They left The National 9 Motel between the baby blue house with a sign on it's turf-looking grass that said YES ON S: KEEP OUR DRINKING WATER CLEAN and the steep brick chapel with the banner that said CAR RAFFLE $25 IN CHURCH OFFICE and ended up in an Italian coffee shop where Doug spread strawberry jam on his bagel with a spoon. They were both easily amused by their logo of Mona Lisa on a coffee mug.

Out of their peripheral vision a man moved slowly into focus. He had Einstein hair bulging out the back and sides of his enormous cowboy hat and "That brown vest over that plaid shirt," Doug imagined the saleswoman saying to him, "couldn't look better on anyone else."

The cowboy turned to them and tipped his hat. "You guys from around here?" he says. "Locals?"

Jeff looked at Doug through the corner of his eyes and assumed that Doug was going to tell him where they lived and then have to explain it all.

"Dude," Jeff says, "he's not going to know where it is." Jeff took a sip of his cappuccino in a plain-white mug and then he set the mug on the table. He wanted a Mona Lisa mug.

Doug says, "By Sacramento."

The cowboy says, "Ah, Sacramento"-He pointed out the window, signaling over some houses-"My old neighbor used to-"

"So you live around here?" Doug says.

"Ah, Yep," he says. "Long time. Well my neighbor, he used to go to Sacramento all the time. He used to go there and sit underneath a big dome. All the time."

He squints underneath his glasses and his glasses were tinted. The squinting of the eyes is a crucial part of his effect. They didn't really start listening until he started squinting.

Jeff waited in the car when Doug checked out of The National 9 Motel. The lady-owner had run out of the backroom in her pajamas.

She said, "Before you go, take what you want. We have coffee, juice, how about a Danish, sweetheart?" Her pajamas had a cartoon picture of a koala on them.

The cowboy says, "But no one knows what he did down there underneath that dome. No one knows." He scanned the room all mysterious-like and he made them feel like he was giving them secret information. Doug was into it. Jeff was a little scared.

The lady-owner of The National 9 Motel asked them if they wanted smoking or non-smoking and Doug said smoking and Jeff said non-smoking and then Doug said non-smoking. Doug figured the more foreign his surroundings the further he would feel from home.

The cowboy brushed his Einstein hair with his fingers around his cowboy hat and the cowboy hat was straw and tan. In preschool, Doug was in a play where everyone in the class had to bring hats of different cultures or of random occupations. They were all supposed to enter the stage wearing the hats that they brought but Doug didn't want to wear his high school marching band helmet with the huge feather that made him look like a "little John Phillip Sousa"-or so his dad said-so he stole a cowboy hat from this blue-eyed kid named Brendan and Brendan chased him all around the stage until his teacher, Mrs. Swanson, made him sit in the corner where he was not allowed to participate until he stopped being selfish.

"Now he's in Washington D.C.," the cowboy says, "sitting under an even bigger dome."

Doug nodded his head. "Oh yeah."

Jeff was wearing a foam mustache.

The cowboy says, "Still I think to myself: What is he doing underneath those big domes?"

Doug remembers turning his head from the corner that Mrs. Swanson sent him to and seeing the back of Brendan as he held up his arms in glory, the cowboy hat in one hand and the high school marching band helmet with the huge feather in the other. He remembers parents whistling and cameras flashing and hundreds of mauve-stemmed roses being thrown on stage. Brendan signed autographs all night. He was in the corner being selfish. He remembers that but it never happened.

Doug rubbed his hands on his jeans and Jeff picked aimlessly at the chunks of strawberries in his jam, trying to get the seeds out.

The cowboy squinted smaller and then smaller and then smaller as he moved closer to the table that lay between them, straightening his cowboy string tie and looking over his shoulders. The tie was red. Red is the first color you see when you open your eyes. He hunched his back and pointed in their faces.

"He used to be an assemblyman," he says, "now he's in congress. His eyes returned to normal and he slapped the edge of the table, smiling. His teeth were brown. "I know you guys are young," he says, "but you should still be asking yourselves: What have I really heard? What have I really received?"