Late Night Shift

As promised, a new story. Enjoy!

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I placed the last glass inside the cupboard and sighed. Thank god that shift was over. Everybody had left already, and I was just closing up after a very, very long night. It was Christmas, and I had agreed to take the late night shift, since I need the money. Oh, and everybody else has a family and friends to get back to.

Tonight had been like every other holiday night. Empty, save for the few sorry drunk sods, crying on their beverages, trying to explain to me that it’s really not their fault that their wives and children left them, or that it’s not really their fault they lost their jobs or whatever. I always try my best to listen, but I feel like I’ve heard the same story over and over again. So I just smile and offer them some nuts, on me.

I nudged the old man asleep on the booth at the back. He looked up at me, “time to go?” he asked.

“Time to go.”

He gave me a twenty. I tried telling him he had already paid, but he insisted I took it anyway, and left. I locked the doors and left to the bus stop.

I sat there, alone, at 3am, after a six-hour shift, waiting for the bus to come. There was a broken lamppost not far from where I sat, and it cast a strange shadow at my feet. I stared at it for a while, wondering why it hadn’t been fixed. I looked up at it. Behind it was the starless night sky. I never see stars in the city, only at the suburbs where I used to live as a child.

The bus arrived. It was packed, filled with people like me. Not all of them young, but all of them need the money for something – family, university, rent. They all looked tired and miserable. It was, after all, Christmas. And here we were. Trying to stand without falling in a packed bus, waiting to get home after a long day to eat the leftover turkey your 80-year-old neighbour left at your door because she feels sorry for you. And we all knew we’d be back tomorrow, early in the morning, ready for another full day. Just making enough to get by, making enough to afford a gift or a card, just a little something to remind someone we still love them. Or something.

At the next stop, people poured out of the bus. There were now a few empty seats here and there, which were quickly filled. I sped to the nearest one, at the window. I enjoyed looking at the buildings as the bus moved. I liked seeing the way the skyscrapers jumped up and then fell right down again, and the ones with the light-up billboards announcing the time and the temperature (almost always incorrectly, but at least they tried). As the bus moved further away from the centre of the city, the skyscrapers became tall residential buildings, which turned into big houses, which turned into smaller ones, with the lights still on and you could hear music and people talking and celebrating Christmas. At every stop, the bus emptied more and more, until I was the only one left. My house is at the very outskirts of the city, where people who can’t afford a real home live. I live in the basement of the 80-year-old lady. I have my own kitchen and my own bathroom, complete with old, dirty bathtub. It’s shit, but it’s home.

Also, it’s all I can afford.

I was alone in the bus, so I opened my bag to count my tips. Seventy bucks in tips. Ninety, if you count the extra twenty the old drunk man gave me. It’s all right. It was a slow night, and what did I expect for Christmas? I stuffed the money back in my bag and rubbed my eyes. At least I had enough money for rent and tuition in the bank.

I sighed. I began the same old line of thought; life isn’t hard. I’m not starving. I can afford the basement and I can sometimes splurge on the nice shampoo. I could go out with my friends, had I had time. And friends.

Such is the life of the 20-year-old student, working overtime and only really doing the laundry when there isn’t any clean underwear left.

But there’s this sense of nostalgia creating a gaping hole within me. I’m not sure what it is. I miss something from my old life, my old miserable life living in the suburbs and going to a school I absolutely hated. Maybe I miss having friends I can call every night, maybe I miss having a lover to curl up against. I suppose I miss both of those things. I suppose I miss the certainty of what would happen tomorrow. I knew every day, as I woke up, exactly what would happen. Life wasn’t unpredictable at all. I wasn’t unpredictable. I knew what to expect from others and they knew what to expect from me.

But I don’t know what to expect from my short-tempered boss, I don’t know what to expect of the dingy bar at the heart of the city. I don’t know what to expect from customers. I don’t know what to expect from university and the teachers and tuition. I don’t know what will happen to little old Claire, who so kindly accepts the rent whenever I have it, and doesn’t really mind if I’ve run out of flour and doesn’t really enjoy having her children over because since her husband passed, they’ve just been pushing her to give them the house and kick me out, because I’ve become her only friend in her old, old age.

I don’t know what to expect from myself.

Yes, that is what I miss. I miss the certainty I had before. I miss knowing exactly what would happen. I miss the predictability of the people I saw every day.

I also miss loving. I used to love so many things two years ago. I loved my friends and I loved my significant other. I loved art class and I loved my 15-year-old Labrador, Tessa. I loved my bedroom and I loved our backyard.

And then everything was gone. My friends moved away for university, and my significant other found another paramour to court. I can’t afford art classes in university, and Tessa passed away. My bedroom is no more, and our backyard is gone.

The bus stopped, slowly. My stop. I got off, and walked the extra two blocks home. Claire was already in bed, of course, but at the foot of the stairs were a little package and a plate of turkey for me. The turkey was already cold, but I chewed on it anyway. I opened the door to my lovely basement and filled the tub with scalding water. I opened the package. It was a picture frame with a picture of a smiling Claire and me sitting on her porch.

Goddamn, I love little, old Claire. I couldn’t afford a gift this year. I felt so bad. I placed the picture frame on the nightstand.

I sat inside the tub. The water was still too hot, but it didn’t matter. It was freezing outside anyways.

When the water began to cool, I jumped out and wrapped myself in a big, fluffy towel, before crawling under the thick winter covers and passed out.

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I had planned this story a long time ago, back in August. I wrote down a bunch of ideas for it on one of my many notebooks and this is the finished product. I'm actually quite happy with it, so bleh.