Outskirts Press, INC.

You can run from your past but it always catches up to you.

Midnight Concessions was inspired by the Edward Hopper 1942 painting “Nighthawks”. That painting shows four individuals patronizing a diner on a dark night. This novel tells the stories of these four individuals, Jay, Osvaldo, Stephanie and Thorpe through the community they establish within the diner. Each has run from their past seeking exile in the City. Their stories are told through memories generated by songs played on the diner jukebox. Eventually each comes to the realization that they must confront the demons of their past to have any hope of a future. In doing so, they come to realize that the road to redemption is littered with landmines they never considered. Midnight Concessions is a riveting story that explores the depths of emotions, love, loss, humanity, identity and hope, tucked inside each of us.

>p< The City can be especially cold at night, both from a weather perspective but more so from a pure loneliness cutting to the bone feeling. The City, like a honey badger, just doesn’t give a shit. At night the thrum and rhythm of its businesses and citizens retreats leaving much of the city feeling like a ghost town. Yes, solace and other humans can be found at the bars and dance clubs but once they close, it’s almost like the City itself shuts down, needing its rest so it can start all over again once dawn comes. Generally after one in the morning, darkness is pervasive in this vast desert. Sure, there may be times when the City is backlit by the moon, if it decides to come out and peer through the pollution the City creates. And, yes, there are also the numerous employers who think they can stave off nighttime crime with a diverse array of lighting programmed to operate from dusk to dawn. Still, many parts of the City are just dark, cave-like and unfriendly as if telling people foolish enough to venture into them, that they are taking their lives into their hands.

In its early days, the diner might have been compared to a prom king, all regal and impressively dressed in the finest tuxedo only to end up at the fifty year class reunion, balding, with a pot belly and generally unimpressive after being worn down by life. Yet, like that former prom king, the diner was still standing and refused to accept the indisputable fact that its best days were behind it. It really wasn’t the diner’s fault that its popularity had faded. In an era of Happy Meals and family gaming centers, it simply couldn’t compete, nor did it even try. It still knew its niche even if 99% of the population had no clue what niche meant.g their lives into their hands.

Osvaldo remembered loving his former life and what wasn’t there to love? He had lived his whole life in Magdalena de Kino, referred to by the many Yanqui tourists as a quaint and picturesque city. Their assessment was based in part on the historic landscapes of the surrounding area and the cobbled streets. Nestled in the northern part of Sonora, 50 miles from the border, it was truly magical. The surrounding area comprised of valleys and hills, some of which went up to 4,500 feet and a temperate to hot climate, with grasslands in the valleys, pine forests in some of the highest areas and an occasional seasonal snowfall. Even now after all that had happened, all the years that had passed, this city still held a special place in his heart. He likened it to a movie he had seen on TV about a baseball diamond in the middle of a corn field in Iowa. A wizened old gringo actor said something about when a place touches you, the wind never blows cold again. When he heard that phrase, he thought of home, of going home and of knowing he would never be able to do so.

Ah Lara, just saying her name made him turn to jelly. Although he had hundreds of pictures of her at that crappy room he rented, he didn’t often carry her picture with him. He didn’t need to; she was indelibly tattooed in his mind. He remembered her hair, long and golden and how it had felt like silk when he ran his fingers through it. He used to call her Sister Golden Hair back in the good days based upon the similarities he found between her and that song by America. That song was one of several hundred on this jukebox but now when he heard it, it made him intensely sad, the same way most of the songs they had lived and loved together did.

She listened to the song closely, noting many similarities within the song to her own life. It was if when the Eagles crafted this song, they correctly pegged much of her story. As the band sang about how things could possibly get so crazy, all she could do was nod her head in affirmation. The lyrics battered her psyche, making her feel like a boxer trapped against the ropes, being mercilessly pummeled, just hoping to stay standing until the bell rang. She got goosebumps when the singer questioned getting too tired or lazy, being so far gone you feel like a fool. Was “crazy” the appropriate adjective to describe just how far her life had spiraled out of control. She vaguely remembered earlier days filled with adventure, hope and so much promise. Now those days seemed like just a pipe dream and she shivered over a thought that she had been lost for years.

Plain and simply, he ran away from that life and all that it had meant to him in the aftermath of losing Lara, only to learn the hard way that one can run but one cannot hide. It was only at the diner that he sometimes felt a measure of sanity while losing himself in song lyrics which had so much significance to his life. He felt some connection to the other three individuals he often shared space with in the early morning hours, assuming but not knowing that each was also escaping or hiding from something in their past. They seemed to be misplaced orphans and somehow that commonality had forged an improbable bond between them. On those few nights when he had ventured in and found one or more of them missing, he felt some degree of concern.