Theo Greenblatt
The Night Shift

What’s going on at the donut shop at four in the morning? The people who ask me this question are the ones who never come in at that time. They wonder why I choose that shift, or why I let myself get stuck with it, maybe, because they would never choose it themselves.

So what’s happening then? Well, of course the short answer is, not a whole hell of a lot. Sometimes I’m reading a magazine, or I might clean something that’s really grossing me out, like underneath the coffee machine, or the wall behind where they keep the jelly and stuff. It’s hard to find anything good on the radio, but at least Donna—she’s the owner, you know, Donna’s Donuts—she lets us listen to whatever we want after midnight. People do come in, more than you’d think, maybe, but it has a kind of laid back, no-rush feel to it. Not like the real morning when everyone’s honking their horn in the drive-through, riled because they’re late for work, or the kids are acting up, or they didn’t get laid the night before. Sometimes I think we’re like the one live place, late at night. When I look out, everything else is black except the streetlights and the moon. Can’t even see a stray dog if it goes by outside the lights of our parking lot.

I think bugs have a special feeling for the late night hours. Outside they whack themselves up against the windows, trying to get in, and inside, they know people are asleep and it’s a good time to poke around and get food. There are trails of ants that you just don’t see in the day. Maybe they know, like instinctively, they’d get stepped on if they came out when it’s busy. And roaches, I hate those little fuckers; so fast and sneaky. I read somewhere their species is like millions of years old, been around longer than humans. I would crush them all; what good do they do? How does something so useless last so long?

Yeah, useless, like some of the people who buy donuts at four in the morning. That’s when you get third-shifters who come in on their break, hotel workers, road crews, truckers, security people. Mostly men, although don’t think that means you’re gonna find your true love or anything. They all make jokes about donuts and holes, especially late at night. They think that’s the witching hour or something, they can talk about sex because it’s dark outside. I just ignore that shit, especially if they tip all right.

Dick usually comes in around then. His name’s not really Dick, it just says that on his coveralls. He couldn’t bother to change the patch, and as far as I’m concerned, why would he, since he is a dick, anyway. I suppose he’s not really so bad, except once I saw him palm a tip off the counter and he denied it. And another time he came in half-tanked and poured a packet of sugar down my blouse. It was all sticky and crusty in my bra for the whole night; gave me a rash. He’s obviously not supposed to be drinking during work hours. One of the other drivers told me later he had a fight with his wife that night, that’s why he was drunk. But, hey, don’t take it out on me. I just work here.

There are some other regulars who come in about the same time as Dick. John and Beau, the guards from the pier; Rosemary who works at the hospital; and the black guy that never talks. I think he works at the hospital, too, but he doesn’t talk to Rosemary, either. The black guy orders black coffee and a chocolate donut every time; Linda thinks that’s funny, but hey, what a sense of humor she’s got. My four-year-old tells better jokes than Linda.

Linda is the other girl who likes working the late nights. Likes to get away from her husband, I think. They don’t have any kids; I don’t know why she stays married to him. He doesn’t make enough to keep her from having to work in a damn donut shop, and he smacks her around, so what good is he? So she’s got no kids and a lousy husband, and I got no husband and a lousy kid. Hey, I would never say that in front of Noah, he’s a good kid, but the truth is, once you got a kid, you can’t do a whole lot else with your life, besides work in a donut shop, huh? I named him Noah after the guy who plays Dr. Carter on ER. I had such a crush on that guy, used to buy the teen magazines just for his picture. And then he turned into such a jerk; now I can’t stand him. Poor Noah, see, now I’m kind of sorry he’s stuck with that weird name—it’s a little religious-sounding. But what can I do? Maybe he’ll grow up to be sweet and gentle like that Dr. Carter used to be. And rich. Wouldn’t that be nice? Because I’m sure not getting rich at Donna’s Donuts.

Yeah, since me and Linda have been working the night shifts together since I got out of high school, you might think we’d be close, but she’s a hard person to be around. She’ll be real nice to you for a while, and then suddenly, Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde, she’ll be cussing you out because you didn’t line up the donuts neatly enough or something. She thinks she’s the boss when Donna’s not around and, well, maybe I’d rather have Linda than Donna—talk about Dr. Jekyll—but she still gets on my nerves. The thing about Linda, I think she’s a little jealous of me. Partly because I’m prettier than she is, no doubt about that, even after having a kid. But also because she secretly wants a kid herself and she knows Noah was not exactly planned. It’s like she thinks I don’t deserve him. Shit, which I guess I don’t in a lot of ways, but he is mine.

