People You Meet In the Middle of the Night

"You can go now, Erin."

It's four minutes to three in the morning when Alan has me clock out. We look at time, at work, like soccer players do—and if I clock out at three, then I will be "in the sixth hour,"—and he'll have to give me a half hour break. By law. Technically. So I'm off work, the night shift—my first, and hopefully my only—and I am exhausted. The muscles in my back are twitching with fatigue, and my eyes won't track like they normally do.


 They had a guy throw up his hands and walk out two days ago. He did the nightshift four days a week. They needed a warm body to cover the shift, and I said I didn't have anything going on tomorrow—today—so I could cover for tonight. Like I said: a warm body. The guy who threw up his hands said that this job wasn't going to be what he did forever, this wasn't his career. He couldn't live on twenty hours a week.

"Well," Cody, the head manager, quips, "now he can try to live on none."

In the deserted parking lot I fumble for my keys and unlock my car—my parents got me one which has not only power locks, but a clicky thing. I love the clicky thing, I named it Randy. I don't love this new-to-me silver car, it's not the car that I put a Dutch Mafia sticker on. That one, my Mafia Mobile, was red, maroonish, and nondescript—you wouldn't be able to identify it if you were called to the witness stand in the trial for the mafia boss.

Imagine how that'd go—

"The defendant was driving a getaway car, can you identify which one you saw, Miss?" And they show you a Buick, a Lexus, a Kia, and something you don't know the name of, and they're all this red-maroonish-nondescript mid-size sedan like Jack Nicholson's mob character rode around in during that mobster movie. It was late at night, you were freaked out, memories get altered by your mind after time, and they all become the same car with different license plates. Yeah, imagine how that'd go.

Man I miss that car. I jimmy the key to get this boxy silver one to start.

A song that I vaguely know the words to is ending as the radio fires up at the blast I left it on before work, and the bass voice states the station name—in the same bass voice I grew up to in a different town, a different state. 101.9 K-something something, in Washington, 93.5 K-something something else, in Wisconsin, all the same voice in that has a "hey, this is hip, for real cool cats," tone. Every rock station, especially the classic rock ones, has the same guy. Check your radio if you don't believe me.

A jiving new song starts up with a snap-snap-bop-snap-bop-bop—David Bowie's voice swinging through the notes. Nothing's gonna touch you, he says in that scratchy soprano-baritone that he's got. "Golden Years"—a song thoroughly written by cocaine and psychosis and David Bowie in the seventies. I want someone to share some painful sounding Golden Years with me, to sing along and truly understand.

I'm not in the back of my dream car, but I am definitely dreaming for a cup of hot coffee—and a comfy green seat at Shari's. The green seats aren't nearly so comfy when you have to peel your legs from them, because when you're wearing shorts the skin of your thighs becomes atomically bonded to the plastic. Luckily for me, I'm wearing standard issue slacks from work.

The drive from McDowell street to Shay takes a long time—David Bowie gave way to Manfred Mann, ACDC, and then some whiny Neil Young song—since I'm paranoid of getting stopped at this hour of the night. I work a hop, skip, and a jump away from the police station, so it's justified. Totally. My eyes are stuck open at different levels, and they're red and dilated. I look like I hang out with Keith Richards from the Rolling Stones, but that only means that I look fine for 3:30 AM Shari's clientele.

The nice Latina waitress says someone will be with me momentarily as she hurries with a plate of eggs towards the group of drunk adults in the front corner. Another woman (Jill? Andrea? Charyle? This is why they make us wear name tags at work, it's mandatory or you get a write up, three write ups and you can kiss your burger flipping paycheck goodbye) arrives and leads me towards the back. She sits me down in a booth adjacent to some women in fishnet stockings and short short skirts. They're cooing over baby pictures, all of the same chubby, wrinkly, gross baby.

