The Service Station

The service station on the A57 has a forecourt light that buzzes and a coffee machine that takes its time. At 2 AM the place is almost empty. Two people are in it. They do not know each other.

The man is at the counter. He is maybe sixty. He has a Thermos and a newspaper he has already read. He buys a coffee he does not really want because the machine is warm and the night is cold and the girl behind the counter is young enough to be his granddaughter and he does not want her to stand there with nothing to do.

The girl is nineteen. Her name badge says KAYLEIGH but the letters are worn. She has been on shift since ten. She has wiped the same counter three times. She is tired in the way that is not about sleep.

The man pays. He does not say much. He says, "Quiet tonight."

She says, "Yeah."

He says, "That's not a bad thing."

She says, "No."

He takes his coffee to the window table. He does not drink it. He reads his newspaper. The paper is from yesterday. He knows this. He reads it anyway.

At 2:20 a van pulls in. The driver is a woman in a high-vis vest. She buys a sandwich and a bottle of water and a lottery ticket. She scratches the ticket at the counter. She wins nothing. She says, "Ah well," and she means it. She is not sad about it. She has won nothing before and she will win nothing again and the nothing is fine.

The girl watches her go. The van pulls out. The forecourt light buzzes.

At 2:40 the man gets up. He has not drunk the coffee. He takes it to the counter and sets it down. He says, "I didn't want it. I just wanted the machine to have something to do."

The girl looks at him. She does not know what to say. She says, "I'll put it in the sink."

He says, "That's good."

He leaves. The door swings shut. The girl stands at the counter. She looks at the coffee in the sink. She thinks about the man. She thinks about the woman with the lottery ticket. She thinks about the machine that takes its time.

She wipes the counter a fourth time. Not because it needs it. Because the night is long and the counter is there and somebody has to.

The forecourt light buzzes. The coffee machine hums. The night holds them both, the way a road holds a car that has nowhere to be.

The man drives home. He will not remember the girl's name. The girl will not remember his face. But the coffee in the sink is warm, and the counter is clean, and the night is a little less empty for having been shared.

That is all. That is the whole thing. That is the service station at 2 AM on the A57, and the people in it, and the small work of being there for each other without either of them knowing they were doing it.