Tales From the Gas Station 2

by Jack Townsend

  Rosa was standing next to me with a big smile on her face and a brand-new nametag pinned to her shirt, listening intently while I explained how our time clock worked. She had a pen and pocket-sized notebook in her hands, scribbling away as I spoke (like there was any way she could forget “scan badge, type in employee code”). She was curious, full of questions, and eager to learn. Of course, none of those things boded well for her future at the gas station.

  It had been an eventful week for both of us, and yet it felt like no time had passed since that night we last saw one another.

  For me, the week had been uncharacteristically good. The follow-up appointment with my surgeon showed excellent progress with my bones and leg wound. They removed the staples and gave me a pamphlet on prosthesis options which I never bothered looking at. The gash on my head from where I accidentally headbutted the car window had healed over, and my bruises were all faded back to flesh tone. I’d pretty much mastered the art of walking with a single crutch, and with the exception of an occasional strange clicking noise whenever I reached for something on a high shelf, I was pretty much back to normal.

  For her, the week had been less than good. Her new job tending bar at a little dive called “Cooter Brown’s” one town over seemed to be working out well enough until the place tragically went up in flames. Thankfully, nobody was hurt, but the building was ruined, and the authorities were unable to determine the cause of the fire. Later that day, Pops called and instructed me to “get that Rosa girl back before someone else hires her out from under us!” It was especially suspicious considering he knew about her sudden unemployment before the news had even reported on the fire, but I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation.

  And so, only seven days after our goodbye forever moment, Rosa was back at the gas station, ready to officially start her training (again).

  It was already dark when she arrived for what should have been a completely boring overnight shift. A light but steady sprinkling of snow had been falling all day, and by the time the sun drifted behind the trees, the world outside was covered below a thin blanket of white powder. Experience told me not to expect too many customers on a night like this.

  I gave her the complete tour of the gas station, starting with the coffee pot in the corner. It didn’t take long to explain how everything worked, even allowing the extra time for her to write everything down. She was highly observant and kept the silence at bay with so many questions.

  “What’s with that stain?” She pointed to the brown shape on the floor by the coffee machine.

  I gave her a shrug. “It doesn’t come up.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I wasn’t expecting to need to clarify. “I mean, it’s been there for years.”

  I was already moving towards the next thing when-

  “Well, where did it come from?”

  I stopped. “What?”

  “The stain? You said it’s been there for years. I bet I could get it up if you told me what it came from.”

  I had to remind myself that we were in for a snowstorm and slow night, and we had nothing but time to kill. “That’s the spot where Mrs. Andrews passed away after a massive heart attack.”

  Rosa made a sad “aww,” like she just watched a video of a puppy falling off a couch.

  “The coroner said the old woman died before she even hit the ground. I mean, not that I asked. He’s the kind of guy who loves to overshare. And I know what you’re thinking, but from what we could tell, all of her blood and fluids stayed inside her body until they took her away. Ever since then, that stain has been there. We’ve cleaned it up before. Several times. The problem is that it keeps coming back. Always in the same place. We tried covering it with a small rug, but then the stain appeared on top of it, too. We checked above the ceiling tiles for leaks, but the only things up there were squirrel bones and empty cans of Mountain Dew.”

  “Have you tried vinegar and dish soap?”

  “We’ve tried everything.”

  “Have you tried—”

  “We’ve tried everything.”

  She looked at the stain like a tiger stalking her prey, and I knew exactly what she was thinking. She saw a challenge, and she wanted to take her shot.

  Next, I showed her the grocery aisles and explained how to front and rotate stock. When I looked back at her, Rosa was holding a lawn gnome in her arms—a female with long braided hair, Dumbo ears, and a yellow hat.

  “Be careful with those,” I warned, hoping to finally get through to her. “Especially the ones with the green hats.”

  “Why?” she asked, “What’s wrong with the gnomes with green hats?”

  “Sometimes they bite.” She laughed, a good genuine laugh that told me my warning wasn’t even close to landing. I elaborated, “A few of our part-timers messed around with them and ended up at urgent care for stitches.”

  “And you just leave them out in the open like this? What about the customers?”

  “Yeah, most of them bite, too.”

  She carefully put the gnome back on the shelf, wiped her hands on her pants, and made the sign of the cross.

  “What do I do if I’m the only one here and I need to use the bathroom?”

  “Great question,” I turned and started for the counter. “We actually have a system in place for this.” I showed her the handmade sign under the cash register that read, “Be back in a minute.”

  She made a sour face, “What happens if somebody tries to shoplift while I’m in the bathroom?”

  I shrugged, “People shoplift right in front of us all the time. Last week, a man stole two cases of beer, then came back ten minutes later because he forgot his phone and stole another case of beer. There’s nothing stopping them from stealing.”

  “I can shame them,” she said confidently. “I can give them the look.”

  She tightened her lips, narrowed her eyes, and slowly shook her head at me. I had to give her credit, it was quite shaming.

  “Not bad,” I said. “But take my advice: If somebody tries to rob us, let it go. When—and I do mean ‘when’—something crazy happens, don’t try to be a hero. Don’t go off investigating weird noises on your own. If something seems strange, or out of place, or impossible, just try to ignore it, and if you absolutely cannot ignore it, pretend. The less you get involved, the better off you’ll be.”

