TheBanyanTree: 3 am at the 7-11

[Monique]

It started off being one of those dark nights of the soul, a time of
pitiless despair and even more pitiful self-reflection, but it didn't stay
that way. It morphed into a vague shadow of itself and from there coalesced
into a shimmering sort of halfway somewhat troll-like representation of life
as we know it except without the sparkly bits. 

You know about the sparkly bits, right?

But I digress. It's common in my line of work. 

The 7-11 was crowded for 3 am. Usually by that time the crowds have thinned,
the good hot dogs are all gone, the Slurpee machine rests uneasily in its
corner, wanting to dispense its product into the empty cups of desperate
Slurpee aficionados who are, instead, all at home asleep, but on this
particular night the Slurpee machine is happy.

For the 7-11 is crowded with a throng of sullen and somewhat unattractive
customers, their deathly pallor the only common denominator, their twitchy
mannerisms small clues to their leisure time pursuits or indicative of some
moral degeneration, no doubt handed down from their parents. And the line at
the Slurpee machine is long. Much too long for that time of night, but the
customers do not seem to care.

They do not, in fact, appear to be conscious to any significant degree.
Rather a lackluster group, clothed in t-shirts and shorts, flip flops and
some even, heaven forbid, shoeless altogether. I felt rather overdressed in
my sharply creased jeans with the strategic hole in one knee and my flowery,
overly large blouse with the long bell-like sleeves that kept getting things
caught up in them. It's not my most attractive outfit, but I'd been in a
hurry, I'd selected items from a closet haphazardly and in the dark, and
this is what I'd ended up with.

It didn't help that it hadn't even been my closet and the clothes had
belonged to a stranger before I took possession. 

You may be wondering what I was doing in 7-11 at 3 am dressed in a
stranger's clothes. Maybe if you'd been paying attention that would be
obvious, but I suppose I can't really expect that you've been listening.
Have you been listening?

My detractors, and there are several, despite my attempts to win them over
with freshly baked pies and my infectious charm, say that I am unbalanced.
Me. As if. I think they're just jealous, that's what I think. Their
insouciance in my presence reeks of desperation, their false goodwill
apparently transparent, their shoes never matching their socks, and their
smiles deceptively deceitful. 

Anyway, I digress again. Let's just say my detractors are not the formidable
enemies they think they are. Until they get their sock situation resolved, I
can't see how they can be any sort of threat to me at all.

My detractors are not at the 7-11 on this night, at 3 am, either waiting
patiently for the Slurpee machine or queued at the counter, desperately
hoping the Slim Jim supply lasts until it is their turn. Instead, it is
these others who are there, people who have never detracted me at all, and
who seem not to care, nor notice, that I am in their midst. It's probably
just as well; if one were to speak to me I would not know how to adequately
reply. One of them could very well be the stranger who had unwilling lent me
clothes, but no one seems to recognize my outfit, at least not with me in
it. Perhaps they're used to seeing themselves in it and can't quite figure
out why I look somewhat familiar though they've never seen me before. 

They can't have seen me before. I've never been in this town before, at this
particular 7-11, at this time of day, nor had I ever, to my knowledge, been
in this particular state, a state known for its inability to pay attention
to detail and its throngs of devil worshipping plumbers, its deep lakes and
its dark soul, if a state can be said to have a soul, a state without reason
or sanity, but with a carefree attitude that bespeaks of carelessness. Have
you been to this state? If you have, you would recognize it. If you have
not, I implore you to avoid it, steer clear, turn left on Highway 90 before
crossing the state line, take a big black marker and destroy mention of it
in your atlas, cross if off your list of places you must see before you die,
stop taking calls from your relatives who live there, and, in general, avoid
speaking of it in conversation.

