Shift

It’s somewhere between 3 and 4. I try not to keep track of the time, but I know this much. I’ve mopped about half the floor, working my way backwards from the door. Everything’s restocked, so I can pretty much take my time. Which is just as well. I’m starting to feel it tonight, and I don’t want to have any more coffee, or I won’t get to sleep again. Already my stomach feels somewhat like a lake in a storm, sloshing about with nowhere to go. Then it happens and I exhale deeply and cross my internal fingers.

        The headlights rake across the window that takes up the whole front of the shop as the car takes our exit from the roundabout. I’m just leaning on the mop, faced by half a wall of chocolate, half of glass, looking out onto the forecourt. Watching the entrance to see what’s coming. That, and my own reflection, superimposed onto the real world beyond, leaning on a mop, staring back at me like a weary ghost. A moment passes between us. He gets it.

“Let me in mate,” says the bloke standing in front of me.

        “I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I can’t.”

        “You’re not sorry,” he says.

        “I just told you I was.”

        “You’re a liar.”

        This guy looks kind of familiar, but I can’t place it. I’m sure I’ve seen him somewhere before. He’s tall and wiry, with a leather jacket and blond hair cut fairly short and pushed back.

        I’m not good with faces. You see so many people when you work in retail. They drift past like pollen in springtime.

That’s one of the bonuses of the night shift of course. It’s worth having to clean the toilets and the coffee machine (not in that order) and tidy up after everyone who’s been in there that day, staff and customers, well worth it, for the relative peace and quiet the dead hours afford. I get to lock the door. It eliminates the stragglers, the lingerers, the ones who just want to come in and look through all the magazines or check every single sandwich in the chiller. Most people seem to think I’d resent walking around the place to collect the items people want, but I don’t mind. It’s active. Better than just fossilizing behind the till.

“Are you listening to me, or what?” asks the guy.

“Of course I am,” I tell him. “But I still can’t let you in.”

He bangs the window with the palm of his hand and swears at me. Nothing I haven’t seen and heard before. Tame in comparison to some. And then he’s gone. Another moment of drama.

The world passes by outside. At the same time, nothing passes by. I watch the pumps, the concrete, all bathed in a dull yellow glow.

“Are you happy?” my mum’ll ask me sometimes when we’re talking.

        What am I supposed to say to that? It’s work. Hardly living the dream. But it passes time.

I once spent a night meticulously altering phone numbers in the Help Wanted section to show the chat-line numbers from the back of porno mags. Another time, I cut the faces out of old football magazines and glued them over the faces in glamour and lifestyle mags.

Did anybody ever see it? I have no idea. So why did I do it? Well… when you start asking the reason for things, you maybe start asking why you’re stood in a concrete block off a roundabout on an A road in the middle of nowhere in the first place.   

Sometimes I realize I’m talking to myself. That may not be a good sign. You hear so much about the bad side of it. Then again, to paraphrase Groucho Marx, it’s conversation with someone I love.

        Well, like anyway.

        Most of the time.

I drift into fantasies from time to time. I wouldn’t say daydreams because there’s no daytime here.

It occurred to me some time ago that this would be the perfect place to hide out in a zombie apocalypse. There’s the obvious points: the bullet proof glass, the back-up generator, the good supply of food. On top of that, there’s the CCTV, which would be helpful. The office and the stockroom have reinforced doors so would serve perfectly as bolt holes. What’s more, I’ve discovered that the metal bars which hold the ceiling tiles in place can take my weight, so I could move around in secret if it came to that. And there’s a solid flat roof I could utilize.

        Not that I’m hoping for the end of civilisation, you understand. But if it comes…

I know what you’re thinking: How do I know the bars in the ceiling are strong enough for me to crawl over them? Well, to cut a long story short, I was bored.

Long haul truckers stop by intermittently. Some of them I kind of know. Regulars. They lean against the window and talk to me, drinking coffee and eating microwaved pasties while their tanks fill up. I ignore the fact they’ve tied off the triggers so they don’t have to hold them for twenty minutes.

        I never learn their names. I never learn any of the customers’ names.

