It all started at 2:30 AM, when I realized I had not eaten all day. I went to the Taco Cabana and sat down to eat my burrito. The guy at the next table was sneezing uproariously. I got up to get more condiments. On the way back to my table, I was bombarded with a hand shake and a Sogoodtoseeyouhaven'tseenyouinforever. It was my friend Devin. He introduced me to Blake the sneezer. Blake’s pupils were huge. They looked like twin black holes ready to devour me as he stared me in the face and apologized again and again for sneezing. He couldn’t believe how much he was sneezing. He knew he was disturbing everyone’s meal. He sure was sorry.

“Hey Mark, want to drink with us?” asked Devin.

"That’s a silly question,” I said. “But first we have to walk to the 7-11 and pick up some smokes."

Blake was upset that we would soon be walking all of 100 yards to the 7-11. "I hate walking.”

“All things are relative,” I said. "Walking two blocks while on fire would probably be much worse."

We walked to the 7-11, which looked closed, despite the sign that read OPEN 24/7.

“How gangsta,” said Devin.

Then we perceived a guy in a 7-11 uniform trying to get the front door unlocked. His nametag said Alex. He was having some difficulty. Blake helped him pick the lock, and we bought cigarettes. Alex was so grateful to get inside that he said we could have all the hotdogs out of the BIG BITE oven. We had just eaten, and weren't really hungry, except Blake, who apparently ate 7-11 food all the time and probably still does. He went into the bathroom. We heard him sneeze twice, and then he stumbled out and sneezed a few more times.

Devin and I gathered hot dogs and buns into little styrofoam trays. “These will outlive us,” said Devin. I wondered if he meant the styrofoam containers or the hot dogs.

Blake started talking to Alex about how good the Spicy Burger Bites are. Alex agreed and gave him another one. Blake would not shut up. He kept talking and talking and talking. Devin and I realized a short story was being written. We put cheese and chili sauce on our hotdogs.

I asked, "Alex, will you be offended if we don't eat these and throw them at traffic instead?"

"You can do whatever you want with them. I was just going to throw them away."

Blake said, "You better not throw those away. I will eat every single one of them." His pupils were the universe.

Devin and I slipped a few into his backpack while Blake explained to Alex how fine the girl on the Cosmo cover was. He picked up a magazine from the rack at the counter and pointed out her various attractive features. He knew her name and her measurements and caught us up to speed on recent events in her life. He told Alex about a website on the internet where he could see everything.

I grabbed another Spicy Big Bite and nestled it into a bun with so much care and precision, one would think it was a test-tube baby. I added a thin line of mustard like a racing stripe down the center. I placed some diced onions near the back of the dog to make it look like a dragster’s engine. I dolloped a globule of nuclear green relish in the middle to represent a cockpit. I am becoming obsessive, I thought to myself.

But then I realized the race car motif was all wrong. I grabbed a napkin from the counter and scraped the toppings into the garbage. I had bigger ambitions for this hot dog than a mere race car. I added spikes of cheese and chili, thinking that if I had something blue I could make a pointillism earth on my Big Bite. The cheese for desert, the chili for earth, the onions for the melting glaciers, and the relish for pine forests and toxic waste. The hot dog was alive. I could maybe find some sort of white cotton candy to somehow fix above it with toothpicks to look like clouds, as if we were orbiting this post-post-modern, edible, Big-Bite earth and looking down on it with pity and disdain.

Blake was still talking about the super model. Devin stared at the dog. "That's art," he said, understanding the precision and madness that had gone into its creation. I nodded assent, but words failed me. Besides which, there were no blue condiments.

We left and walked back to the car. I paused and set my creation in the middle of the street.

"Needs to be farther out," suggested Devin.

"No it doesn't."

"Nothing will hit it there," opined Blake.

"Sure it will." As if to punctuate my sentence, the first car to come along so squarely hit it, that the entire affair was squashed neatly down into the pavement. The hotdog assumed the shape of tire tread. "Performance art," I said.

"Allegory," said Devin.

“Goddamn,” I said with appreciation. “You’re right.”

We went to my apartment, where we drank enough beer to make my couch comfortable. Then Blake got on my computer and pulled up the website to show us the supermodel’s labia. “Told you you could see everything!”

“That isn’t even her.” I said. “It looks fake.”

“Bullshit, man, it’s her!”

Devon zoomed in on the picture. “Nope, sorry, man. Look at the neck. This is some other woman’s body and what’s-her-face’s face cut and pasted--.”

“Bullshit. That’s a tan line,” argued Blake.

“Don’t take it so hard,” I offered. “Nothing is really real.”

Devon started laughing, and we retired again to the couch. Blake said, "I know you don't really know me, but can I use your bathroom?"

