Time Moves Forward

        I woke up with a gun pointing at me. I’ve never had a gun pointed at me and I’m not the type who lives a life that might result in a gun being pointed at me, so to say that I was shocked would be an understatement. But there it was, black steel and cold barrel pointed six inches from my face. I saw thick fingers gripping it hard and followed the line of my sight along two beefy arms in long black sleeves. I could see that it was early morning and sunlight was beginning to slant through the plate glass window. It glinted on the chest of the man holding the gun. He was wearing a badge. The nameplate below it read “O’Gilvey.” Another badge, “Southside Police Department.” He was a cop.

               He withdrew the gun.

               “Are you OK? I thought you’d been shot.”

               “Jesus Christ,” I said.

               I looked around. I was still at the Spee-D Mart, where I’d been scheduled to work on March 9^th, the late shift. I’d had some bad luck with jobs recently, and the late shift paid better than my day job at the school library. I was hoping to save up for another semester of college.

               “Your head was down on the counter. You really looked like you’d been shot.” Officer O’Gilvey was putting the gun away. I could breathe again.

               I was regaining myself. I remembered now. It had been so late. I’d been pushing myself, trying to cram for finals. I’d never fallen asleep at work before. The last thing I remembered was that I’d been reading the newspaper and I couldn’t bear to make myself drink another cup of coffee, even if I made it fresh. No one had been coming to the Spee-D Mart late at night, anyway. There was the scare about the pandemic. Other than a few who had to get gas, my late shifts had been quiet. I vaguely remembered laying my head down on the counter and feeling a sensation of sweet relief. Then the gun.

               “Thanks for keeping an eye out?” I said, more like a question than a statement. Sweet relief had erased any resentment for the gun that had been pointed at me just minutes ago.

               “Any time,” said O’Gilvey. “With people getting back to work and the lack of stability, you just never know. Anyway, happy return to work and be careful.”

               This guy was freaking weird. Must be one of those cops who got into it because he was too gung ho. I knew the type. Thinks that most people are out to get one another, quick to pull his gun. Probably more afraid of teenagers than they are of him.

               “Yep, you too.” I said and watched him leave the store, climb into his car and pull away.

               For the first time in months, I felt truly rested. I’d not been able to sleep well. There had been a lot going on. I had barely scraped together enough to pay for a semester of class, and I didn’t have enough time between work and class to study well for Anatomy and Physiology. I was sure I’d fail the exam on Monday. I could still see my anatomy coloring book perched on the stool I’d kept next to the cash register. I felt strangely relaxed about it. At least I’d slept well. Was it Sunday? I’d just have to cram and pull another all-nighter before Monday, do the best I could on the test. I hoped my classmates wouldn’t ruin the grading curve.

               Ok, then, first things first. I was going to need coffee. I could smell a strange chemical smell in the air. I must have left the coffee on too long. I walked to the large bar where the machines stood: decaf, bold, regular, blonde and good old plain, hot water. The machines were all off. This was odd. Coffee is never off at the Spee-D Mart. It gets replenished, it gets shut off automatically, it gets re-replenished. It is the one thing (besides perhaps slushies) that convenience stores do well—is to always have hot, fresh coffee. I wondered if we’d had a power outage. The carafes had black tar congealed to the bottom of them. Auto-off must have kicked in. I wondered that I hadn’t noticed it before. I brought the carafes to the sink and filled them with water, dumped out the old grounds and decided to grab a donut. There were boxes of Softee Donettes, but I’d have to reimburse for inventory. I could take the old, unpurchased donuts from the glass case for free. Plain glazed, I thought. I was starving and the sugar rush would be needed for the long day of studying ahead. 

               The tongs did not sink into the donut like they usually did, though. It was hard. Not just a little stale, but stiff and unyielding. Disappointing. Those donuts were never really all that great. Maybe an old-fashioned would be better? It was not. Rock hard. Wow. Mr. Simentec was going to be pissed that I’d have to throw away all the inventory. Oh well, I thought. I shouldn’t be eating that crap, anyway. I could make myself an omelet with the frozen egg product. On my way to the back to the refrigerator, I saw that the newspaper delivery service had left a stack of papers by the front door. I’d stock those first, then run back and fix the omelet. My watch said it was only seven a.m., I could set up and see whether any customers would show. People had been saying that the pandemic might continue to drive customers away for a while.

               I grabbed my keys. I hesitated. Something wasn’t right.  Something felt off.  I glanced at my watch again. I knew what it was. It had malfunctioned. The date on my watch was reading June 9^th, not March 9^th. For God’s sake, it was always something with that watch. They call it a smartwatch, but I call it an asinine watch. I’d have to add reprogramming to the million other things I’d have to do before the exam on Monday.

               It was seeing the newspaper that stopped my heart. I don’t remember whether I’d seen the date banner first, or the headline: Country Returns to Work After Pandemic. There was a picture of the President and the Secretary of Health smiling broadly. The date read June 9, 2020.

               This was impossible. It had to be a joke. My coworker, Phil, no doubt. Phil was a big guy, who worked at Spee-D for the past fifteen years. He loved practical jokes. I had to hand it to him for this one. Not sure how he’d gotten the fake newspaper out, but it was awfully convincing. I slowly pulled out the paper. Shockingly, it looked to be regular size. I would have expected a joke paper to be a little less substantial.  My heart was starting to pound a little faster, but I couldn’t tell why.