  I might have gotten a little carried away, but I wanted to make sure my words were getting through to her. Judging by the blank expression on her face, Rosa had definitely heard me, but whether or not she understood was still a mystery.

  She pulled out her notebook and said, “Could you repeat all of that?”

  I sighed.

  She was stubborn, but she was also a fast learner, which meant I was quickly running out of things to teach her. She already knew how to run a register, her time as a bartender would have prepared her for the temperament of our regulars, and the last time she was here, she found a batch of cleaning supplies that I didn’t even know existed. It seemed the owners had overestimated the amount and quality of wisdom I could impart when they insisted on letting her shadow me for an entire overnight shift. But there was one lesson she hadn’t learned yet, and I considered it my duty to educate her—to warn her—before the night was over.

  “There are things that happen here, especially at night and especially when you’re all alone. Things that happen for no good reason. You have to accept it and move on, or this probably isn’t the job for you.”

  Thankfully, she didn’t write any of that down. She just looked me in the eyes and said, “You’re really intense. You know that?”

  “I guess.”

  “Jerry said the same thing about the weird stuff. He says that there are strange animals out in the woods, and sometimes, when it’s quiet, you can hear them.” She had a goofy smile that in no way respected the severity of the words she was saying. It felt like she was telling a campfire story to a group of children. “He told me on clear nights, you
can go outside and see constellations that don’t exist anywhere else. He says this place is a window to other worlds, and if you find the right way to look through it, you can see someone or something on the other—”

  I cut her off. “Listen, Jerry says a lot of things. What you need to know is this: Things work differently here. It’s not a hard job unless you want it to be.”

  “He also told me something else,” she confessed. “Is it true that you can’t fall asleep?”

  At first, I was annoyed. But then I realized I had never told Jerry about my condition. Had he gleaned that information on his own? Or did someone tell him?

  Judging from the smile on her face, she didn’t realize the implications of her question, so I wasn’t going to hold it against her.

  “Yeah, it’s true.”

  “That’s pretty cool.”

  “No, not really.”

  “I wish I had that problem.”

  “It’s a fatal disease, and it’s literally killing me.”

  She covered her mouth and shouted, “Oh my god I’m so sorry! I didn’t realize!”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Is that what happened to your leg? Oh my god! Never mind; that’s super rude! Please forget I asked!” She stared at the ground and stuffed her hands into her pockets. “Can we start over, please?”

  “Why? I think this is going great.”

  Right then, a gust of cold air and snow flurries whooshed into the room. We turned to see Jerry walking into the store, wearing nothing but a wife-beater, jeans, and a camo trucker-hat covered in fresh snow.

  “You guys,” he announced as he passed us on the way to the liquor aisle, “it’s colder than a stepmother’s kiss out there.”

  “Hi, Jerry!” Rosa said with a friendly wave.

  He grabbed a bottle of whiskey from the shelf, then walked up to the counter and said, “Hey there, sweet cheeks. Oh, and hi to you, too, Rosa. Pack of Marlboros, please.”

  “What are you doing?” she asked, “Aren’t you freezing?”

  “Well yeah. Didn’t you hear what I just said? I’m as cold as a witch’s dick.”

  Rosa handed over the pack of cigarettes and rang him up, saying “I don’t think that’s how the expression goes.”

  “I don’t know much about expressions, but you ever felt a witch’s dick before? It’s pretty freakin’ cold.”

  She laughed. “Does that line ever work?”

  He was already unwrapping the pack of smokes. “You’d be surprised.”

  She gave Jerry his total, but he just winked at her and said, “Put it on my employee tab,” before turning around and walking back out into the falling snow.

  Rosa looked at me with a confused expression. “How do I ring something up under an employee tab?”

  “We don’t have employee tabs.”

  “So… ?”

  “Yeah, Jerry just robbed us.”

  ***

  We didn’t see another customer for the next half hour. When she came into the store, I instantly knew there was going to be trouble. But at least it was trouble I was familiar with, and trouble I knew how to handle.

  My late friend Tom was percipient as always, and if he were still around I’d be the first to tell him that he was right. The fox lady had returned, and now she was standing in the center aisle, looking for another potential friend or victim or mate or meal or whatever it was she wanted. The moment I recognized her, I looked down at my book.

  Soon, I could feel it again. Her stare from the other side of the counter, a radiant warmth, reaching out to me, caressing me, enticing me. She may as well have been putting her hands on my face for how strongly I felt her presence. It was annoying as hell.

  This is ridiculous. I’m an adult. I work here. I pay taxes. I shouldn’t have to avoid eye contact just to get through a shift.

  I took a breath and looked up at her, ready to explain how she couldn’t just hang out creeping on people, and if she were done pumping her gas, it was time for her to hit the road. But the second I saw her face, all the words evaporated in my mouth and came out as a garbled noise that sounded like “whaa.”