Jildreyle, as good a name as I've ever ascribed to someone with that sort of unhappy set to her mouth, sets a menu down in front of me. Her voice is gritty, like someone just getting over a severe cold. Or someone who would've liked it if you hadn't walked through the door of their humble establishment.

"What can I start you off with?" I don't play hard to get, sucking my teeth as I peruse the Honored Guests and Soft Drinks section of the menu. I hate people who play hard to get when they know damn well what they want. I decide to not be "That customer," and be quick and precise about it. Precise people are also annoying, but less annoying than the jerks who hem and haw. You don't know it, for sure for sure that is, but when you become "that customer," we make the most of it—we mock the shit out of you when you can't hear us. We don't love any of our customers, but we do hate quite a few.

"Just some coffee, and cream too please." I know what I want, which is why I showed up here—I'd like some coffee. From a Never-Ending Shari's Coffee Carafe, if you can manage it, and yeah there's a copyright pending on the NESCC logo and concept. Jildreyle nods and hurries away. I don't see her for another five minutes.

My eyes are droopy when she returns, the kind of awake you are in the middle of an eight AM biology lecture, but I perk up immediately. I would've thanked her if she hadn't immediately scampered off to help the nice Latina with four more plates of eggs and other assorted breakfast food for the table full of drunks. Thank you, Jildreyle, you have really made my day. No, I don't need anything else right now. Yes, I'll tell you if I do. Thank you.

She never comes back, even though I make eye-contact with her six times after I run out of coffee (guess they were out of the NESCC's tonight) after three cups. Three cups is far more than I expected to come out of a non-NESCC, but I came here to drink coffee—and maybe even buy pie.

After another five minutes, I know because I set a timer on my phone, I give up and pay. No pie for me tonight, which is probably a good thing. Jildreyle never gave me the nifty Shari's ticket, so the poor night manager has to find my order manually. I tip him, not Jildreyle, and leave. There's a police officer outside when I push the doors open, talking to the Usual Suspects. They've apparently been smoking too close to the doors while they were out, among other assorted miscreant behaviors. They weren't there when I went in, they were just leaving actually.

My silver car's cruise control kicks in at thirty six miles an hour, and that's how fast I drive down Shay as I head back to Woodrow, my dorm. There is no one on the roads at a quarter to four in the morning on what to me seems a Saturday night. It won't be Sunday until I've had some shut-eye.

The gravel parking lot has always creeped me out—ever since the day I moved in and there was zero parking there anyway. Nothing has changed, of course, in the months between now and September—but I've gotten better at making bee-lines towards the front entrance of the building. After the dull beep of the little card-reader, a little protruding black box (with the slogan on the front of it: Not just for commercial airlines anymore!), I stumble in—I'm at my wit's end with lack of sleep, despite the coffee—and push open the second set of doors.

From the left a roar of machinegun sound-effects bursts into my ears—the Guys are downstairs watching TV. I've seen them off and on all year, sitting in the downstairs lounge at a quarter to five in the morning when I had the five-to-two shift, and sitting in there at ten at night when I got back from the one-to-nine shift. The guy with the black fedora, and the two guys who I can't really distinguish, the guy with the lip, and a blond one I've never seen before in my life–I've always talked about them, or thought about them, or seen them and labeled them as The Guys. Everyone who lives in the dorm knows what you mean when you say it with that particular sort of emphasis.

Every other time I've seen them I've been dead tired and heading off to work or heading off to catch the rest of House—but not now. I've just worked a six hour shift, and had three cups of damn good coffee, and I am going to sit down and see what these guys are up to. It's that curiosity that your mother always warned you against—don't go play with the strange kid who only ever goes to use the slide at the park, no matter how fun that slide is when you use it. That kid just isn't right, and why don't you go to the monkey bars honey?