        They talk to me about everything and nothing while they wait. Sport or driving or movies or whatever they’re watching on Netflix. Some of them want to talk about sex and for some reason they think I want to hear it. This one guy recently was talking to me about our top shelf mags. “I can bring you better stuff if you want it,” he told me. “I know a man.”

When I first started working here, this old bloke, Gareth, showed me the ropes of the night shift. He’d been working there forever. Pretty much a local monument. The best part of two decades working without sunlight. And never turned up on time once, so the story goes.

He showed me how to operate the nightpay; a deep drawer for the customer’s shopping, and a shallow one for their payment. He explained to me how only our side had handles so the customers couldn’t control them. “Use the handle,” he’d say to a customer who was pulling on one of the drawers.

        “There isn’t one,” they’d reply.

        “Exactly!”

More importantly, he showed me how to move the two drawers just right, at the last second, to catch the customer’s fingers and make it look like an accident.

        It’s fair to say that Gareth isn’t good with people.

Before the sun starts to come up, I go out to empty the bins. I prop the door open with the mop and bucket and stand outside for a while, just looking up at the night sky.

        This is my favourite part of the night. I feel like I’m being decompressed, standing out in the real world. It’s so quiet. Dead. Apart from the birds. The birds and the cows.    

Out the back of the garage, apart from the bins, there’s excess parking and the car wash. Beyond that is a wooded area which surrounds our plot, isolating the garage from the world by not just blocking the road visually, but also dampening the sound so that when it doesn’t have much traffic, you wouldn’t even know it was there. And on the other side of the trees to one side is a field full of cows.

I walk over, through the trees and stand by the fence watching the cows. I don't know why. This is just what I do most nights. It's part of the ritual or whatever.

It's not that I have any particular interest in cows. They're just there and something to do. I stand by the fence and watch them and listen to them. What is it called? Lowing? I seem to remember that word. I’m not sure where from, but I think it’s right.

Back in the shop, I close the door behind me and head into the office where my bag is to get something to eat. As I open my bag, I glance at the monitor above the safe, the CCTV flicking from camera to camera around the place. The car wash. the HGV pumps. The stockroom. The guy taking a can of drink out of the fridge. The left hand side of the forecourt.

Wait.

What?

I wait a few seconds, but the cycle of cameras is taking too long so I sneak back out of the office and behind the counter, sure I'm imagining things.

"Hey," says the guy, now choosing a packet of crisps.

"Hey," I say back.

He holds his can of drink up to me. "Do you have any of these that aren't refrigerated?" he asks. "I like my drinks at room temperature."

My mind has raced itself to a standstill. I'm just standing there staring at him.

He's probably forty or thereabouts, average height, average build, balding. He looks completely unremarkable, but there’s something odd. Besides the fact he’s in a locked shop, of course. He looks a little wild in the eyes, sweaty too. 

"How did you get in here?" I ask.

"The door was open," he says, pointing at the back door.

He's not wrong. It was. 

"You're not supposed to be in here," I tell him.

He shrugs and holds up his goods. "Well I am," he says. "And I'm hungry. Can I buy this stuff?"

I look out the window. There's nobody else about. No cars on the forecourt. I might as well serve him and get it over with. 

"I guess so," I tell him. 

"Thanks," he says. "Much appreciated."

        “You said you wanted a different drink?”

        “The same drink,” he says, holding up the can. “I just want one that’s not chilled. Is that possible?”

        “Shouldn’t be a problem,” I tell him. “I’ll go back and check.”

In the stockroom, I find the drink quick enough, open up a plastic wrapped packet and take three cans, incase he decides one isn’t enough. As I’m leaving the stockroom, something dawns on me and I stop by the office on the way and look out the window. I’m right. The forecourt’s empty. There are no cars. 

“I got your drink,” I say, holding up a can as I position myself behind the till.

        “Thanks,” he says. “Much appreciated.”

        I smile at him and nod as I run my hand along the shelf beneath the till. My fingers run along the baseball bat hidden there and I roll it to the edge for easy access. I watch the guy, but try to look like I’m not. He’s over by the car-care section, mostly hidden behind shelves, so I can only see his head.

        “Quiet night?” he asks, half turning his head and calling over his shoulder before ducking down out of sight behind the shelves.