  I knew she was beautiful. I could remember that from the last time I saw her, but my memory was like a blurry polaroid of the Sistine Chapel—the idea was there, but the beauty and detail was nothing compared to the real thing. To say she was immaculate would be an insult. She was perfection incarnate. She was amazing. Beguiling. Mysterious. Unnatural. Impossible. Oh, wait, there it is. My rational thought here to save the day and remind me that something is definitely wrong. Real people don’t look the way she looks.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” I tried to get my words out before she had her chance to ask the question that I knew was sitting on the edge of her lips. “We have a new store policy regarding prolonged eye contact, and I—”

  It took this long for the spell to wear off, for me to finally realize that I wasn’t seeing what I expected to see. The energy coming from the other side of the counter wasn’t meant for me at all. What I was feeling was a ripple of her real intentions. I was caught in the blowback and too arrogant to realize before now that she had her face turned, her cheek pointed at me, her eyes focused somewhere else… on someone else…

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  She turned and looked at me. We made eye contact, and I waited for the words I knew she was going to—

  Oh, she’s walking away now.

  “Walking” may not be the best word. It was like watching her flow with a kind of grace and elegance unattainable and nearly imperceptible to humankind. Wait… what the hell? She’s not supposed to leave. We made eye contact!

  The new employee was on her knees working on the mystery stain by the coffee machine. In a moment, she was looking up at the fox lady and offering her a friendly smile. I reached for my crutch. This was going to take some intervening.

  “Hello,” Rosa said.

  “Will you come with me?”

  “What?”

  “Will you come with me?”

  “N-no? That’s okay. I’m working, and I don’t know you.”

  She knelt down onto one knee, bringing herself face-to-face with Rosa.

  “Will you come with me?”

  Rosa frowned. I could almost see the question mark over her head. I was about to step in when she took the conversation in an unexpected direction. “Cómo?” she said. “Qué estas diciendo? No entiendo. Sorry. I… no speak… English.”

  The fox lady stood and took a step back. Her mouth hung open in surprise.

  “Hey, Rosa.” I was standing between them now. She looked up at me and smiled nervously. “I need you to start the backroom inventory. Okay?”

  She nodded and slipped away towards the supply closet with a quick, “Si, comprendo!” When she had gone, I turned to face the fox lady head-on. I couldn’t tell what her new expression meant, but I assumed she wasn’t happy.

  “You heard her, lady. No means no.” She continued to look at me beautifully, and I found myself in the uncomfortable position of needing to carry a conversation I didn’t even want to start.

  “Alright, come on. Give me something. Who are you, anyway? What’s your deal? Are you supposed to be some kind of vampire or demon or angel?” She continued to stare silently. “You seem to know what you’re doing, and I don’t mean to tell you how to run your business, but why are you even here? This can’t possibly be the best town for you. We’re so small! We’re running out of people! How long do you think you can keep this up before someone important starts to notice? Why don’t you go to some big city and leave us the hell alone?”

  She stared at me as beautifully as possible (actually, it was more beautiful than that). And when the time came and she turned and walked away, it was with the supreme beauty of a goddess. As she reached for the door handle I called out and stopped her. “Hey, fox lady.”

  She turned back beautifully and beautifully looked at me with an absurd amount of beauty that was literally making me sick t
o my stomach. “I don’t know what you’re doing with these people, but she’s off limits, okay?”

  When she spoke, it was with a horrendous amount of beauty, and I had to turn my eyes away or I was going to throw up right onto her beautiful feet.

  “I will come back for you, Jack, and you will come with me. You will see that I only want to love and protect you. I will show you another world. A paradise with no pain and no suffering.”

  “Nah,” I said. “I’m good here.”

  “Fine, loser. Stay here and die! Be worm food; see if I care!”

  She held up two absolutely beautiful middle fingers, waved them around beautifully, then walked backwards out into the snowy abyss.

  With that out of the way, I went into the supply closet to find Rosa with a clipboard and inventory sheets, diligently counting our stock.

  “Sorry about that,” I said. “Sometimes customers can be… tenacious.”

  “No problem! That guy was a creep, but I’m used to dealing with his type.”

  “Remember what I said about ignoring the weird stuff? Well, she’s a good example.”

  “Who is?”

  “The lady with the hearse. If she ever comes back in, just ignore her until she goes away.”

  Rosa gave me an inquisitive stare, which I was beginning to equate as her default look. “What are you talking about?”

  “That customer. We have a name for her. We call her the fox lady, but I don’t know why.”

  “Are you talking about that weirdo who kept saying—” (she used her mockingest mocking voice) “‘Will you come with me’?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why do you keep calling him a she?”

  “Huh?”

  “That guy driving the hearse. We’re talking about him, right?”

  This was the conversation equivalent of the moment a zipper gets jammed on nothing. She and I both waited for the other to figure it out, but I could tell after a few seconds that it wasn’t going to happen. Finally, I tried a different tactic. “The person who kept asking you to leave… can you describe them?”

  She laughed, but there was an element of nervousness to it. “Okay, sure. He was…” she smiled awkwardly, “you know… really handsome. Like, almost too handsome. Like, a really beautiful man. Absurdly so.” She stared at the ceiling and tried to think it through. “Actually, that’s all I can really remember about him.”