They're watching anime. That strange and often unspoken of pastime. Just saying it can make you an outcast no matter how much Proactiv you use or how many cheerleaders you took to prom from eighth grade onward. It creates nerdiness—a lifelong, visible mark. A scarlet letter. It's the real reason I've never stopped to talk to them, because they live such a wild lifestyle compared to mine—they stay up all night every Saturday night and on into Sunday morning. I just don't do things like that, I'm boring—I work and I drink coffee.

I turn away from the hallway and go see what's going on in the lounge, where they are seated in a semi-circle around the TV.

They are watching the love of my childhood: Big O (my brother explained it to me once that it was basically just mashing together Transformers and Batman, but I loved it). I used to watch Big O, and assorted others, on the latest of late night cartoons when Cartoon Network used to only play cartoons. Back then they filled up Toonami with anime—primarily old mini-series, Sailor Moon, Inuyasha, Full Metal Alchemist, and things like Big O.

These are all of the shows I would watch when I was sick and awake at three am. Wandering into the living room, feeling like death, and collapsing into a feverish and sniffling pile on the couch, remote control in hand—only to be thwarted by a parent after not any time at all. They can sleep through your very thorough raid of the cookie jar at two AM, but they will always hear a muted TV across a football stadium.

Suddenly I know their names—or at least some of them—and the guys are no longer The Guys but are Taylor, David, Sean, and Eric, and the gorgeous blond guy. He shouldn't be gorgeous—that shouldn't apply to him at all. He's got a big David Bowie nose and a pimple to beat all pimples on his chin (with major competition on his forehead, too), he's going to be bald by the time he's twenty with how far back his hairline is. David Bowie Blonde isn't going to save those locks.

But he's beautiful, in fact to take that Bowie reference further, my coffee-filled-sleep-deprived brain comes to the conclusion that he's David Bowie Beautiful. He's only perfect, now, the perfect story-book ending to the "Heroes" poster I've got in my room.

He introduces himself as I plop down in the only open seat close to the TV—

"I'm----."

"Hi, I'm Erin, nice to meet you."

My brain buzzed out his name, that strange attention deficit that happens during a crucial part in lecture or when your mom is telling you when to take the turkey out of the oven. You're embarrassed to raise your hand, admit that you tuned out, show that you're the space cadet you spent your youth protesting you weren't. You sit in silence, agonizing over that loss of conscious thought. I don't ask him again what his name is—it doesn't matter, he's perfect as is.

We all of us talk, especially the blond guy whose name I should now know—and the anime marathon ends, but we still all sit and talk, all of us. Religion and politics, classes and jobs, and majors and childhood experiences. The blond has an adorable way of making a point he thinks I'll agree with, his eyes slipping into almost a double wink as they slide to look at me through the corner. His voice is smooth, like good coffee that I can drink black. I never drink coffee black, as it's bitter and sick and I can see why my roommate hates the stuff altogether—I drink it with cream, and sugar, smooth and sweet.

He has no problem talking about so many things I can only think that he is amazing—so comfortable with the person he is and his likes and dislikes—and his maturity is attracting. David Bowie starts to sing in my ear—audiation, hearing a song in your head as your brain puts it together. Mozart had it crazy leveled up, he could hear symphonies, whereas I can hear snatches of lyrics once in a while.

The sun rises, reflecting off his hair in a way it never does on mine, and he looks at his watch as Taylor gets up to leave. Everyone's eyes bug as he reads off the time as eight in the morning, and he has to be going. He engages in the ritual that men do when they say goodbye, the awkward stance, sometimes a very manly-man hug. David, obviously his greatest friend gets one of those freaky pensive thousand yard stares.

"It was good seeing you, Joe, thanks for making the drive. Ring me up next week or something."

"Yeah, this was cool, thanks for telling me to come down. But, I gotta get going." No one tells him he ought to stay a little—he must be tired, he needs some rest. I certainly don't—I don't know this guy, despite the fact that I should.

And then he's walking.

Never look back, act strong, walk tall—angel, David Bowie sings in my ear.