        “Fairly,” I tell him. “No more than usual. Life around here’s pretty dull.”

        “Yeah? That’s too bad.”

        “I quite like it,” I tell him.

        “A fan of the quiet life?” he asks, standing again and looking at me.

        “It can’t be beat.”

        “Ok for some,” he says.

        “What about you?”

        He starts to walk slowly back to my end of the shop, still mostly hidden behind the shelving. “Me?” he says. “A chance of an easy life would be a fine thing.”

        “Having a bad night?”

        “Just a night?” he asks, getting to the end of the shelves. “I wish,” and he holds a red plastic canister up for me to see. “How much is this?”

        I tell him the price and he nods his head, getting close to the counter now. I take half a step back and glance down at the baseball bat, the handle now sticking out slightly. I can’t hold it though, without standing at a weird angle.

        He puts the canister and his snacks on the counter next to the can of drink and smiles at me. “I’m glad you’re here,” he says.

        “Yeah,” I say. “Is this everything?”

        He looks around. “You don’t sell torches, do you?” he asks.

        I shake my head. “Sorry.”

        “No biggie,” he says. “I don’t really need one, but I thought it might help.”

        “Yeah?”

        “My car ran out of fuel down the road,” he says. “But it’s not so bad. The moon’s bright out tonight.”

        I nod in agreement. “Not much light pollution around here, so you can really see the night sky.”

        “I see,” he says. “You spend a lot of time looking up at it?”

        I gesture around me. “What else am I going to do?”

        “Fair point,” he laughs.

        I ring up his sale and he adds enough money to fill the can too. “How far away’s your car?” I ask.

        “Couldn’t tell you the distance,” he says. “I must have walked for maybe forty-five minutes.”

        “Jesus.”

        “Exactly. It’s not the best way to spend the night.”

        “Couldn’t you call anyone?”

        “Phone’s dead.”

        “Typical,” I said, looking him up and down. “Do you want to charge it before you leave.”

        “I left it in the car,” he tells me. “But I will make use of your bathroom, if you have one I can use?” he says and I point him in the direction. “Cheers. You don’t mind if I leave this stuff here, do you?”

        “Of course not,” I tell him.

 I’m thinking about the conversation we just had, wondering what to make of it, when the police pull onto the forecourt, stopping right in front of the door. They come by at least twice a night and I always let the in, even if the floor’s still wet. It never hurts to keep the police on your side. I know Gareth doesn’t let them in when he’s on shift, but that’s his choice.

        Two officer’s come in. Both fairly young. Maybe about thirty. A male and a female. The male’s clean shaven and wearing glasses. The female’s taller than him, slim, with long black hair tied back in a ponytail. She comes up to the counter and asks how my night’s going while her partner makes himself a large latte with lots of sugar. Sometimes, I think she’s flirting with me. Other nights, I think she’s just friendly. I ask her how many people she’s arrested so far tonight, and she asks me how many customers I’ve served. It’s stupid, but it passes the time.  

While we’re talking like this, and her partner is sipping at his coffee and trying to decide which scratch cards to buy, the guy who came in the back door comes out of the toilet.

        He steps into the shop towards the counter, and then he sees the two police officers and he freezes.

        He looks at the police and they look at him.

        I look from one to the other.

        “Is this your shopping?” asks the female officer.

        The man nods and takes a step forward. It seems very slow.

I explain to the police that he’s run out of fuel down the road and is going to fill a can. They ask him where his car is and he doesn’t exactly know. He just points in the direction and tells them how long it took him to walk here. They offer to drive him back to his car and he gratefully accepts, so then he goes out and fills his newly bought canister while the one officer scratches his scratch cards and doesn’t win anything, and the other tells me a random seeming anecdote about her sister burning salmon last time she went over to her house for dinner, because she’s going over there again tonight and not looking forward to it. Then she looks out of the window at the guy filling the red plastic canister, and I do too.  

Before he’s driven back to his car, to fill it with fuel and get back on with his life, he comes into the shop and thanks me for helping him.

        “No problem,” I tell him.

That’s how it goes on the night shift tonight, or this morning, out here where civilisation is a memory and a possibility. Sometimes it feels like something’s going to happen. Then it doesn’t.