1
Layla works the register, the on the wall reading well past four in the morning, as the manager smiles jeeringly from the door, letting yet another customer in, as her line simply gets longer, the customer at the counter now counting pennies to pay hundreds. Her own smile feels broken and tattered, her eyes near to tears, her body aching and shivering under the weight of what looks like will be an eternal abyss of humanity. Somewhere, something screams into the void, and she realizes that the sound is her own voice, her mouth dropped agape and uttering the alien digital noise as she begins to claw at her face in panic.
The thick resin of dream is split by the electronic whine of the alarm, its shrill cry dispersing the shadows that had danced in her mind a moment earlier, replacing it with the dull drone of a too early morning and the warm ache in her shoulders and back, hand numbly fumbling for the phone to tap at the screen until successful in silencing the idiot crier. The sheets cling to her skin, blankets bunched around her feet as they move to the floor, her skin like summer in the swamp, damp, sticky, and prickling against the invasion of movement.
It’s hot. Unpleasant. Third week of the heat wave. Second week of the busted air conditioner looming in the window like a casket for the comfort she could have felt in the night. A hand brushes back the tangles of red hair from her face, the dampness of it not keeping the knots from gripping to her fingers and tugging at her scalp. She blinks, blearily, at the morning light coming in through the slats in the blinds, licking the taste of fuzz on her teeth fruitlessly as she stands, stretching out her lower back as it all but audibly groans at the impertinence of movement.
Plush carpet old enough to be her father pads under her feet as she flips through her phone, putting on some music with life, energy, anger, and lyrics she can’t make out as it syncs to the Bluetooth speakers, growling to life across the small apartment halfway into the first verse. The aggression of the music is good for her soul, the beat making her hips begin to swing as she moves to the shower, the bass thumping against the dull ache in her forehead like a feral drummer.
A warm soda, open and flat from the night before, almost knocks over the half-empty glass of whiskey as she slides it across the counter, popping the cap off the ibuprofen, tossing back a couple of pain killers with the thick, sweet almost syrup as she cringes at the taste and feel. She moves into the bathroom without urgency, brushing her teeth as she lets the shower water warm.
Less than an hour later, she is rattling keys in her door, tucking her wallet in the back pocket of her khaki pants, adjusting the itchy black polo shirt on her shoulders as she goes to make her way. She stops for a half-second to kick the tire of her old beat up economy car, spitting on the hood as she grumbles about its current state: dead for reasons unknown, but costing her fifty dollars a month to park like the world’s most cumbersome paper-weight.
The bus stop is empty, as it normally is while the sun is half-peeking across the horizon. The bus itself is almost on time, giving her only minutes to worry that this time it won’t come. That she’ll have to call her manager and say this is the day that public transport failed, that she’ll have to go home, go back to bed, and put today’s problems off for one more day. Instead, almost as if to mock her, the turquoise and white fleet vehicle rattles and rumbles up to the stop, the hiss of the brakes always setting her teeth on edge as the door opens, the bus lowering slightly, as she steps in and flicks her card against the display.
The driver, something between Santa’s long-lost twin brother and an elder statesman biker, barely acknowledges her as she moves past, subconsciously counting the people aboard the bus as she moves to a seat away from all of them, and tunes them out to the white noise of the engine, and the drone of traffic. It’s not his job to make friends with the passengers, and the repeat of that mantra through is too-long career as a bus driver finally settled in. Better to make schedule and keep the bosses happy, than to worry about people who he’ll most likely only see once in his life.
Near the front, a young man sits, shifting nervously in the ill-fitting thrift store suit, adjusting the clip-on tie awkwardly with one hand, while the other holds on to the small manilla envelope containing everything he needs for the interview ahead. Months without work have left him anxious, panicked to get work again before the razor’s edge his family balances on finally severs them utterly, and a part of him has already attached the idea of ‘last hope’ to today’s meeting, no matter how premature that is. He doesn’t see the other passengers, but rather sees ahead to the end of the day, the disappointment in his wife’s eyes when he tells her another interview has failed.
