Night Shift

by Diana Pollin

part 2 of 3

III

Unbelievably lucky was she when she arrived in a stupor at the Dunkin’ Donuts. Why was it empty on a weekday night?

“It’s a trap, Marion Peters, leave at once!” Jiminy Cricket said looking over her shoulder. “This place is weird, empty as an old can. You think you’re some kind of queen ? Do you really think that you deserve special treatment after what has been going on in your poor little head all day long?”

But the hour was late, hunger is the best teacher, and reverie beckoned, she promised JC, no ill thoughts would or could stir up her weary mind. She would dream of her window-sill children, her flowers, the four o’clocks in tardy bloom, the naughty hibiscus and the sensuous begonias.

And even the spider plant would be checked to see if its visitor had stocked the larder. And she thought of Delia and Reverend Andrews, their three children, two girls and a boy, well dressed, always polite and smiling, and even this warm empty dining area, strangely hers tonight, a gift, no questions asked, a small favor of Chance to one who is not used to receiving.

She got her tray, picked up a free newspaper, sat where she never sat, facing a mirror, and began flipping through the pages of the tabloid until her eyes came upon an ad for a secretarial school with a photo.

No high school degree? No problem. We’ll have you through business school in no time and on your way to earning big bucks. And feeling great about yourself. We’ll teach you how to act, talk and dress like those Gal Fridays the Brass cannot do without. So stop by for more information and a free appraisal. You’re headed for the top of the Class.

Stunning, that Beyoncé type with a telephone against her ear, and, in the other hand, a briefcase bursting with gazillion dollar deals, she is standing in an alley of royal palms on some financially graced shore where limousines cruise down wide boulevards and life is said to be easy.

“A real looker, I agree.” The black bowler hat had taken the seat facing hers! He had entered with his foulness, called in by her dreaming of Beyoncé in paradise, she was sure. A plump bejeweled hand reached across the table! Never would she take it, but he did have the look of a rescuer approaching a drowning person.

“Now, why wouldn’t you shake the hand of an elderly gentleman who followed you to church? I know, the old sin of pride, too good for someone like me? Well, sweetheart, you are facing a mirror, and dreaming of secretarial school, so doesn’t that tell you something? Suppose you were wrong, very wrong. Be honest with yourself, and the rest will follow. The name is Gabriel.”

“How did you know I was looking at the ad?” Her dark eyes narrowed mistrustfully.

“I know everything about you. You may not know it, but you are rather pretty. Push your bang aside and above all lose some weight.” He smiled at her. She accepted his outstretched hand.

“I get it,” she said, “you are the angel of the spider plant!”

The elegantly dressed gentleman burst out laughing. “Sweetheart, I’ve been called many things, but never that!”

“Then, who are you?” Marion choked with fright.

“Sweetheart, I am you. I am the big blazing truth that you are going to have to face up to one of these days, and the sooner the better!” Gabriel pulled out a fat cigar.

“There is no smoking in this restaurant!” Marion cried, astounded.

“Yeah, I know. You should try it one day, not the cigars — not for ladies — but silk-cut Turkish... Maybe somewhere deep down, you really want to give it a try. The only cigarette you ever had was when you were ten, in the parking lot behind a Safeway supermarket and, if I recall, the experience ended painfully. Only smug unadventurous souls give up a pleasure. And as for this place being a restaurant...”

“Get to the point! NO beating around the bush and this... this... name-calling, it’s just plain insulting! Okay, so I am not the glamour queen of the year, but at least I know what I want!” She hissed loudly while he laughed, but he ceased his laughter at her final words.

“Do you? Are you sure you know what you want?”

“Yes. Yes, I suppose I do.”

“He smokes like a chimney,” Gabriel said.

“Who?”

“Your husband, that crook, who else?”

“Yeah, Roman goes through a pack and a half a day.”

The gentleman took out a card and read, “Smoking constricts blood vessels and thus contributes to aneurysm ruptures.” He returned the card to his pocket and said squarely to Marion’s face, “A longstanding habit of smoking can end in sudden death.”

“Yeah, but I don’t smoke. Never have.”

“Sweetheart, not you — him! Now, when you step out of that subway an hour from now you’re going past Santos, and I recommend you go in and buy a pack of whatever he likes. You are all out of them and he’s going to bust you in the morning anyway. If he gets his hands on a cigarette... Let us just say that I will make sure that it’ll be his last.”

“Just what are you saying’?” Marion Peters knit her brow.

