Quarters Only

What had started as an inconvenience had become a dire need that could no longer be denied without running the risk of catastrophe; Jase Maurits had to piss. He had been seriously considering the logistics and legality of pulling onto the narrow shoulder of I-30 when his headlights hit the blue REST AREA sign, informing him that his salvation was a mere two miles away. He sat forward in the driver’s seat and pressed down on the pedal a bit; the need to shave off even a few seconds seemed increasingly important as the pressure inside him forced him to bite down on his lip to keep from cursing.

He took the exit a little faster than he should have, the ramp curving away from the interstate through a strand of trees before opening into a parking lot washed in the pale orange light of sodium lamps. Jase glanced at the clock on the dash as he sped to a spot directly in front of the entrance to the squat brick building in front of him.

2:56 a.m.

Jase threw the car in park, killed the engine, and climbed out before the headlights had finished fading. The place was deserted. There were at least forty unoccupied spaces around him. The September night air was warm and filled with the chirping of crickets, though he barely noticed, his attention solely focused on the illuminated MEN sign visible through the glass doors. He walked quickly, not quite allowing himself to run.

The lobby was smaller than it had looked from the outside. Restrooms occupied either side of the building with a few vending machines wedged into the space between them. A large state map hung near the entrance beneath a plexiglass cover scratched cloudy with age. Beside it, an enormous mural consumed most of the back wall, but Jase only caught a glimpse of it: Hallways. Lots of them.

He shoved through the restroom door.

Seconds later, Jase stood over the urinal with his eyes closed, experiencing the kind of profound relief that made him wonder why people bothered chasing happiness in more complicated forms. Then he realized the relief brought something else with it. Exhaustion.

When he finally finished, he washed his hands and splashed cold water on his face. The man staring back from the mirror looked like he’d been driving for much longer than he had. His eyes were bloodshot and dark stubble covered his jaw.

He should have taken his sister up on the couch, but six hours wasn’t that bad, and he’d promised his boss he’d be back Monday morning. Rachel had called him a stubborn asshole as he carried his bag to the car. Jase had pointed out that she’d known that about him for thirty-eight years and should probably stop expecting a breakthrough.

Jase dried his hands and walked back to the lobby, where an old coffee machine sat next to a snack machine and one selling bottled drinks. It was a hulking brown relic, the kind of machine that dropped a paper cup into a recessed compartment and filled it while you watched. There were faded photographs of steaming cups arranged beside rectangular buttons.

Coffee. Coffee with Cream. Coffee with Sugar. Hot Chocolate.

A peeling sticker above the coin slot read:

$1.00

Quarters Only

“Of course.”

He knew he didn’t have any change on him, but he checked his pockets anyway. Keys. Phone. Wallet. That was it.

There was a bill changer mounted on the opposite wall. Jase crossed toward it, pulling a dollar from his wallet, and this time he actually looked at the mural.

Dozens of corridors intersected one another at impossible angles, some narrowing into the distance while others seemed to emerge from places they couldn’t possibly originate. Perspective shifted depending on where his eyes settled, giving him the uncomfortable impression that some of the passages descended while simultaneously climbing. It reminded him of M.C. Escher. Hyperbolic geometry laying out something that obeyed the rules until you tried to understand how.

Jase fed the dollar into the changer. The machine swallowed it and spat four quarters into the tray. He scooped them out and returned to the coffee machine. He dropped the first quarter in and heard it clink through the chute and land in the catch. The second and third quarters followed.

The fourth quarter slipped through his fingers. It struck his toe, bounced onto its edge with a metallic tink, and rolled under the coffee machine.

“Son of a bitch.”

Then he listened. The quarter kept rolling.

And rolling.

And rolling.

His brow creased as he contemplated that. Then he got down on his knees, pressed his knuckles onto the epoxied concrete floor, and looked sideways under the machine.

Jase stared for several seconds, trying to work out what exactly he was seeing. The wall was visible behind the machine, but the place where a baseboard should have been was missing, and a soft fluorescent light was pushing its way through the gap.

He stood and looked around the lobby, then up around the edge of the ceiling. If he was about to start rearranging state property over twenty-five cents, he at least wanted to make sure there wouldn’t be a record of it. There were no cameras that he could see.

Jase gripped the side of the coffee machine and pulled. The behemoth didn’t move. He planted a foot against the wall and rocked the machine toward himself. There was a scraping sound against the concrete as it started to shift, and after a bit more effort, there was enough room for him to squeeze behind it.