At the back, watching the morning sun listlessly, is a woman whose makeup was hastily reapplied, rubbing her temples before messy hair with leaves in it, a drumbeat in tune to her heart behind her eyes, as a heavy and hot weight rolls in her empty stomach, the taste of bile and cheap beer on her tongue. There’s a smirk on her face despite it, remembering what she can remember of the night before, excited to tell the story to her roommate who went home early. It ended up being a hell of a party, after all.
Layla sits across from the rear door, staring out it, the sun on the back of her neck warm in spite of the tint on the windows, the feeling of the thin breeze of the air conditioning paradise in the already rising heat of the mid-summer morning. She looks away when people get on or off, but more as an automatic function than as any kind of social grace or awkwardness, a habit borne of years rattling from one place to another on the bus.
Eventually, it’s her stop. Knocking on the glass door of the store, pacing as she waits for someone to unlock the door, let her in, so she can go to the back, and stare into the aging yellow paint of the break room for 20 minutes. Half-practiced pleasantries with the morning stock crew as they begin to wind their day down, her teeth slowly becoming more clenched as she sits listening to the ticking of the clock.
The stock crew is leaving, blocking the punch clock in their chatter and in-jokes as she pushes her way past them, swiping her card and heading to the front of the store. The air conditioning the only comfort given as the pad under her feet seems to make her feet hurt worse than the linoleum does. She counts her drawer, making sure the amount is correct, as the front-end manager flits about checking the stock, setting everything in place, for the opening of the doors.
Once the doors open, it’s a slow build throughout the day. A trickle at first, building to a deluge of humanity. Some come to try and find the fans that were sold out in the first couple of days of the heatwave. Some come to stock up on random cheap sundries. Some come to fill their pockets with things they hope they need or can hock for some money. Some come to escape the heat in the bliss of air conditioning.
The line is consistent, becoming constant. One person after another. One problem after another. Wrong label. Missing tag. Not in the system. I’d like to return this. Tax exempt. I don’t want to pay that much for that. Why is the line so long. Why aren’t there more cashiers. Hurry, I’m running late. Do you take checks. Someone at the other store said you’d have it. I called last week and they said you had it. I’d like to speak to your manager. I’m never shopping here again.
The customers who are pleasant, or even simply benign, vanish from memory, replaced by the angry, scowling, sneering faces of the ones who weren’t. They didn’t shop, they demanded. They weren’t customers, they were owners. They couldn’t be wrong, they’d been told it their whole life. Her smile was hard, but it held. Her voice was pleasant, almost forced, but practiced from several years at one register or another. Her desire was to scream at them, to berate them, to fling obscenities into the faces of their children, but the only desire they could read on her face, in her voice, was to be as helpful as possible.
Break was missed. Lunch was late. Someone called out, so it was just her for long hours of the morning. Payday was still days away, so the only solace was that her shift would end when her replacement got in, her feet almost screaming as her back ached, her mind focused on the transaction. The minutiae.
Scan.
Bag.
Scan.
Bag.
Thanks.
Next.
She watched the door, and almost danced when she saw the swing shift cashier come in. More people had called out, so a day of the till, the phone, and the throngs of humanity unending. Layla was, in that moment, Dante seeing Beatrice at the passage between Perdition and Paradise. The manager took the cashier by the elbow, guiding her to the back, as Layla counted down the minutes until the register closed for the day, when she could put the store at her back and start homeward.
She was unaware of much else, except it was taking longer than it should for her replacement to come forward before the evening manager touched her shoulder to get her attention. They’d had to let the other cashier go, a mandate from higher up. They appreciated that Layla would be staying until the closing cashier came in, several hours down the road.
She wanted to scream, to cry, to unleash a thunderstorm of profanity upon the rat-faced bowling ball of a man. But the money would be good. And it was only a few hours. Another small slice of another small day of just one more moving forward. She needed the job more than she needed to go home and stare into the internet until she went to bed. She nodded, smile gone for what felt like a long moment as she did, before it came back, as practiced and honest as a whore’s.
It’s dark when she finally leaves, prickly pain running from her ankles to her shoulders in varying amounts, dark circles under green eyes as she rubs the bridge of her nose, pulling her hair tie out of her hair and spitting on the sidewalk, wishing she hadn’t quit smoking. Wishing she could afford another bottle of whiskey, before she willed her feet to trudge to the bus stop, the heat on the blacktop palpable in the stale, damp air.