               I pulled out my cell to call Phil. It was dead, so I had to plug in. There 48 messages on my voice mail.  My heart was now racing. I scrambled to access them. Each message bore a different date. I started to listen. There were desperate messages from my parents, wondering if I was safe. There were automated messages from 911, that the state was under a strict stay-at-home order. There were messages from the school, no one was to report for class. There were messages from the guy I dated—it’s the end of the world, don’t get near me. This last one wasn’t surprising. Why was I dating him anyway?

               Entranced, I walked over to the grill and poured egg product onto the griddle. The refrigerator smelled. Old milk, curdled, bearing an April use by date. So many signs. It was undeniable now. I’d slept through the past two months.

               It is difficult to describe how I felt at that moment. Before I’d put my head down, I’d felt overwhelmed. I recalled thinking distinctly of all those things that added to the terrible pressure—my student loans, which were in danger of going into default, messing up my Anatomy exam, which would jeopardize my chances to ever stop working at the Spee-D Mart, the stacks of books at the library that I would be too tired to re-shelve, my iffy relationship, the fifteen pounds I’d put on worrying about it all, the smoking habit I’d picked up since working at the Spee-D Mart . . .  All, small additions of pressure that felt ever greater with the burden of carrying them, until they had become, well, almost too much. I remembered thinking that I’d give anything to make it all go away, to have a fresh start, to live simply again. That would be really something.

               My reverie was interrupted by a customer rapping at the door. I went to the door. It was open, but I pulled it from the inside anyway. I hadn’t seen at first, it was my best friend, Meagan. 

               “Thank the freaking Lord—you never phoned or texted to let me know you were here! You are the workaholic. Geez, everyone else left school.”

               She was carrying a box, looped around with a ribbon.

               “Yeah, isn’t it great about the loan forgiveness? You don’t have to work at this freaking gas station anymore!” Meagan threw her arms around me. “And happy belated!! I brought zucchini brownies. But look at you! Pandemic apparently agrees with you.”  

               I caught my reflection in the paper towel dispenser mounted on the wall. I did look different. My hair had grown. I pulled out my ponytail holder and found that it looked longer, fuller, shinier since I hadn’t had it processed for the last few months. Also, Meagan was right, my jeans were loose. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about those fifteen pounds. And no extra weight meant that I wouldn’t have to smoke off my hunger. Hm. Maybe the pandemic did agree with me, I thought wryly.

               “Thanks for the birthday love!” I hugged her right back. I vaguely recalled a suggested moratorium on touching being proposed some months ago. I’m not a hugger, but it felt great that Meagan remembered my birthday—even if it had been four weeks ago.

               “Yeah, not only are your loans forgiven, classes switched to pass/fail,” so we both passed Anatomy. Take that, Martin Casster.” Martin was the smartest in our class. He consistently ruined the curve for those of us that wanted nothing more than to get in to med school. He was blatantly trying to edge out my rank, and I’d been fretting about it for months.

               I was laughing. “Seriously? This is too good to be true.”

               “Haven’t you checked your email?   God, I don’t know how you passed the time for the past couple months. The rest of us have been checking email and watching reruns of ‘The Office’ on Netflix. Honestly, Kara, you crack me up, sometimes.”

               I pulled up my email on my phone. There were 238 unread messages and several notifications that my mailbox was full and needed to be purged. I quickly minimized the screen.

               “Anyway, just wanted to say ‘hi’ before I took care of a few things. Happy B-Day, bud! Dinner at  Bugsy’s tonight?”

               “Sure,” I said. Why not?

               I flipped through my emails. Only the top few were of interest—sure enough, loan forgiveness, and equally as miraculous, I’d passed my classes. I looked over at my books, tempted to toss them into the nearest trash can, but thought better of it. I might need to make up for lost time later. Mr. Simentec walked in. He threw his arms around me. 

               “Kara, you’re OK! I tried to call you. I couldn’t leave after they began spraying to disinfect for the pandemic.” This was truly bizarre. Simentec usually treated me with disdain. Now he was acting as though we actually liked each other. “Kara, I thought so many times over this pandemic that I should have treated you better. I never told you what a good work ethic I thought you had. In fact, I submitted your name for the employee of the month for national Spee-D Mart, and I think you have a really good chance of winning.” I had to chuckle at this. The only benefit of being the national Spee-D Mart employee of the month was the title, which was actually more embarrassing than it was complimentary, I thought. Still, Simentec’s sentiment seemed to be genuine, and I appreciated it. I would be quitting now that my school loans would be forgiven for this semester, but I didn’t have the heart to say it just then.

               “Guess it’s OK if I clock out then?” 

               Simentec was nodding, approaching the cash register and getting ready to print out the tape. That seemed more like it.

               I walked out of the store. The air was clean and animals were abundant. Deer strolled across the street and birds, weirdly unafraid of encountering humans, swooped and dove in the spring air. I would call my parents. Before I could pull out my phone, I ran into my boyfriend. He looked terrible, white pasty skin, hair growing over his ears and soft. 

               “Kara?”

               “Uh, hi.”

               Now he looked sheepish. He was staring at me. “Guess I freaked out a little,” he was saying. 

               “Uh huh.”

               A pause. I felt absolutely nothing. “Maybe it’s for the best that we’re not together.”

               The words tumbled out of my mouth, but it felt freeing to let them go. He mumbled something I didn’t hear and didn’t really care about. “Catch you on the flip side, then,” I said. I didn’t think I would miss him.

               Hours later, I was downing pizza and having a cold beer with Meagan and my classmates. The beer tasted slightly sweet, the pizza was hot with the crust nice and doughy, just the way I liked it.  They were laughing. I was laughing. For the first time in months, it felt like I didn’t have anything to worry about. For the first time in months, life felt simple again.