Gabriel touched her wrist and whispered, “Listen. You are what? 27? You can go through life a battered cleaning woman, dead at an early age, or you can take steps to change it.”

“Are you telling me that I should bring on a death just because...”

“I’m not telling you anything. I am just giving you the truth! Up to you to do what you like with it.”

“Do you realize that it is a crime, a sin! An act against... against... God!”

“Hush!” he said and smiled. “Take a sip of coffee, it’s getting cold.” When she looked up, he was gone.

Tortuously slow was the ride to Atlantic Avenue, the stations appeared like bobbing shadows on a Chinese lantern, they lingered teasingly when she wanted them to move in a sort of relay race in which she was the baton. When they neared Atlantic Avenue, she felt like a diver sighting a brown line shimmering above the nebulous liquid.

And in the same impatient way, she wanted Tuesday to bolt to the end of the week, where her dreams were already resting, and praying in the pristine white church on the hill, embellished with the intoxicating sweetness of flowers and the prettiness of Delia, and her minister husband who was so distracted by his wife that he had to shift around the sermon pages during the minute of prayer. That was her Sunday morning sorcery, conjuring sunshine and grace, even in the dead of winter.

Santos! She saw him in his doorway at midnight, pinning a look on her that felt like a bee sting and she responded to him with a righteous glare. God save her! The supplier to Satan would be glad to open just for her... NO! It was unthinkable! May he be damned! She walked past him with all the Christian virtues speeding her pace.

Be thankful, Marion Maybelle, for the small joys that come your way; there’s worse off than you, and you know it. Today is Tuesday and you get the night shift! At least you got a job! He has slugged you again over those Marlboros you won’t buy? Well, you know how it is: “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do!” Remember that line and keep silent, that’s two lives you’re saving, his and yours.

Your Christian duty is to save them in silence, something about the right hand not knowing what the left is doing. And keep telling yourself that some people must wait before they are led in triumph to the Lord! If you are a Christian beg for pardon when he comes at you, hush up when he calls you chubby. “Turn the other cheek” wasn’t written for the birds. And hang in there, think about Sunday coming up and Delia at the organ.

But it was Saturday Marion Maybelle was thinking of. A few blithe minutes to finish the mug of coffee. She will miss the train. So what! The office at 42nd Street will wait.

A sunny and icy Saturday had swirled out of the week’s grinding dullness, winter had put on its finery and its minion, a nippy mischievous wind, was exploring open necks and ears. She chanced to meet them — Delia and the Reverend, their two big girls and their little boy trudging after his sisters — on an afternoon walk. The girls wore white dresses with skirts opening out like lilies beneath their matching plaid coats and the son, in a dark suit and a woolen cap, trailed peevishly after his sisters.

She was returning home from the supermarket, bundled up and overloaded with packages; she had deliberately walked past Santos and there they were, Delia and the children and, to her great surprise, the Reverend, emerging from the hovel with a pack of cigarettes.

“Smoking! Reverend Andrews!” she exclaimed.

“That’s right, Mrs. Peters, bad habit, shouldn’t indulge.” He answered with a smile that gave every indication that he had no intention of stopping the indulgence.

But she forgave him. He was really such a dear and a great guide, inspiring people to go the straight and narrow. And he was so boyishly good looking, despite his 50 years, graced with a halo of thick silvery hair that must be the color of the eyes of God.

His sermon on Sunday praised purity. “Draw the lines of good thought and righteous action and color them with your character. Your acts must reflect the truthfulness of your thoughts...”

His words of righteousness caused the congregation to rise and sway in harmony like the palm fronds that must have fanned the Savior’s way into Jerusalem, and, during the coffee which, that week, she did not refuse, she saw him put his arm around his wife’s shoulder.

The front door clicked open. She heard shuffling, then a curse, and the door slammed on its hinges. A hand pulled open a drawer, another curse. Roman had come in. Roman had seen the light in the kitchen, he knew where she was and Lord Jesus Christ!... She was going to pay for her dreaminess!

A mass of human rage entered the kitchen. Roman was not a tall man, but he was powerful, with a vicious whipping energy to his movements and a sneer disgracing his weak face. He stood for a long minute at the kitchen door with the havoc in the hall behind him.

“You got my cigarettes?”

“No, Roman! I told you...!”

“Told me what woman! Don’t give me that religious crap, I told you to get the Marlboros or...”

The kitchen door snapped shut.

Proceed to part 3...