|
I go to Wayne’s for lottery tickets, a cold drink, or something I need—sometimes milk, beer for beer-cheese soup, M&M’s that will push my diet’s start date to tomorrow. The most I’ve ever won is $6 on the Powerball, but a few tickets are worth the money for a half hour of thinking about winters on the beach, a housekeeper to clean my toilets, and not having to worry if my son has a drug problem.
Wednesday is the day the smell of Hot Broaster Chicken floats from the door all the way down the aisles of motor oil and crisp bags of chips, even though they pressure fry it every day of the week. This must have something to do with the fact it’s the day when the mail trucks ring the parking lot like an outline and deliver their carriers to a too-small table in the back where they pull wings apart and talk about I don’t know what, except whatever it is, it’s good with a side of poultry. Even when I don’t go in, I like seeing the trucks there when I drive by. The US mail is rain, sleet, and snow dependable in a way nothing else is. Even the stamps say Forever.
A lady with close-cropped hair and plump wrists calls me “baby,” though she won’t see hollows like mine under her eyes for twenty years. I usually dislike this from someone I don’t know, but she is not that. We’re friends, even though we’ve never had a conversation that wasn’t held over an open wallet, and I don’t know her name. When we talk, we’re nice. “Print the winning ticket out for me,” I’ll say, and she always replies, “You got it,” and smiles when she drops the change in the flat of my palm. She’s never going to ask me about the patched-but-not-yet-painted holes in the wall at my house, and I’ll never have to make up an excuse.
For a long time, the Wayne’s sign was his autograph, white cursive stretched across a circular sign above the ice machine just outside the double glass doors. But I never knew who Wayne was, never knew the place was for sale, or that it had a new owner until the day I stopped by for gum and the circle had changed. Cursive was replaced by block script. Wayne’s was now Wuz Wayne’s.
Though she is now growing her hair out, the lady who calls me “baby” is still there, the lotto machines are still spitting out two-dollar dreams, and candy still comes in share sizes, which I always like. It tells everyone watching me buy a snack, she’s not eating three servings of chocolate by herself. She’s generous and has friends. I should thank the Mars Corporation for providing that service right on the bag.
Not too long ago while I was waiting to pay, two guys my son’s age lined up behind me and started talking.
“How come you didn’t come to the party last night?” said a guy in a baseball cap clutching a cardboard-clad case of Bud.
“I didn’t know about no party. Nobody told me,” said his friend, shifting a pack of honey buns from one hand to the other.
“Aw man, anybody could of come. You shoulda just walked over. It was a good party.”
“Who else was there?”
“Awww, I don’t even know. I passed out cold. The cops came, but I didn’t get arrested.”
“Well, man, that’s a good party if you can’t remember nothing and don’t end up in jail.”
The day I heard them, the conversation made me laugh. I probably even smiled and looked over at the guys when I did it. Thinking about it now, I don’t know what was so funny. That guy woke up the next morning, but not everybody does.
It seemed like the Wuz Wayne’s sign was only up for a few weeks before it changed again, this time replaced by a picture of a giant can of Bud Light that looked like it was surfing on a splash of cold blue water. If the place has a new name, nobody knows what it is because there isn’t a sign anywhere unless you count the brand of gas.
Other things are different, too. The ice machine was moved all the way down the sidewalk, replaced by a cage with propane gas tanks. A red-lettered No Smoking sign is attached on the front, but there is almost always somebody smoking there anyway. Even if you don’t see them yourself, the fresh cigarette butts on the sidewalk and pavement tell you they just left. Most of those smokers probably don’t even know they aren’t standing in front of an ice machine anymore.
When my son came home a couple of weekends ago, he accidently locked his keys in his car because he said some weird guy was staring at him while he was getting gas and they almost got in a fight. It was a cold night, so I drove up and we sat in my running car waiting for the Pop-a-Lock man to get there. A guy in an old flannel shirt and jeans that dragged on the ground started walking across the parking lot.
“Why’s that guy still looking at me?” my son yelled and hit the passenger window hard with the flat of his hand so it sounded like a gunshot. But it didn’t break.
“He only looked over here for a second,” I said. “He probably wasn’t even looking at us. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Just look away.”
“I just gotta get out of here,” he said and pushed against the seatback hard like he was breaking out of a vise. Luckily the Pop-a-Lock guy drove up and opened the door in less than a minute. With that, my son was gone.
~
The last time I filled up my tank, a paper sign was taped on every pump with a Xeroxed picture of a lady in sweats putting gas into an old Jeep. This lady was a drive off, the sign said. Does anybody know her? I looked up to see where the cameras were that took the picture. They are new, and I guess they record everything—every mail truck, Broaster-to-go order, and a lady walking to her car with too many M&M’s, not enough luck at the lottery, and a rolled-up window with a handprint on it.
When I finished pumping my gas, I started to push the NO button like I always do because I don’t need any more curled-up receipts in my car’s cup holder, but I noticed the peeled off plastic on the YES button showed it was the one most people pushed. Still, I didn’t push that one. I know the lady who works there. If something ever happened and I accidently drove off without paying, I know she’d vouch for me.
|