The light was brighter now. It came from beneath the wall, but when Jase leaned closer, there was a barely discernible, thin vertical line. He ran his hand across it, and his thumb felt a seam.

A door.

There was no knob or hinges, and nothing to distinguish it from the rest of the wall except the nearly invisible crease beneath his fingertips.

He pushed.

Something clicked and the wall moved toward him. He jumped back.

“What the fuck?”

The panel had opened less than an inch, leaving a gap about the width of his finger. It was heavy as he pulled it open. On the other side was a hallway, perhaps six feet wide, its walls painted the same bureaucratic beige as the rest of the lobby. Long bulb fixtures ran along the ceiling at regular intervals, illuminating a floor that sloped gently downward. There was nothing to suggest what the hallway was for. It simply continued downward until turning sharply to the right.

Jase leaned his head inside.

“Hello?”

Nobody answered.

He stepped back into the lobby. For a moment he stood there looking from the open doorway to the glass entrance twenty feet away. Then he went outside.

The chorus of crickets returned as soon as the doors opened. Jase walked around the side of the building, following the direction of the hidden corridor as best as he could. A narrow strip of grass extended behind the rest stop with a metal trash can mounted to a pole with a sign above it asking travelers to clean up after their pets. Beyond that was forest.

He walked farther, stopped by the edge of the light cast by the parking lot, and looked back at the building. No chance he’d walked as far as that hallway had seemed to go. The trees were tall and smelled of pine. He didn’t know for sure, but he thought the root systems for trees of this size must run deep. A basement extending this far out would be impossible. 

Jase rubbed a hand over his face.

He should leave.

The thought arrived with remarkable clarity.

He looked toward his red Camry. Then back at the building.

“Fuck.”

He went inside.

The coffee machine still sat crooked from the wall and the door behind it remained open. He walked over and looked down the corridor again.

Jase stepped across the threshold. The temperature dropped immediately, several degrees cooler than the lobby, with the dry artificial chill of an office building after hours. He felt a thrill settle into his gut, and with its arrival, his exhaustion vanished.

He started down, his shoes making soft squeaks against the polished floor. By the time he reached the bend, he figured he was now under the forest. He looked down and saw his quarter lying near the wall. He laughed lightly and bent to pick it up. He slipped it in his pocket. At least he’d be able to get that coffee when he went back.

He looked around the corner at another corridor stretching ahead. About halfway down, an open doorway waited on the left. He walked toward it and stepped inside.

The room was enormous. Rows of arcade cabinets were arranged in tidy rows with narrow aisles between them. There had to be over a hundred. Every screen was dark.

The nearest cabinet was Spy Hunter. He remembered the name, but couldn’t picture the gameplay. Beside it stood Sinistar and then Trog, followed by one that sent a wave of nostalgia rushing through him.

Jase’s smile was ear to ear. “Holy shit. BurgerTime.” He hadn’t thought about that game in decades.

His dad used to give him five dollars in quarters and turn him loose in the arcade while he bowled with his buddies. Jase could make those quarters last for hours, but BurgerTime had always kicked his ass.

He didn’t see the classics. There was no Pac-Man or Donkey Kong or Street Fighter. These were games he remembered only after reading their names.

Jase wrapped his hand around the joystick of Elevator Action. It answered with a series of tiny mechanical clicks. He pushed a button.

Nothing.

None of the machines were plugged in. In fact, there were no outlets that Jase could see.

At the far end of the room was another doorway. He looked back at the corridor he’d entered from, then at the doorway ahead. 

“Just a little farther.”

The doorway led into another corridor, though this one was shorter than the last. Jase followed it past the next turn before reaching a second room.

Dozens of vending machines stood in rows in the middle of the room. Some were boxy steel cabinets with narrow glass doors while others had gigantic advertisements covering their fronts. Jase stepped up to the nearest row and immediately recognized the red and white logo of Tab. A few machines down was Crystal Pepsi.

“No way,” he said with a smile.

He wandered between them. Slice. Surge. Josta. Some he remembered while others stirred vague recollections of commercials or convenience store ads from when he was a kid. One machine was filled with bottles of Orbitz, tiny colored balls suspended inside the liquid.

Jase leaned closer. There was condensation on the bottles. He touched the glass.

Cold.

He stepped around the machine. There wasn’t even a power cord.

His smile faded. He backed away and continued toward the next doorway.

Another corridor waited beyond it. This one went farther, but he could see the next doorway. He felt confident he would be able to find his way back as long as he didn’t take too many turns.

Pay phones covered every square inch of the walls and stood in rows on metal partitions throughout the room. Hundreds upon hundreds of them. Some were stainless steel, others faded blue or black, each with its receiver hanging neatly in its cradle.

