Time After Time

My self-soothing mantra is, ‘it’s just twelve seconds’. There’s always an uncontrollable muscle tick in my right wrist afterwards, which I have to shake out. Usually, it’s a more mundane repeat. The exchange of a dollar bill to pay out a receipt. Happens once, twice, eleven times, with the same polite hopeful question ‘enjoy everything’ – because if you give people an option for feedback, they might just find something to complain about – followed by generic well-wishing parting words. Or maybe it’ll be a sneeze, ‘bless you’, interaction between two booths. Niceties of the south. I cross my fingers for something innocuous.  

If I think about how many times the world has actually looped before my notice I might be driven to insanity. I try not to think about only catching the tail end of these sequences. I don’t want to know if we were stuck for longer than what my perception can manage to comprehend. 

After the morning rush I excuse myself to the walk-in freezer by offering to grab Trey another box of home fries to keep his immediate supply stocked. 

I can feel one coming on. When the universe compresses and isolates, I get a cluster headache at the corners of my eyes next to the bridge of my nose. It feels like using the rounded dome side of a ball-peen hammer to crack an egg. Like overkill. Completely scrambles my head. I hold my breath, bear down on my back molars. Count twelve Mississippis. Don’t get mad. It’s over so quickly.

Relatively speaking seconds are nothing until I start tallying. A couple minutes each week. About fifteen minutes each month. I stop at months. I don’t want the collective running total of years. This is the third year in a row I’ve experienced these daily ripples. One would think these occurrences would grow to be less jarring over time, similar to living near an airport or the railroad tracks. It doesn’t get easier.  

I lightly toe the floor puck that it a rogue frozen hamburger patty. It has a darker red ring of ice burn around it. I can’t bring myself to throw it away. Trip hazard that it is, it’s a mascot now. I move it back to the corner where it’s less likely to injure someone.  

I say my chant out loud. Give a physical look to it by way of vapor. “It’s just twelve seconds.” It’s going to be something like a toddler bumping their cup of orange juice off the table with an elbow. A shooting spray of citrus that might speckle the ceiling tiles in an impressive projectile range. It’ll be an old lady who fumbles the strap of her purse as she tries to get the heavy thing onto her shoulder. That’ll be the inciting incident. A tumble of pens and coins scattered across the never-completely-clean floor. 

In the dining area the large sheets of window are decorated with cutouts of snowflakes; the same seasonally appropriate subject of our coloring activity we hand out to occupy the ten-and-unders that don’t come in with tablets wearing sticky indestructible cases. Lining the ceiling are string lights with big textured plastic bulbs. When the littles come in, we change the setting to a multi color oscillation rather than the classic dreamy soft white. 

The air smells like blueberry syrup, old bacon, and cold grease. We play an obligatory hour or two of Christmas tunes. Lean more into the faster tempo covers. 

I like the playlist of 80s soft rock and pop we cycle through on any given non holiday, day. Men at Work. Prince. Bowie. Micheal. AC/DC. Foreigner. Journey. The list goes on. You’ll find most people don’t yell over the nostalgia of it. In fact, I see a lot of head nodding, mouthing, and finger drumsticks tapping on the table’s edge as I set down steaming plates of pancakes and all American breakfasts.    

Maybe it won’t be an accident today. 

Once Steph and I were in mid conversation about the science center. Both hovering over the flatbed grill. I watched as she pressed her raw patty with the bottom of the spatula, greasy weak blood crying out of it. 

Over and over. 

The pressure, the surfacing of oily red. The warm smell of buttered fat. It was enough to make me vegan. 

The same exchange of information eight times. “ – we should go this weekend. They’re bringing in a Parasaurolophus skull.” 

Sizzle. Blood. “Which one’s that?” 

“The one with the single horn. Curved, going backwards. Ryan says it’s their hair. One long hair.” She laughs. “Anyway. It’s not going to be real, Cypress couldn’t afford real but, you okay?”

The sequence happens again. Sizzle. I don’t attempt to say the name of the dinosaur. She laughs, it’s high and pretty. 

“-afford real but…You okay?” I had jerked my right wrist so hard she looked at me. Sometimes I think the jump in that muscle is my version of startling awake after falling in a dream. She stops popping her gum to peer down at my hand now bawled in a first. “Cramp? I can take over once I get back.” 

“What? No. Maybe? We’ll see. You just enjoy your break.”

After the head pain I’m always on edge. Waiting to react to a louder noise: fork drop, plate shatter, car horn, smoke alarm. The forewarning only serves to exacerbate the feeling of haplessness. The knowing. The repeats feel like watching myself in the third person react too slowly. Twelve seconds takes years, but it’s also too short a timeframe to fix mistakes, accidents, blunders, intentions. 

