Midnight Gas Station

I sat down to write about an hour ago. I guess the feeling I was chasing in this little piece of writing was something like a missed opportunity, but one that is not fully formed. I wanted to capture the way opportunity is just a malleable thing that will come and go with the slightest change of wind. This is a chance encounter between two people. A girl who feels, but can't voice her attraction to an almost caricature of a man. I also couldn't help but notice how with each word and phrase the passage leaned further and further towards caricaturization for both of the characters, as if these people were two jokes forming in my head, but not jokes directed on the page for a particular laugh, just sort of a joke that is a riff on emotions I have felt, including the joke and ambivalence of fate, time, and the way people get trapped into the fixtures of their own lives, including gas-stations, cigarettes, and even manners of speech.

I stood beside my car in the gas station. I had come from Reno on my way to Los Angeles. This was somewhere near Bakersfield. It was late. I was holding the nozzle, staring at the price, $2.89 per gallon, about to insert the nozzle into my '91 Camry. He pulled in, with one headlight that placed a spot-light on the ice-box. He was driving a Chevy pick-up that sounded like it had some kind of belt malfunction, or maybe it was an issue with the alternator. The night was cool, dusty. I could hear crickets. I could have driven another seven hours.
Then I was in line. There was a line. I eyed the chewing gum, looking for something I'd never seen before, but they only had the classics. Spearmint, JuicyFruit, Big Red, Wintergreen, Peppermint. Trident, Dentyne, Orbit, Wrigley's. I knew them all by heart. He walked in and his jeans were faded, like really old jeans, but they didn't have any holes. He cut in front of us, the family of three, and the two young boys who were being carded for their beer. The hands of the clock veered closer and closer to midnight.
"Hey, can I get a pack of Marlboros," he said with a southern accent. Marlboro man.
"There's a line," said the old lady behind the counter with purple hair and roots of silver.
"Oh." He said. He turned and looked at me, the last in line, then sauntered back, closer to me. I turned towards the chewing gum at my side and I noticed how he planted his boots apart from one another, the distance from one side of a horse's belly to the other. His tan arms were crossed, revealing the line separating the white from the tan, just below his Nascar shirt. His eyes looked up from under his camouflage cap.
"Did you know that one of your lights is out?" I asked.
"Yeah, its been out for the last 350 miles," he said and he winked. He winked! He smiled.
"Well, how did you make it that far without getting pulled over, then?" I asked.
"Not sure. I guess the coppers didn't notice."
"350 miles is a long way. Where're you headed?"
"Hollywood. I'm headed there for a movie-gig. All of the way from Kentucky."
"Oh yeah? What kind of movie-gig?" I asked.
"Stunt-man."
"No kiddin'?"
"I jump off of buildings and what-not."
"Well shit, I don't think I've ever met a stunt-man. That's impressive." I smiled at him, with my full attention. He smiled again.
"It ain't nothin' special. I just rolled around in the dirt growing up all of the time, and then one day a movie producer met me at a bar when the Kentucky Derby was going on. I bet him that I could jump off of a three story building. He put in $50 and then other people at the bar started to get interested in our little bet. No one believed me, but I convinced them to let me try, and sure enough I made $350 and got me a movie-gig."
"Dang. That's not bad. What's the movie?"
"I believe the working-title is Dangerous Fiascoes. Its an action thriller about the Napalm industry."
I batted my eyelashes, in awe. I felt a was of heat climbing up through my collar and impulsively, I reached for a pack of Big Red.
"You're up," the stunt-man said.
I looked forward and realized that the line had disappeared and there was a gap of about ten feet between me and the counter. The old lady with purple hair and silver roots had sunk below the counter to re-fill the cigarette display and the hands of the clock now veered toward a quarter past.
"Oh, goodness," I said, and skipped forward. I paid for two Red-Bulls, a coffee and a packet of energy pills. And a pack of Big Red.
When I was done, I waited outside the door, to have a smoke. The stunt-man came out to join me. Outside, the bright lights of the Shell station lit up his green eyes and I could see why the movie-producer had been drawn to him.
"You know, I'm heading to L.A., too," I said, while the smoke exhaled from my lungs.
"No really?" he said.
"Yeah, I'm going out there to see my cousin. She just had a baby. I've never been there before, but I hear that Venice Beach is a trip."
"I've never been there either," he said. "Looks like you might be planning to go the rest of the way, tonight. Judging by your purchases, anyhow." he said, nodding to my paper bag.
"Yeah, I was hoping to. I've got to be back to work on Monday, so I don't have much time."
"Oh, that's too bad. I thought maybe...well never mind."
"Never mind what?" I asked. He didn't answer. We just stood there, looking out into the black emptiness beyond the lights of the Shell station. A string of images unraveled in my head. I grew dizzy. I saw caravans, camels, remote tents in the desert, dancing by fire. But this was Bakersfield, not the Sahara. I was not a bejeweled whore, he was not a prince.
"Maybe I'll see ya," he said. That was all.
"Yeah maybe," I said. He walked off, unlatched the door, swung his legs in and fired the engine. He stuck his arm out his window, with a big wave, too big, with his whole arm. It was like he was parading away on a float. I let my cigarette die out and I drove off into a ditch on the side of the highway, without a sip of coffee. I slept the whole night through until 7am the next morning when the sun had ignited the sky long enough to make my car feel like a furnace.