“Anything else I need to know?” the rumpled clerk said.
“That’s it, I think,” the goth clerk said. “Oh, except there’s a thing on the desk about another guy they banned yesterday. He can’t come on the premises at all anymore. If you see him, call Ronnie.”
The rumpled clerk picked up a piece of paper, which I could tell from the reverse side was a printed photograph surrounded by text, like a notice someone would hang on a telephone pole about his lost dog.
“I know this guy,” the rumpled clerk said. “He drives a blue Honda.”
“Yeah, that’s what Rick said too. I’ve never seen him. He must only do nights.”
The goth clerk shouldered a black bag and made his way out from behind the counter and through the exit door.
I stood pretending to peruse their selection of overpriced DVDs while keeping my eye on the counter and the front door. The pocketful of tokens recalled days of my youth when, left by my shopping parents to roam the mall alone, I cashed in a five- or ten-dollar bill for that clanking jackpot rush from a video game arcade’s coin changing machine. Before the quarters started to dwindle, the options seemed limitless.
After several minutes passed with no one coming or going, and a few glances from the rumpled clerk, I goaded myself to the mouth of one of the hallways, where I lingered briefly before forcing myself inside. My shoulders relaxed when I found the corridor empty, save for one or two red lights illuminated above the doors. I chose an empty booth, locked the door behind myself, and popped a few tokens into the glowing slot.
As shrieking porn began to play, I used the light from my phone’s screen to scan the benches for anything I wouldn’t want to sit on and discovered a gift from heaven: a forgotten pack of Camels with a book of matches in its cellophane. I had been in the process of quitting for a couple of weeks by then, and had been unsuccessful, despite the fact that I had completely stopped keeping cigarettes on me. One problem was that I didn’t actually want to quit at all. I loved smoking. It was the cop I was in love with who didn’t like it. I was giving it up for him.
I took a cigarette from the half-empty pack and lit one. I didn’t change the movie on the screen. I just sat staring up at it, filling the booth with smoke and idly rubbing my dick through my jeans.
Before I’d smoked even half the cigarette, I was startled by the sound of someone trying to enter the booth. I was perfectly silent, though of course he knew someone was inside, not simply because of the light above the door, but also due to the loud squeals of a woman in a nurse’s uniform being screwed onscreen by a man in green scrubs and a surgeon’s mask.
After pushing against the door several times, the person on the other side actually started knocking on it in a quiet and creepily persistent manner that filled me with panic. My eyes shot around the booth like someone in a horror movie seeking out a weapon in their limited environment. The lit cigarette was the only thing I felt I could use if it came down to defending myself. Maybe I could blind him if he somehow broke through the door.
I knew if I didn’t respond, he would be forced to move on eventually, but he was still there, quietly pressing and knocking on the door when the tokens ran out and the movie ended. Suddenly the room was quiet and I heard a whispering voice that I hadn’t been able to distinguish from the din moments earlier. Without rising from my bench, I leaned in the direction of the door to hear it.
“Hey,” it was saying. “Hey, let me in.”
“Go away,” I whispered. Then I rose and quickly put three tokens in the slot. In an instant, the screen came back to life with another scene from the video, which now showed a woman having her temperature taken rectally by a physician while she performed oral sex on an orderly. I rapidly tapped the Vol+ button until the deafening moans of the medical assistant drowned out all other sounds.
Every muscle in my body was tense as I cranked myself around to see the shadows of the would-be intruder’s feet beneath the door. A minute later, after they withdrew, I calmed down. But after a short time they returned. He pressed on the door, and the voice hissed something inaudible, the shadow lingering for a moment before the shoes retreated again for the last time.
I sat in the booth and smoked three more cigarettes one after another, dropping tokens in the slot each time the movie ended. Then I rose, noiselessly slid the bolt free from the lock, and peered through the open door. The hallway was empty.
I rushed towards the brightness of the store as if making my way to a protected shelter. But the eeriness of the dark hallway had carried over into the shopping space, which was still vacant and utterly silent. Now even the counter was unmanned, the clerk gone.
When I found myself alone in terrible and shameful situations, my first assumption was always that the end of the world was upon us, and I had been caught with my pants down. Had the nuclear apocalypse been announced, and here I was about to die alone, blasted apart along with one of the biggest collections of sex toys and videos in Central Texas? Had the man at my door, his voice raspy with radiation illness, been trying to warn me?
I noticed some movement at the front of the store. Just outside the exit, I could see something. It was the rumpled clerk pacing and having a cigarette in the one place where he could smoke while watching both the parking lot and the front desk.
The tokens still filled my pocket like a bag of marbles, but I was afraid to go to the other hallway and run into whoever had been at my door. I took a cigarette from the pack of Camels, and went to where the rumpled clerk was smoking.
“‘Scuse me, bro,” I said, a portrait of heterosexuality. “Mind if I bum a light?”
The clerk narrowed his eyes at me, but reached into his pocket and handed me his lighter. “Here you go.”
I lit my smoke and gave it back to him. “Thanks. How’s it going tonight? You just starting your shift?”
“That’s right,” he said, glancing at his watch. “Only seven hours and forty-three minutes to go.”
“But who’s counting, right? Anyway, I bet the time passes quick. It must be an interesting place to work.”
“Can be,” he said.
“You worked here long?”
By my posture, movement, and eyes, I did everything in my power, short of hocking a loogie, to indicate that these questions were merely friendly conversation and in no way a come-on. I could tell the guy was cautious and even a little annoyed, but he was too polite to tell me to fuck off.
“I’ve been here about six months.”
“Cool. You like it?”
“It’s okay.”
“Seems pretty dead tonight. Does it ever get really busy around here?”
“Yeah, it gets busy,” he said.
“So when does it pick up?”
“Different times. Like around nine o’clock people tend to show up. After the bars close at two. Lunch hours are busy, and I’ve heard that Sunday after church a lot of guys pop in.”
“After church?”
“Yeah, supposedly. I’ve never seen that myself. I work nights.”
“I heard your coworker say something about someone getting banned. I was just wondering, I mean, how…”
“Phone’s ringing man,” the rumpled clerk said, stubbing his cigarette out in the ashtray he’d used to prop open the door. “Gotta go.”
He scooted the can out of the way, and the door slammed closed with him on the other side. I took two more drags from my cigarette, then left what remained of the pack in the ashtray and headed to my pickup with the tokens still in my pocket, more to add to my collection. Mine was the only vehicle left in the parking lot, aside from a beat up