"Uh, sure." I wondered: Do some people not let their guests use their bathrooms?

"No, I mean, I’ve got some stuff and I want to use the back of your toilet."

"Is it coke?"

"Yeah, but he said it was cut with some other stuff, too."

The world spun momentarily into focus: "You are going to do unknown drugs in the unknown bathroom of an unknown guy? Doesn't seem like a lot of thought is going into that decision."

"Will it bother you?"

"No, but if you O.D., I am dragging your ass back to the alley, and I am not calling anyone."

"Fair enough. You can do it with me if you want." He handed me the bag. I prodded an exploratory finger into the bag and took a taste. Whatever it was, it tasted like it was cut with crushed aspirin and baking soda. I declined. He snorted up. He came out of the bathroom and sneezed. He got bored and left.

Devin and I drank more beer. We talked about Jessica, Laura, Sarah, and Starla, and how infinite love was unattainable in temporal space. We talked all the way through the movie "Swingers," until I said, “I am sort of tired of the world not meaning anything. I wonder if someday it will get better, or if I should embrace my inner nihilist.”

The room grew strangely silent, though it was at the part in the movie where the one guy pulls a gun on the other guy.

“You’d make a crappy nihilist,” said Devin. “You should stick to making wiener art.”

“Faith eludes me, but that seems to be the trick.”

“Indeed,” Devin said, "Hey, I'll pay for breakfast."

Walking into the IHOP, Devin commented that there sure were a lot of cops there.

"I wanted to be a cop when I was a kid, but when I was in high school my probation officer told me I’d never make it."

Devin grinned. "They are always so discouraging."

A family of five was seated at a booth in the corner. The eldest daughter, who was around 15 I guessed, kept smiling at me and winking. It was weird, and I said so to Devin. The cops muttered in their corner about deviants they would like to kill. We ordered more food. Our waitress was the only woman in the world who could save the universe from its cold, entropic pall. I told her so, but I used the word "pretty" instead. She blushed and introduced herself as Susan. She said it like it ended with an exclamation mark.

She went to get our food, and Devin told me he was thinking about joining a monastery. I debated with him the advantages and disadvantages of monastic life. It was either all real or all bullshit, but even if it was all bullshit the illusion of meaning would be comforting. We invited Susan! to join the discussion after she got off at 6 AM. When we finished our coffee she left with us.

I said, "I have been up for two straight nights. I have one beer at my apartment, I have 5 cigarettes left, and I need a shower. This is perfect. We have to see the sunrise."

The three of us drove up the interstate as the earth began its goodnight bow.

“We have to hurry,” said Susan. Devin tried to convince her that we had all the time in the world. “See, we’re actually driving south at 6:25 PM instead of north at 6:25 AM. We have 12 more hours to get there.” It didn't work. She was far too clever.

“Where are we going, anyway?” asked Devin.

I shrugged. “I think the sun is this way.”

“A quest for the grail,” said Devin.

“The Holy Grail?” asked Susan.

“That’s the one.”

We exited the interstate and drove into a residential neighborhood. None of us had ever seen that side of town before. The air was cool. We could smell the trees. Probably white people lived there. I was wondering if I would remember any of this. At the edge of the neighborhood we saw an oil pump in a field. We drove out to it. A sign on the pump said, "OIL WELL."

"That explains everything," said Devin. I laughed because it seemed somehow metacognitive.

When I looked up Devin was kissing Susan. Then Susan kissed me. I kissed her again. Devin kissed her ears and neck. I kissed her lips. We all kissed for a while, Susan alternating between the two of us. We did not take any of our clothes off. We stopped and wondered aloud where that had come from, and then Susan started laughing. "Whoops," she offered.

We talked about what it was and what it was not.

“Look!” Susan pointed out past the edge of the field. The sun.

“Goddamn,” I said in appreciation. “We almost missed it!”

The sun rose like it did every day and we thought it was pretty spectacular all of a sudden, how it didn’t have to be there and neither did we. It was all improbable and terrifying and beautiful, whether there was a God or not.

We went back to the IHOP and dropped Susan off. She thanked us for being nice and not raping or killing her. We said it was our pleasure, but that she should be careful in the future.

“But then I would have missed the sunrise,” she said.

“Goddamn,” said Devin.

“Goddamn,” said I.

Since we were in the neighborhood, we decided to go see what the hot dog had come to. We walked to the 7-11 and studied the street. It was no longer there, only a grease spot. I reckoned aloud that it was the ghost of the hotdog, the dream of the hotdog--.

"No,” said Devin. “It is the mere reflection of the hotdog that was so perfect it was grotesque."

That seemed as right to me as it could have been, so we said goodnight. He walked down 19th toward his apartment, and I walked back to the car. I didn’t want to go home, but I guessed that was all there was.