The scariest part about the loop is that I can’t change my initial course of action, even though I’m cognizant of what’s happening. I’ve never been in quicksand, but I’ve lost shoes to mud. It’s a whole body sensation, leaden. Submerged and now trying to breathe. 

The bell above the door chimes. “Mornin’ peaches.” Stephaine then makes a noise of disgust. She goes up to the high-tech jukebox and changes the orchestral hymns by punching a bypass code on the touchscreen. She mumbles, ‘had enough of this on the way over.’ 

I greet Steph in our usual way while keeping my eyes on the coconut meringue pie I’m divvying up, “Word of the day is ‘sardonic’.” A challenge to squeeze usage in. I can hear the smile, triumph in her voice as she says, ‘Hey! I already know that one.’ I look down at the little flecks of whip cream dotting my disposal gloves before peeling them off and chucking them in the trash. Proud that I’ve gotten better about neatness when it comes to handling the goopier desserts. 

“How are you? How’s the turkey?” 

“We had a hard time getting up this morning. I think he’s old enough to realize daycare won’t let him outside if it’s going to storm.” I can tell she wants to rub a hand over her face. She sighs, “so, he’s crabby today.” 

“Coffee?” 

“Yes. I’d pay you a million bucks.” I wait for it, her offer to make me a millionaire echo. To make me wealthy beyond imagination seven to ten times over. Ten million dollars. Wouldn’t that be lovely. But this isn’t where the repetition comes in. I’m not stopped and jolted back into place, still gloved up and in the process of removing them. I’m not physically restrained from the massive contraption that breathes life into us; the beast with two settings, forth degree burn, or cold by minute two. 

I have another cup as well. 

Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Time After Time’ starts playing. Since this monumental shift in perception, events not being as linear as I once believed, I’ve noticed songs about turning back time. Time running out. Life feeling like a rollercoaster. I wonder if these artists know. If others have spent elongated moments in this purgatory and have found better ways of compartmentalizing it. Commodifying it, profiting from. 

I don’t ask Steph or Trey or any other late shift staff I pass on my way out because no one seems to react to it after it happens. Or if it happens to them after the fact; maybe in the privacy of their homes, like it does sometimes for me there too, yet no one says anything about that either. ‘I walked to my microwave six times before I was able to put my Banquet meal in.’   

There’s a lull. The sky is a threatening watercolor of gray. The last two patrons leave. Older women, sisters, wearing mirroring costume jewelry and tweed jackets that always make me think of TV static. We wave them off. 

We resort to cleaning during our free time. The hot bleach water makes my hand itch. It finds new microscopic cuts to make burn. Stephaine and I pause in our wipe downs to point at each other and serenade along with the chorus. ‘The Promise’ by When in Rome. 

I’m sorry, but I’m just thinking of the right words to say 

I know they don’t sound the way I planned them to be

But if you wait round a while, I’ll make you fall for me

A truck door slams with a metallic crunch. Unintelligible shouting across the parking lot ensues. We stop goofing around and stand a little straighter. I move to the register. Readying for a confrontation of ‘we’ll serve you, but you have to keep all that outside’.

The noise comes closer, grows louder. Bits and pieces. Farm equipment. Something owed. A lit cigarette gets tossed away. Nice, I think sardonically. Then think, did I use that right? As the guy in the newsboy cap goes for the door handle, he’s pulled back. There’s a scuffle. Arms swinging, legs kicking out. There’s the sound of a gunshot behind the glass of the diner. Like the slamming of a metal filing cabinet. And nothing like it. 

Yelling again. The cherry tip of the cigarette sailing through the air. My feet taking me to stand by the register. Stephaine also looking on from behind the counter. See the pulling-shoving. Punches thrown. Hear it. The blur of falling. 

I get new things; a layoff, backpay, services rendered. Broken equipment. Gun shot.

‘–what you owe.’  

The layoff. ‘–hard times Paul.’ ‘–feed my family.’ The flash at the end of the gun’s barrel. 

It could be that I’m watching this man’s death eight now nine times. It might be a graze. My hands ache for the freedom that will let me pull my phone out of my pocket and call for an ambulance. Maybe that’s what this is. Desensitizing. Preparing. 

If I had been blindsided by such an act of violence I would’ve tensed up. Wouldn’t’ve made the seconds count.  

The argument gets louder. I’ve abandoned the rag on the counter to address the two gentlemen. Guy in the hat gets tugged back. The shot rings out. 

I bring the phone to my ear. Speak sure and strong as we duck behind the counter on our haunches. I look down at the pale blue of my veins before rotating my wrist. Stay on the line until the police and an ambulance reach us. Waiting for the sirens to clash with the jaunty power ballad.   

Gotta tell you

Need to tell you

Gotta tell you

I've gotta tell you