His mother used to make him call collect whenever he needed a ride, then decline the charges after he’d crammed his location into the space where he was supposed to say his name. She called it beating the system. Jase called it embarrassing as hell.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen one. He lifted the receiver from the nearest phone and held it to his ear.

No dial tone.

He hung it up.

Jase continued through the room without stopping to inspect the others. The novelty had begun to wane. Another doorway stood on the opposite side, and beyond it another corridor. This one had a short turn to the left only a few feet away. He decided he’d poke his head around the corner before turning back.

The corridor was a gradual incline leading up. At the top was a door cracked open just enough for someone to slip inside. His door.

“What the hell?”

He glanced back toward the phone room, wondering how he’d somehow looped around, then decided it wasn’t worth trying to figure out. All these hallways and doors must have been connected, and here he was.

He climbed the incline quickly, eager to leave this strangeness behind him and get back on the road. He was silently crafting the Reddit post he was going to make about this place in his head as he squeezed through the door and stepped back into the lobby.

He took two steps and then stopped in his tracks.

The coffee machine was green.

Jase stared at it, certain that he must be misremembering. It was the exact same machine, but the one he’d pulled away from the wall had been brown. He was sure of it.

He looked toward the state map, then the mural beside it.

Something was wrong with that too.

Jase crossed the lobby and studied it. The corridors were there, intersecting and folding into one another at impossible angles, but the longer he stared, the stronger the sensation became that he wasn’t looking at the same painting.

Then he realized why. It was backwards. The entire mural had been reversed.

Jase turned slowly.

The bill changer was on the wrong wall.

“No.”

He went outside. The same pale orange lamps lit the same vacant parking lot, and the same smell of pine hit his nose. His Camry was parked exactly where he’d left it.

Except it was black.

Jase stepped toward it. Same license plate. Same wheels. Wrong color.

He pulled his keys from his pocket. He pointed the fob at the car and pressed unlock.

The headlights flashed.

Jase stood perfectly still.

A toilet flushed inside the rest stop.

He turned. Through the glass doors, he could see the entrance to the men’s room. A man walked out. He was wearing the same shirt Jase was wearing. Same jeans and shoes too. He also had the same face.

Jase forgot how to swallow. 

He watched himself through the window as he walked to the coffee machine, studied the buttons, and then checked his pockets. Jase knew how this would go. 

Jase heard the bill changer dispensing coins, and for some reason, that made the hair on the backs of his arms stand up.

He watched himself cross back to the coffee machine, his hand moving to the coin slot.

One quarter.

Two quarters.

Three quarters.

The fourth quarter fell. He couldn’t hear it strike the ground, but he watched himself get down on the floor to peer underneath. He watched himself stand back up and step around to the side of the machine, where the door he had left slightly ajar was now visible. The other Jase poked his head inside and called out.

“Hello?”

The sound barely reached Jase, but it reminded him what came next.

“Oh shit,” he mumbled to himself as he ran around to the far side of the Camry.

He crouched down just a second before the glass doors opened. The other Jase walked outside, then around the side of the building, going back until he hit the tree line.

Of course he did.

Jase remained hidden, his heart thudding in his chest. He had a bone-deep instinct that he could not allow himself to be seen. Something about the idea terrified him in a way he had never understood possible.

A few moments later, the man went back inside. Jase crept toward the front of the Camry, staying low, and looked through the glass doors.

The other Jase stood behind the green coffee machine. He looked down the corridor, then stepped through.

One minute passed.

Then another.

Jase slowly stood and walked back into the lobby. He took great care to keep his steps light as he inched closer to the hidden door. He peered into the corridor. He watched himself pick up the quarter near the bend, laugh to himself, and disappear around the turn.

Jase let out a shuddering breath, then eased the door closed. He pushed it until he heard a gentle click. The fluorescent light disappeared. He shoved against the coffee machine until it scraped across the floor and settled against the wall.

A different flavor of profound relief rushed through him. Brown or green, it didn’t matter anymore. He was finished with this shit.

Jase turned toward the exit, then stopped. His hand went into his pocket and came out holding a quarter. He rolled it between his fingers and looked back at the machine.

He dropped the quarter in the slot. The machine came alive with a mechanical hum. A paper cup fell into the compartment and a stream of black coffee began pouring into it. It filled the lobby with the smell of something hot, bitter, and wonderfully ordinary.

Jase waited for the machine to stop, took the cup, and headed back out into the night. After all, he still had a long drive ahead of him.