It was my relatives that caused the problem of course. Relatives have a way
of doing that. Second cousins twice removed for their overweening sense of
entitlement and bad fashion sense, they'd had the gall to call me and
request an extension of their terms. "More time," they pleaded, "We need
more time to come up with the money," but this tactic had been tried before.
And succeeded. Indeed, this tactic had succeeded several times before
because I always felt sorry for them, I ached for their ineptitude, I pitied
them their wastrel ways, I liked their dog, Mattie, a large Golden
Retriever. But this time I decided I'd had enough. Enough stalling, enough
of their self-pitying avoidance of my needs, enough of their insistence on
matching plaids with stripes, and so I went to see them. They would not, I
resolved, get away with not giving me the money they owed me.

In my haste, I neglected to pack, a fact that would return to haunt me over
the course of the next few days as my clothes would begin to give off a
noxious odor. That's why I ended up in the stranger's closet, with the
stranger's clothes. There's only so much of myself that I can take, and
several days in the same clothes is more than enough for me of me. And I had
yet to locate the missing relatives. I had only a post office box for an
address, but upon arriving at the post office I'd noticed a discernible lack
of anything resembling living quarters, and so surmised that this was a
place where they got their mail, but little else. There was, for example, no
sign that one could find food at this place, or even a comfortable place to
sit down for a minute or two. Since I had no address and they had long since
stopped answering their telephone when I called, I had decided to camp out
at the post office, assuming that eventually one or the other of them would
wander in to pick up their mail with the hopes that there would be a check
in there. 

The days passed slowly, and over the course of several of them I had not
seen anyone who resembled a relative to any degree. I even had the bright
idea of sitting myself down, writing my relatives a letter, then posting it
so that they would have a reason to come to the post office to pick it up. 

Until I realized they would not know I had sent the letter since they
wouldn't answer the telephone when I called. And who doesn't have any sort
of voicemail at all, may I ask you that? 

So I waited. Until the fourth day, when I decided to set out on a search for
them. If they would not come to me, I would go to them. I found a telephone
book in a telephone kiosk, and though several pages were missing, especially
those in the middle, I had no trouble finding them listed under Z for
Zablonski (though their last name was Edwards) with a full address,
including zip code. I purchased a map of the local area and found where they
should be on it, a residence apparently two blocks over and three streets
up, within walking distance (so why hadn't they bothered walking to the post
office?) and so easily attainable. 

I set out on foot, which is the only way I set out since I lost my license,
and within minutes I found myself in front of a large Victorian house
painted pink with purple trim and the foreshadowing of middle age. My
relatives didn't live here, but the house was interesting, it was only 5 pm,
and it seemed a good opportunity to investigate. I knocked on the door
rather loudly, not wanting the occupants to later be able to say, "Well, we
just didn't hear you, that's all, we weren't avoiding you, nothing like that
. . . "I knocked so loudly there would be none of that at all, they couldn't
deny it in the least.

No one answered the door. When I say "no one," I literally mean no one, not
some entity known as no one. In short, the door remained closed. So I tried
the knob. It was large and shiny and begged to be tried. And it turned. The
door creaked. The house was silent, the white carpet spotless, the scent of
persimmons and baking bread wafting out. The large attack dog that came
running up to the door seemed a bit more intent on what was behind me than
on me, and sped right out the open door past me and down the street. 

So I went inside, now that the attack dog was safely out of the house and no
doubt headed for mischief. Not my problem though. The house was painfully
silent, by which I don't mean the house hurt, I doubt if houses hurt because
of silence, they probably welcome a bit of quiet now and then, nor was I in
any real physical pain, but the silence meant I felt I should be quiet so as
not to disturb it, and this caused me mental pain. Silence is a sort of
death, isn't it? They say no news is good news, but you know what they
really mean . . . no news means nothing good is happening, and it's silent. 

Where was I? 

Oh yes, I was in the Victorian house. And once I saw one of the beds in the
upstairs bedroom I fell right asleep next to it, since I had not seen a bed
for several days and only then realized how much I missed it. I didn't miss
a bed enough to actually sleep in a stranger's bed, that would be odd and
there was no telling when they'd last washed their sheets, but the bed next
to me comforted me in a strange way I won't even try to explain.