The reason I know this about Linda is, after Noah was born, she would always want me to bring him around. She would pick him up and hold him and hold him, like even after he’d fall asleep. And I’d say, you can put him back in the carriage if he’s asleep, but she would keep holding him. She had given me shower presents and all, but then she kept on buying stuff all the time, little outfits and toys, and even ordinary stuff like bottles she thought were cute, or a new kind of Huggies. I felt pretty funny about that. I mean, we were friendly, but it’s not like we saw each other outside of work or anything. She would offer to babysit, and I partly really wanted to go out, but I just had a bad feeling about letting her do that. I don’t think she would’ve done anything—like what? steal him?—but it gave me the creeps in some way. Maybe I was just jealous of how much she liked Noah, and I wished I felt more like that myself. Maybe I was afraid if she had seen me outside work with him, she would know she was better cut out to be a mother than me. I don’t think that anymore, because now I can see how Linda is a little twisted herself sometimes, but back then, I didn’t know her so well. Anyway, that was a long time ago, and after Noah got bigger and started walking and talking, she stopped buying stuff and drooling over him. Like she only wants a baby, not a whole kid for life.

So I don’t really think Linda works the night shift because she likes hanging out with me. Like I said, she gets to ditch her horny husband, and I guess she needs the money. Besides, not too many other people want to work nights because of the robbery. Which is maybe the only exciting thing that ever happened at four in the morning at Donna’s Donuts. If you don’t count having sugar poured down your shirt—ha, ha.

That was my first summer out of high school. It was the beginning of August and hot as hell, even in the middle of the night. Who wants donuts when it’s 90 degrees at four in the morning? Not too much business, except for the people who need their coffee. Iced coffee, that’s what we sell gallons of in the summer. So this one hot night a guy came in to get an iced coffee and decided to rob us, basically. That’s what happened. Or, well, there’s a little more to it than that.

Yeah, this guy walked in, and he looked hot and sweaty and irritated like everyone else in the world that night. He was pretty cute in a grungy, unshaven kind of way. He was wearing jeans and a beater—a little high on himself, showing off his tattoos. Nice tan and muscles, like he’d been working outside—right, not tan from working outside at four am, but just in general. Some kind of fancy watch he had on, too. He sits down at the counter and I ask him what can I get him, and he gives me this look like he’s gonna make a wise-ass comment, but he doesn’t say anything for a while. Finally he says, “How about an ice coffee?” and I say, “sure,” and go off to get it. When I come back he’s just sitting there looking around like he’s never been in a donut shop before, and he starts asking me questions about the machines and how they make the donuts and we get into this conversation. Linda was wiping down the tables and booths, not paying any attention to us.

So we keep talking and I can tell he’s checking me out. I got my uniform on, these stupid pink blouses Donna makes us wear, and mine was unbuttoned as low as I could get it without everything falling out, on account of the heat, and he was getting in a few good looks down my shirt. I was hot and sweaty though, and couldn’t imagine anyone getting too turned on by that. It was the kind of night where you don’t even want your arms to touch your sides if you can help it, so the thought of touching someone else...well, it wasn’t really on my mind, but I could see it was on his, a little.

At some point he nods his head toward Linda and asks me if she’s the boss. I say no, that’s just Linda, and he laughs and says, “So who has the keys to safe?” I thought it was some kind of joke that I’m not clued in to, like something dirty maybe, and I felt a little stupid for a minute. I said, “We don’t have safe.” And he just looked at me and said, “Really?” I said, “Yeah,” and he asked me where do we keep the money then, and I said, “in the register.”

“Oh” he says, “then this will be easy.” I guess I’m pretty stupid ‘cause I had no idea what he meant by that, and I didn’t ask. Actually, I still thought he was making some kind of sex joke that I didn’t get, and since I thought he was actually kind of cute, I didn’t want to shut him down, or have him think I was clueless, so I didn’t say anything. Then he takes a long chug of his iced coffee and finishes it, and asks for another and a jelly donut, too. I’m wondering how long this guy’s break is supposed to last because he’s been sitting there a long time already, but hey, it’s none of my business. As long as the customer keeps ordering stuff, Donna says they can sit at the counter for as long as they want. Besides, there was hardly anyone around. Dick, and the black guy, and a few other people came and went while he was there, but mostly we were alone. Linda kept going out back to smoke cigarettes—that woman is gonna die of lung cancer if there’s any justice in the world. Donna lets the customers smoke but not us, so Linda has to go outside about every ten minutes. Come to think of it, she probably smokes up her whole paycheck, what with the price of cigarettes these days.

