No more coffee? He went through coffee like... he couldn't think of a proper metaphor now, but it was amazing how fast he went through coffee. Just when he had brewed a new pot, he saw that it was empty. He left the counter for a moment to get more from the store room. When he came back out, someone was at the door. She was looking around, looking kind of lost, watching the other customers before she finally found a spot at the counter and stared at a spot on the wall behind him. She was new in town, he was fairly sure. Nearly everyone in town ate at the diner at least once a week, some more, and he didn't know who this woman was.

He looked at her more closely. There was something familiar about her, though just what he couldn't say. He was fairly sure they had never met. He didn't usually venture far out of Stars Hollow, at least, not anymore. Once in a while he went to Hartford, but he hadn't met anyone there. This woman was obviously from the city though. She had her dark hair was up in a severe yet flattering chignon, and she was wearing a black suit, a power suit: black skirt and jacket with black shoes: heels. And she was wearing tortoise-framed sunglasses. Definitely from the city. No one in Stars Hollow had fancy sunglasses like that. If they had sunglasses, they were the cheap plastic kind you could buy at the market for five bucks.

The woman looked up at him. "I'll have a coffee, please."

He turned around and looked at the pot. Still fairly empty, the new coffee hadn't finished brewing yet.

"It'll be just a minute," he said, turning back to face the woman. "I'm brewing a new pot right now."

She nodded and looked off over his shoulder again. "So, do you own this place?" she asked him.

"I run it." It was the easiest answer. This fancy lady obviously didn't want to hear the story behind the diner.

"Oh," she said. She looked confused and... it was hard to tell with her dark glasses, but she also looked a bit sad.

"Where are you from?" he asked, trying to make conversation.

"Why? Why do you ask?" she sounded almost afraid.

"You're just obviously not from around here," he said.

"Oh, no. I'm from... I live in New York," she said. She looked off again, distracted.

"Coffee's ready," he said, reaching behind him and pulling the pot off the machine and setting a mug in front of her. He poured the coffee and set it back down.

"Thank you," she said, more to the mug than to him. She took off her sunglasses and stared into her mug for a moment, cautiously taking a sip after a while.

"Can I get you something else? A burger?" he asked.

The woman looked up, startled. Her severe blue eyes almost paralyzed him. And then he realized... he looked deep into those eyes...

"A burger? Oh, no. No, no thank you." She stared back down at her coffee and then reached out for her sunglasses with a trembling hand to put them back on. She raised the coffee mug to her lips, and just before drinking, murmered, "I'm a vegetarian. I don't eat meat."

'Oh, OK." He looked at her eyes again, but the lenses of her glasses were too dark for him to be able to see anything. The woman dropped seventy five cents on the counter, three quarters in a neat stack and then grabbed her purse and walked out. He reached out for the quarters and walked over to the cash register. The coins were warm from her clenched fist. He hadn't had the heart to tell her that coffee was a dollar. It hadn't been seventy- five cents for ten years.