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The toasted Everything bagel is covered with a smear of Cream Cheese and shavings of Lox and a few pickled capparis spinosa berries dotted here and there in the spread like a white Christmas Tree I.S.O. of a stand and, with mouth agape and taste buds in anticipation, I lock my teeth down on This Yummy Thing, and taste the abundant Garlic which I have ardent admiration for and the Taste hearkens me sideways in time and I’m now on a rickety train speeding South through the wilds of the Steppe on a rail line in the shadow of the Carpathians, the sun long ago set behind the Fold and Thrust Belt and a cold moon rises in the east in a purple twilight sky and I’m carrying papers of a Sensitive and Supercilious Nature that describe a recipe for the creation of “Savory Doughnuts That Are Not Bagels, and Sweet Bagels That Are Not Doughnuts” and, although I’m traveling incognito as a disgruntled pastry chef and making gluten-based treats for the other passengers, I know it’s just a matter of the moment before she comes. You see, I’ve been here before, in this Hiccup in the Flow of Time, and I have my garlic on my breath but that is all and I understand when she’s next to me in her flowing black caped coat that I am a long way from Donutland and the train whistle sounds hard and in time with the incessant “clickity clack” of that quintessential train rhythmical soundscape and I offer her a bite, which she accepts and then leans close her breath a confluence of Flinders rose and garlic and she tells me I’m good, but need more training and she laughs at this, and when she moves sufficatingly closer to me, her mouth opening on the nap of my neck and all quiets and I know this will indeed be a caper, and Budapest needs doughnuts and stuff.