So I’m doing my work and the guy keeps talking to me. He asks my name and I tell him it’s Joy, and he makes some crack about ‘joy to the world’ like everyone always does—thanks a lot, Mom—but still, I kind of liked that he was interested in me. Finally he asks when I get off work, and I say six o’clock, and he says, “Oh, that’s too late, we can’t wait that long.” I just looked at him, like, “What the f—?” (I really try not to swear anymore because of Noah, but you know what I mean), and he says, “Well, you’re coming with me, aren’t you?”

Now I really don’t know how to explain what I was thinking right then. I am not the sort of girl who just goes home with a guy, but I think the heat was getting to me. I suddenly thought, What the hell? Maybe I will just leave. Why should I sit in a lousy donut shop sweating my brains out, waiting for the sun to come up? Who’s gonna stop me? Linda? She could care less. Except I’d be leaving her alone, but most of the clean-up and prep was already done; I’d been doing that while the guy was talking. Probably he could see me trying to make a decision there, and he stood up and walked around to the register like he was getting ready to pay, like he was going to leave, anyway. Suddenly I really didn’t want him to go without me, and I said, “Yeah, okay,” kinda quiet, and he smiled at me—not like a bad-guy smile, a smile like I’d really made him happy. And that made me feel happy, too.

Like I said, I thought he was going to pay, so I rang up his order and popped open the cash drawer. He was pretty tall, leaning way over me, looking into the drawer. “Is that all you got in there?” he asked.

“Well, what do you expect?” I asked back, and then he took hold of my arm, and bent it behind me. “Well, scoop it outa there, and give it to me,” he said. My left arm, he had hold of, because my right was still free to get the cash. I guess I should’ve understood this was what he meant to do all along—rob us—but it hadn’t really occurred to me until that moment. And that was the moment that Linda walked back in from one of her smoke-breaks. I couldn’t see her because she was behind me, but I felt his grip tighten, and he said, “Linda! How ya doin’?” like they were old buddies. I can just imagine the look on her face. “Your friend here is gonna give me all the cash you girls got, and then she’s coming with me. And, see, I will break her arm if you do anything stupid, like pick up that phone.” And he jerked my arm up a little higher to show he meant business. He made Linda lie down on the floor, and all I could think was how gross it must be down there, especially since she was sweaty and all the crud was gonna stick to her. She did it, though, without so much as a peep. It isn’t much of a threat, to say you’re gonna break someone else’s arm, but maybe Linda knew there couldn’t have been more than a hundred bucks in the register and it wouldn’t be worth it to risk my poor arm. I don’t know what she was thinking about me going with him. The thing is, I only realized later that she didn’t know I had agreed to go. To be honest, me and Linda have never discussed these details ever ever, because I think she felt guilty that she didn’t try to stop the guy, and I would rather she felt guilty for that, than me feeling guilty for having wanted to go with him.

So I grabbed all the bills and handed them to him, and he crammed them into his jeans pocket without stopping to count. He walked me out from around the counter, still holding my arm bent behind me, and we headed for the door. Linda stayed on the floor behind the counter—maybe she passed out down there, or something. We got out to the parking lot and he shoved me into his pick-up truck from the driver’s side. I had to squinch along behind the steering wheel, and then finally he let go of my arm—which was really starting to burn from the shoulder all the way down, I can tell you—and he turned the key in the ignition and floored it outta there.

He seemed to know his way around some, because he took a few good turns and had us headed toward the highway pretty quick. He fiddled with the radio while he was driving until he found something he liked and was singing along. He seemed pretty damn pleased with himself. I was stunned, I guess. I just sat there not saying a word, feeling like I had got myself into some kind of royal mess. Like I said before, it hadn’t occurred to me at that point that no one knew I had gone along of my own free will. I was wondering what my mother was gonna say when they broke her the news.

