A man in a gray suit sits in the diner at 2:47 AM, the quietest hour in Minot, North Dakota, on a Tuesday in late November. He orders coffee, black, and a slice of apple pie, then pushes the plate away without touching it. For three hours, he stares at nothing — or maybe at everything he's already lost. When I finally sit down across from him, he tells me he's been waiting for a train that never arrives, to a place that doesn't exist on any map. The station closed in 1958. But he's been buying tickets every Tuesday for twenty-seven years. And tonight, he says, the train is finally coming. By dawn, the diner is empty, the pie crust gone cold, and the ticket stub is still folded under the salt shaker.