The bus is not so kind his evening as it had been this morning. It’s not as much on time or late for this stop, as it is almost early for the next an hour later. The metal bench of the stop is warm in the heat, and the stink of the traffic as it passes would be nauseating if she’d managed to eat during her shift. She passes the time looking at the screen of her phone, wandering randomly from the doomsaying of the news, and the mindless nothing of memes. She looks at his name several times, but can’t bring herself to open the messenger and text him; things just ended too bad, and it was still too soon.
She was checking her e-mail when the bus rattled up, an older turquoise and white beast, the open windows giving threat to the state of the air conditioning. The driver, a middle-aged man with a distant expression and sweat on his brow, nodded aside to her as the pass dinged on the machine. His eyes are on the steady stream of the river of cars around him, pulling out into it as she moves to her seat.
The bus rattles along the road as the late afternoon sun beats down on the roof. The air is stifling, despite the thin opening of the windows as the lumbering thing drags to a stop. Even in the shade across of the other side of the bus is no real escape, as with each rise of the old unruly road the sun peeks down into the window, casting its hot and golden gaze across the whole of the interior. The small number of passengers remaining sit far from one another, each trying to ignore the rest and keep to their own little problems.
At the front, a little old woman sat next to her purse, with a rolling cart tucked behind her legs, the handle coming up between her knees and pressing her flowered skirt to the seat, rubbing her eyes behind thick glasses as she listens to the newest audiobook from her favorite erotic author, shifting nervously in her seat from to time.
At the back, a teenager wreathed uncomfortably in last month’s latest fashions is sprawled across three seats and trying his best to look aloof and above everything as, from behind sunglasses and hidden by the back of the seat in front of him, he regularly checks his phone for a reply to the message he sent before he got on the bus, his stomach naught but knots and butterflies. Hoping she sees it. Hoping she reads it. Hoping she feels the same way.
Near the middle, ringing the bell for the next stop, a man in an ill-fitted suit shifts uncomfortably, pulling the collar around his neck looser, swallowing hard in the itching, sweat damp suit. He drums his fingers on his legs, looking around at the passing scenery, becoming more concerned as his stop approaches, running his hand through his sweat and gel styled hair, biting his bottom lip as he prays that today’s interviews went better than last week’s. Not sure how much longer he can afford to make it to them, without asking for help.
Across from the back exit, bracing slightly as the bus comes to a stop, Layla sits and shifts her black uniform shirt, musty from the heat and all the itchier for it as the bile of customer service still sits on the back of her tongue. She glances at the man in the suit crossly, not even knowing the irritation he registers in her gaze, unsure why he smiles sheepishly as he gets off the bus. She adjusts herself on the seat, moving the uncomfortable khaki pants under her rear slightly, trying to find some kind of comfort on the hard seat of the bus as she shifts backward, the bus lurching forward once more with a creaking groan.
The driver looks through the mirror, checking the people are seated as he moves back into traffic. His sweat has all but stuck him to the seat, dampening the front of his shirt as he rolls the wheel left, cursing in his mind at the state of the bus. Tapping his fan in the vain attempt to get it to suddenly cool the air properly, rather than just breathe steadily across the sweat on his skin. He shifts his uniform tie slightly, adjusting his seat a bit as he pushes the break for the light. He coughs, clearing his throat of the thick dryness and the clawing need for a cigarette, putting the straw of his water bottle to his lips and pulling at the swamp-warm liquid in a desperate attempt to quench that fire before for five more minutes.
The ride is a chokingly mundane affair; every stop and every intersection blending into the next. Every passenger blending together, just more flotsam of the sea of humanity. Same day. Same route. Mostly the same faces, and the ones that are new are rarely more than a passing note. The traffic outside, buzzing and bitching, as people struggle to race one another to wherever any of them want to go. Stop. One more. Stop. One less. A slow, steady rhythm like the waves of a sea on hot asphalt, while the sun sets across the panes of glass.
Weariness, from the heat, from the drone of the engine, from the rocking of the bus, and from a long of the cash register, and endless sea of people among whom only the worst examples are memorable, settles in her muscles like the air before bad weather.