Then the guy finally turned to me and smiled that friendly smile. “Joy,” he said, “How old are you?” I said I was eighteen. “You’ve never done anything this exciting in your life, have you?” he asked. I wasn’t exactly prepared for that question. I thought for a minute, and I had to admit he was right. He started laughing, and so did I. He told me to feel under the seat for a bottle. It was “Captain” Something, some kind of rum, I think, and it burned going down, worse than my shoulder did. I said so, and he made a face and said, “Hey, I’m sorry about that; I didn’t mean to hurt you,” and he reached over and put his arm around me. I could feel his armpit hair all wet and scratchy against my shoulder. He was definitely sweaty. And he smelled like donuts, same as me.

We were cruising way over the speed limit, no other cars on the road, and the radio was blasting. The sun was coming up behind us, a blinding light in the rearview mirror. Along about halfway through the bottle of rum he pulled off the highway, onto a back road, and stopped somewhere in the woods. Later I figured out we really hadn’t gone very far from town, but I’ve never been too good about travel and directions. I just know there were trees all around so it was kind of dark in the truck, even though the sun must have been all the way up by then. He started kissing me and telling me how pretty I was, and one thing led to another, you know. You gotta remember I’d been working all night, and the rum, and everything else.

Next thing I knew I was waking up to the sound of the engine revving, and he was backing the pick-up out of the woods. The sun was high, and it was hotter than hell, even hotter than the day before. No A/C in that pick-up truck, I can tell you that; maybe that’s why he wanted the donut shop money. He didn’t say good morning or anything, no sweet talk, so I clammed up, too. I could feel a headache waiting to get me. I wanted him to say something nice, like how much he liked me, or whatever, because the morning after, you know, you kind of want to hear that sort of thing, but he was poker-faced, all the way. I got my clothes back on more or less, and realized he was heading into town, not away from it.

“Tell me when we get to some place that’s walking distance from home,” he said. I was going to ask if he would call me, but then I realized, hell, he had robbed the donut shop, he couldn’t exactly come around. I kind of wanted to cry then, but I was afraid he’d get mad or something, so I just sat there quiet. He didn’t say anything else, either. We came to the street where my old grade school was, and I said that would be a good place for me to get out, so he pulled over. He smiled his little friendly smile at me and kind of messed up my hair—I mean, it was already a mess I’m sure, but he ruffled it, like, and then he reached across me and opened the passenger-side door for me to get out. I hopped down, and he pulled the door closed and took off, and that was that. And I did cry on the walk home, believe me.

So that was the big exciting robbery at the donut shop, only most people don’t know hardly anything about it. I never did let on that I went with the guy of my own free will. It just seemed cleaner to leave that part out, especially since I got a lot of sympathy for having been a “hostage.” Hostage to the donut shop robber. I guess Linda did call the police finally, but she didn’t see the guy’s license plate—neither did I, for that matter—and once I turned up safe, they pretty much stopped looking for him. He only got away with eighty-four dollars, not even a felony. If you don’t count the hostage business.

I never told anyone about what happened later in the truck either, although eventually it became pretty damn obvious; to a point, at least. I just kept my mouth shut and let everyone think what they wanted to think. I know, even with the heat and the rum and all, I pretty much did what I wanted to do that night, but nobody else was there to say that was the case. I got more help by keeping quiet. Dick took me aside one night and told me, too bad he was already married, or he would be glad to marry me. Real generous of him. That was long before the sugar incident. I actually got a few other proposals, too, but I wasn’t about to get saddled with some useless guy because he felt sorry for me. And see, I think Linda always kind of wished that the robber had picked her, and then she’d be the one with the sympathy, not to mention the kid. I know Donna still feels guilty and always gives me the shifts I ask for, and Linda is jealous and thinks I’m the favorite. I think Donna would like me better anyway, because I don’t smoke like a chimney and mouth off to the customers.

Really and truly, I guess I choose the night shifts because I think maybe that guy will come back and twist my arm again. But when people ask me, that’s not what I tell them. I tell them not a whole hell of a lot happens at four in the morning, but the night shift is good for me because I’ve got to be home with Noah during the day. And that’s true, too, isn’t it?

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Theo Greenblatt teaches composition at the Naval Academy Preparatory School in Newport, RI. Her work, both fiction and nonfiction, has appeared or is forthcoming in Harvard Review, Pembroke Magazine, The Examined Life Journal, Ocean State Review, Aesthetica, South Loop Creative Nonfiction+Art, Vermont Literary Review, The Flexible Persona, and two anthologies of women's writing. Her short memoir True but Incomplete has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is currently working on her second book-length memoir.

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