Frankie Doyle worked at O'Malley's from seven at night until three in the morning, which meant that his life ran on a schedule that was the opposite of everyone else's. He woke up at two, ate a meal that was usually soup or toast or something he found in the back of his fridge that had been there since the last time he had gone to the store, and went to work.

O'Malley's was a bar on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens that had been a bar since before Frankie was born and would probably be a bar after he was dead. The bottles on the shelves were the same bottles they had been serving when Frankie was ten and his uncle had brought him behind the bar to show him how to pour a Guinness without a head. The TV above the bar showed sports Frankie did not watch. The music was whatever the regulars put on the playlist, which was always the same five songs.

The customers were the same, too. Old men who sat at the end of the bar and drank whiskey and talked about things that happened thirty years ago. A woman named Gloria who came in every Tuesday and Thursday and ordered a gin and tonic and cried into it without making a sound. And Frankie, who poured the drinks and collected the money and existed in the flat gray space between unhappy and happy that most people spend their entire lives trying to occupy without noticing they have arrived.

The dream started on a night in March when it was raining and the bar was empty except for the old men and Frankie was wiping down the counter and thinking about nothing, which was his preferred mental state because thinking about something usually led to thinking about something he could not change.

He went home. He slept. And he dreamed of a woman in a red dress standing under a streetlamp at the end of an empty block.

She did not speak. She just stood there. The red dress was bright against the dark, the kind of red that exists in reality but seems slightly too bright, the way colors seem in dreams. The streetlamp flickered. The block was empty except for her.

The next night, she was back. Same dress. Same lamp. Same silence.

Frankie told no one about this. What would he say? "Hey, I had a dream about a woman in a red dress"? It was the kind of thing you said at a party and then everyone looked at you the way they look at people who talk about their dreams, which is to say they did not look at you at all.

The third night, she smiled. Just a small smile. The kind you give a dog you are trying to be polite to. Frankie slept deeper than usual. When he woke, he felt a strange satisfaction. Not joy. Just... something. The kind of something you get from eating a good sandwich.

Night after night. Week after week. The dream became part of his routine. He knew that after closing the bar, going home, heating up a can of soup, he would dream of the woman in the red dress. It was as reliable as the sunrise and as emotionally significant as a bus schedule.

The dream did not get more exciting. If anything, it got worse—or better, depending on how you looked at it. The woman stopped smiling. She stood there, motionless. And Frankie stood there, looking at her, the way a man looks at a wall he painted himself. He knew every inch of this dream. He could probably paint it.

"You look like shit, Frankie," one of the regulars said one morning—the morning after Frankie had closed, which meant the afternoon, because Frankie's mornings were other people's nights. "You alright, mate?"

"Yeah, well. I've been busy," Frankie said. He did not explain that being busy at 3 AM, when nobody else is awake, is the busiest kind of work there is.

One night, the streetlamp was off.

The woman was gone.

Frankie stood there in the dark and felt nothing. Not disappointment. Not relief. Just the absence of something he did not know he needed. He stood there for a long time, in the dream-dark, looking at the empty space where she had been, and he realized that he had not noticed she was gone until he was looking at the absence. This was not dramatic. This was not a crisis. This was just... fact.

The next night, the lamp was on. She was back.

Frankie did not smile. She did not smile. They had an understanding. She was not his girlfriend. He was not her lover. They were two creatures sharing a routine, nothing more. And maybe that was enough.

It probably was.

He continued working at O'Malley's. He continued sleeping from three in the morning until two in the afternoon. He continued heating up cans of soup and watching the sports on TV and listening to the same five songs on the playlist. And every night, after work, he went home and dreamed of the woman in the red dress standing under the streetlamp at the end of an empty block.

Sometimes the lamp flickered. Sometimes it did not. Sometimes she smiled. Most of the time she did not. And Frankie stood there, looking at her, the way a man looks at a mirror that shows him not his face but his routine, and he felt nothing and everything and the space between nothing and everything that most people spend their entire lives trying to navigate without any map and without any compass and without any woman in a red dress standing under a streetlamp at the end of an empty block, waiting for them to arrive.

The bar is still there. Frankie still works there. The woman still stands under the lamp. The lamp still flickers. The routine continues.