maybe real-reverent, and he wheels on you. "Can you introduce me?"

There is a man standing silent among the graves, eyes unfocused, staring out into the middle distance. As you approach, he rocks back and forth on his heels, chews his lip.

"Okay," says the guy, real slow, like he's building to something. "Let's pretend this is a normal question. Can you feel the skeletons?"