the night shift

tw: implied/referenced suicide

You’re alone in the grocery store again, fingers tapping out no particular rhythm on the checkout counter, feeling this strange dark hour yawn inside you.

The windows have long since faded to a flat midnight blue, and the moon is a wrinkled paper crescent pinned to the starless sky. Inside the store, fluorescent lights halo the groceries lining the aisles. If there do happen to be any customers here, they’re swimming through the endless rows of groceries, out of your sight.

You’ve never liked working at this time. Because of the echoing emptiness, maybe, or the way the clinical white light only seems to reach halfway down the wall, or the shouting all-caps advertisements for Fresh Meat! From Farm to Table! 60% discount on pastries today! that have no one to advertise at. The world is asleep, dreaming of rainbows, and you’re here, leaning on the checkout counter with your mind far away, looking at an assortment of cans.

Shopping cart wheels squeak against the tiled white floor. Someone - a man, tall and burly - rounds the corner, peers into your checkout aisle. “Are you open?” he asks.

You smile and nod. It’s a reflex.

He wheels the rest of his cart into your aisle. It’s heaping with groceries, cooking supplies and ingredients, utensils and seasonings. Taken alongside your cramped gray counter, it looks like the Titanic seconds away from colliding with the glacier.

“That’s a lot of food,” you hear yourself comment as you reach out for the first item. You’re not quite sure why you’re trying to strike up a conversation, except for the vague feeling of wanting inside you, of some sort of human noise to rise and expand and fill this empty store. You’ve spent too much time here alone anyway.

Now that he’s right in front of you, transferring items from the cart to the conveyor belt with some sort of fumbling uncertainty, you can see the dark bags under his eyes. “I’m making dinner for my s- daughter,” he says. The words sound like they don't belong on his tongue.

“In the middle of the night?” you ask. The machine beeps as you scan and talk, confirming one purchase after another. “That’s an interesting time to have a dinner party.”

For a moment, he looks like the words have died on his tongue. Eventually, he mumbles, “I never said I was eating it with him- her. Sorry.” He forces a wan smile to his face. “New pronouns. Sometimes it’s hard for me.”

You think about your childhood for a moment, long carefree days and golden afternoon laughter, summers spent running through sprinklers barefoot, winters spent curled up inside with an oversized blanket spread across your shoulders, just as ill-fitting as your body felt when you looked at yourself in the mirror. Then leaving home, moving away, and presenting yourself to the chaos of the city as the gender you’d always been - even if no one else had recognized it. The new pronouns were a pair of gilded wings, a sleek suit of armor that fit, at last.

Something sympathetic unfolds inside you. “It’s good that you’re trying.” You lock eyes with him, trying to infuse your gaze with something meaningful, with visible understanding. “I know I would have appreciated the effort from my parents, even if they made mistakes.”

A moment of silence passes, broken only by the beeping of the machine as you flip the items over with robotic coordination and press the barcode downwards. It’s an awkward rhythm, an off-beat metronome to the crooked motion of your conversation.

Finally, he exhales. “I think she would appreciate it too. But she can’t make it tonight.”

You shrug. “Next time, I guess.”

“No, you don’t get it.” The outburst is surprising, and you look up to see the man holding a container of canned tomatoes tight as a lifeline, well-built and broad-shouldered and on the verge of tears. He turns his face away for a moment, but not before you see something like anguish cross it. “She can’t make it anymore… ever.”

Ever. The word hits you like an anchor colliding with sun-dappled sand. Even your hands freeze for a moment, as if the hidden machinery inside them has ground to a halt. “I’m sorry,” is all you can summon to your lips.

You hear him take a shuddering inhale, see his chest rise and fall. He puts the canned tomatoes down on the conveyor belt with a little too much force. “It was my fault. I wasn’t accepting enough, I hated her until she hated herself, and then she-”

He breaks off. You don’t hear him finish the sentence, but you can practically see the words hanging in the air, fluorescent lights outlining their ghostly borders in the color of grief.

There is something about the night that loosens lips, you think, its shadows like oil working at the hinges of mouths until they open a little easier. Until thoughts take form and words come spilling out like dark ink from a pen, until new waterfalls spring to life. Maybe it’s the freedom in the dark that makes people feel like they can say anything. The words have been penned up in their throats for far too long, leaping frantically against their clenched teeth, and everything is easier to voice in the night.

The silence is choking. You reach toward the conveyor belt and find that there are no more groceries. You’ve finished checking them out.

When you look back up at the man, he seems to have collected himself, though you think you see something shining clinging to the taper of his eye. “This was her favorite meal,” he says. He raises his hand in a bitter mock toast. “Here’s to hoping I can make it without her.”

You have a vision of the man returning to an empty house, where the corners cast shadows even when the lights are turned on. Maybe he’ll chop the asparagus by himself, boil the water by himself. A vestige of a man making dinner for his daughter, trying to save a girl who cannot be saved anymore, by himself for now and always. It almost snaps your heart in two.

You show him the charge. He pays. He tightens his fingers around the cart handles until his knuckles pale. You know with bone-aching certainty that home was not meant to be experienced alone.

He starts heading toward the exit, and you let him go. Just as the doors whoosh open, he turns back, his expression unreadable. Something unspoken passes between you.

“Wait,” slips out of your mouth, and he does. A cool breeze flows through the open doors. 

You jot down your phone number on a piece of paper and rush to hand it to him. “Let me know if you need any help, okay?”

“In the middle of the night?” he repeats, but he pockets it gratefully.

“Sure,” you say.

The faintest hint of a smile arches across his face. “Thanks,” he murmurs, and steps out into the night.

You nod and wave goodbye. Smile back.