And that's how I came to be at the 7-11 at 3 am. When I woke up the house
was still dark and silent and the dog had not returned (though I had closed
the front door, so it would be rather difficult for him to get in anyway,
unless he had a secret entranceway or used a window), and the time was
nearing 3 am . . . and I heard a car pull up in the driveway. Not knowing if
it was the resident's driveway or the neighbor's driveway, I hastily pulled
some clothes out of the closet (I never sleep in clothes, especially in a
stranger's house, so I didn't have to bother getting out of my clothes
first), put them on, and ran out the front door before I could be caught and
arrested.

Arrested for what, I don't know, it's not as if the door was locked or
anything. 

And found myself at 7-11, searching the vacant faces around me for anything
that might resemble a missing relative, twice removed. I had a Slurpee,
after waiting fifteen minutes for my turn, and paid for it and a Slim Jim
with my credit card. I parked myself at the front door, hoping Mr. or Mrs.
Zablonski (Edwards) would come right in and save me the trouble of further
searching for them. The hours passed by so slowly I thought I had died and
gone to my own private hell, a place where waiting was the order of the day,
where the opening and closing of the door meant only another missed
opportunity, another chance that would not be my lucky break, where time
slowed to an imperceptible crawl . . . and so at 3:30 am I began to get
impatient.

That was then they walked in. Mr. and Mrs. Zablonski (Edwards), sans child.
I wasn't there to see the child, so this didn't bother me in the least. In
fact, I was glad there wasn't an innocent child there to witness the
bloodshed that was sure to happen.

Mr. Zablonski (Edwards) saw me first. That's because I was standing in front
of him when he entered, and he is not, despite the state he lives in, a
particularly stupid man. 

"Mr. Edwards," I said in my most charmingly false voice, "What a pleasure to
see you here!"

Mr. Zablonski (Edwards) looked a bit nonplussed, and looked back at his wife
with what I believed was no small degree of agitation. "Look who's here,
Mrs. Zablonski," he said to his wife. She looked even more agitated than he
had, if that was possible. She hid it well, however, as she shrieked out my
name as if we were long-lost relatives who didn't despise one another. 

"You should have told us you were in town!"

"Why? So you could make your escape without paying me what you owe me?"

Mr. Zablonski (Edwards) furrowed his brow painfully, at least I believe it
must have been painful, and when he spoke it was with the words I'd waited
to hear.

"Didn't I give you that twenty bucks at the luncheon last month?"

I turned to look out the plate glass window of the store, a contemplative
and thoughtful silence that was meant to make them think I was actually
considering the question, though of course there could be no question of
that, certainly I would know if I'd had my money returned to me, surely I
wouldn't make such a mistake, and the idea that they would think so caused
me no small distress.

Especially as I realized that Mr. Zablonski (Edwards) was right. I now
recalled a bit of strawberry lemonade, a hand pressing a twenty dollar bill
into mine, the smile on Mr. Zablonski's (Edwards') face as he repaid the
money he'd borrowed the week before when he'd been short of cash.

This was not one of my best moments.

"Oh yeah," I said, "That's right. Well, I was just in the neighborhood,
couldn't remember if you'd paid me or not so thought I'd stop and see how
you were . . . " my words began to falter and I had to look away to hide my
embarrassment.

"At 3 am at 7-11 you were just stopping in? Fours states away from where you
live?"

"Uhm, yes, what a coincidence, isn't it?" I laughed nervously, both
Zablonskis (Edwards) looking at me as if I were one of the zombie people
walking past us with Slurpee's and Slim Jim's. "Gotta go, really, have an
early morning meeting, talk to you soon, so nice to have seen you . . . " my
penchant for small talk beginning to sound, even to me, rather desperate and
just a bit sad. 

I made my escape then, the Zablonski (Edwards) couple looking after me as if
I'd committed some sort of faux pas, though I'm not sure what that could
possibly be. Like I said, people from that state are just a bit weird, at
least, not at all what one might call normal.