life in limbo

Look, no one voluntarily chooses to be a convenience store employee. 

It’s the kind of job that you reluctantly take after exhausting all other possible options. After the realization that it’s the only place desperate enough to hire a 24-year-old with a minor criminal record, no diploma, and a blank sheet of paper as a resume. It's the kind of job that makes you contemplate all of the poor life choices you made leading up to this exact moment; selling a bottle of whiskey to a homeless man at three o’clock in the morning.

Jordan sees the man every night at the beginning of her shifts, and every day at the end of them. On some cold evening, the man stays in the store for her entire shift, standing silently by the slushie machine and staring at it as if it's the greatest thing since the wheel. He always flashes a sweet, but pungent smile as he checks out, before disappearing out the door. Jordan usually returns it half-heartedly, but she never looks him in the eyes. 

The man flashes his usual yellowing grin this morning as Jordan checks him out, and she averts his gaze as usual. Shes’ not really sure why she does it – she supposes it makes it easier to pretend he’s not an actual person, that perhaps he is merely a figure of her sleep-deprived imagination, conjured to evoke empathy and pity. 

Counting up the cash he handed her, she realizes it falls a few cents short. “Sorry, you don’t have enough.”

The man looks defeated, handing the pint back over to Jordan solemnly before making his way out the door. 

The bell sounds as the wind slams the door shut and the man is gone as quickly as he came. Jordan exhales a miserable groan, rubbing into her temples with the futile hope of placating her budding migraine. 

“C’mon Jordan, at least give ‘em a smile!”

Her headache only intensifies at the sound of Marlos’ burly, chainsmoker-laced voice. He’s the manager of the store, and has far more pride in it than Jordan thinks he should. It’s as if his entire life revolves around this sad, little EZ-stop. Jordan would feel more sad for him if he didn’t make her want to blow her brains out.

“It's 3 a.m and I'm cashiering in a gas station,” she deadpans to him. “What about that warrants a smile?”

“Hey, it always could be worse!” Marlo says. He nods at the door, still reverberating from the man' s exit. “You have a job and a bed to sleep in at night – that's reason enough to smile!” 

Jordan responds with a half-assed mumble. She knows that he’s right – to an extent – but she also knows that there's far more to life than this miserable, 1,000 square-foot cage she is indebted to for eight hours a day. She sees her former friends' lives on Instagram; extravagant weddings and vacations to Greece. They would never even dare step foot into a shop such as this, let alone devote their time and energy to working here. 

It’s only a matter of time until I’m out, Jordan reaffirms to herself – the only way to cling to her sanity when she finds herself reaching an existential breaking point. This is only temporary, as soon as I sort my shit out – I’m gone.

It's as if Marlo can read her mind, because he says; “It’s no use thinking about the future. The only moment we ever exist in is the present, kid. Why not make the most of the moment we’re given?”

Jordan is really not in the mood for his toxic optimism, especially as her back joins her head in a perpetual, throbbing ache. If this moment is all that she has of life, then she might as well run out into oncoming traffic. 

“Look, kid, all I’m saying is that ‘have a nice day’ goes a long way for someone,” Marlo says as he leans against the counter, sparking a Marlboro red. “You can change the trajectory of an entire person's life with a single smile.”

Jordan can’t contain her snort at that comment. She thinks that sometimes Marlo genuinely forgets that they’re minimum-wage convenience workers, not superman. Sure, they both attract a similarly helpless and pitiful audience, but instead of confronting the evil head-on and making the world a better place, they hand them a pint of vodka and hope it's enough to numb the pain of existence into something bearable. 

Healing the world, one escapist substance at a time.

“Whetever you say, boss,” she grumbles. “You’re the expert here.”

“You’re practically one yourself now,” Marlo chuckles casually, puffing his cigarette. “You’ve been here – what, almost two years now? I consider you a seasoned expert at this point, too.”

The words hit Jordan as hard as one of the trucks barreling down the interstate right outside their door. Was it really almost two years? There was no way – she had applied to this job on a whim, it was only meant to be a pathetic padding on her resume until she figured out a way to get out of this hell hole. How had she managed to waste away two whole years of her life at this place without even realizing? 

“I-” She starts, but she doesn’t know how to finish. “I’m only here until I figure my life out,” the words feel stale on her lips, like she's trying to convince herself more so than him. “Then I’m gone, you’ll never see me again.”

Marlo stares at her for a moment, a palpable silence seeping into the tobacco-laced air. Then, he bursts into laughter, his entire burly body shaking as he wraps his arms around his stomach. Jordan stares back with an expression half between confusion and disbelief, watching as he wipes amused tears from his waterline, and says to her; “ I said the exact same thing to my former boss when I was your age. Ah, the naivety of youth!” 

He keeps laughing, but Jordan feels like a bullet has been lodged into her chest and she's bleeding out all of the countertop. Her expression must’ve viscerally reflected how sick to her stomach she feels, because Marlo sobers up, inhaling a deep breath before offering her his cigarette. She takes it without hesitation, but it provides little relief to the churning deep within her bones. 

"If you wait until your life is figured out to do something about it, you’ll be waiting here forever,” Marlo says, a far-off look in his eyes. “This place does have a way of sucking people like us in, of turning hours into years, and before you realize it,” he examines his wrinkled hands, “Half your life has gone by.”

Those words are too little to quell Jordan's distress, but he keeps talking before she can open her mouth. “But it’s really not all that bad. In fact, I’ve come to appreciate all of the little things that people take for granted.”

Jordan cocks an eyebrow. “Like what exactly?” 

“I don’t know, I just like the way the world seems to slow down at this time of day – like it's existing in a limbo between what it should be and what it is.” He glances outside, “I like the way that the damp concrete of the parking lot refracts the glow of the neon signs, the way the moon peaks through our only window every night without fail. I like the -– good morning, Linda! How was the shift?”

Marlo casually strikes up a conversation with a woman in scrubs who just walked through the door. They talk about her usual coffee order, medical bills, how her kids are faring with the divorce. Jordan recognizes her as a familiar, nightly patron, but never once had she asked for her name or life story. 

Her eyes catch a glimpse of the unsold bottle of whiskey on the counter. Marlo is too busy with his conversation to even notice as she grabs it and walks out the door. She surveys the area – he’s not hard to find, you just look for the Walmart shopping cart and the matted cat who looks more like an old blanket. They’re all sitting on the edge of the sidewalk outside the back of the store, huddled close together within the crisp November night.

The man doesn’t even notice Jordan as she sits down beside him, and she assumes it is partially his fault for treating his existence as invisible every day for the past two years. She pops open the lid, extending it as an olive branch to the old man. His eyes widen as he finally looks up from his blanket fort, and notices her. Reluctantly, he takes the flask, downing a mild sip before meeting her gaze.

This time, she doesn't avert it. 

In the silence that lingers between them, births a strange, implicit sense of similarity. A tacit likeliness that, from the outside looking in, you would never expect between the two strangers sharing a sidewalk. For maybe there is something to be said about those who exist in the margins of what they’re expected to be, who slip through the cracks of society, of the fast-paced nature of the system – and within those cracks, create a world all of their own. 

“Whats’ your name, sir?” She says to him, smiling.