Cool night. Just the first bite of fall.
Stop the car.
Sit, listen for a moment to the quiet.
Find your Visa card. Little green sign says pay at the pump-for your convenience.
Get out and pop the gas tank lid. Slide your card in the reader mounted atop the pump, carefully noting the directions for the correct way to do it.
Beeps. Buttons.
Flip the lever. Pump.
That gas smell. It's intoxicating in that way we don't like to admit. Sweet. The breeze picks up. The cars do their passing doppler song on the road.
Pump shuts off.
Nineteen dollars and forty-three cents.
"Do you want a receipt?" Asks the bright screen about the height of your nose.
You press "Yes."
The receipt whirrs out. Tiny rip. You pocket the receipt to record later in the checkbook register. Very efficient, these modern conveniences.
Before getting in the car, glance up at the store. It's that typical bright white island of lonely light in the night.
No movement. At this time of the night-it's late-the clerk is probably watching one of those small TV's. Crackly re-runs of Springer.
Nodding off.
You feel a bit colder now. It is late. You have a full tank. Bedtime sounds good.
Driving away you wonder at the fortitude of people working the lateshift at such places.
The jobs are dangerous. They get robbed a lot. Treated like expendable people.
Funny. With pay at the pump you didn't even need an attendant.
The place looked awfully empty.
A bright, fluorescent tomb perhaps. While you paid.
At the pump.
