Pit Stop
The sterile light flickered obnoxiously, the faint buzz like an incessant beetle. Tinkle. Nearly deaf to the rusting doorbell, Noah hardly noticed the customers who entered. A sweet scent of gasoline followed the customers from the gas pumps, and Noah couldn’t help but breathe it in. The convenience store was small, made even smaller with the aisles stuffed full while he remained trapped behind the counter.
“You have fluid for the brakes?” The customer’s Bengali accent tickled through her broken English.
Noah didn’t look up from his book, elbows red from leaning on the bullet proof glass of the counter. “Back left, across from the soda.” A purple lighter tussled between his fingers, eagerly awaiting his next smoke.
Her feet shuffled, tapping along the tile floor to the sodas, the lady looking for brake fluid. Another pair of feet lumbered to the chips, the man debating, sour cream and onion or salt and vinegar? A pause, then the sound of the bottle of brake fluid clunking to the ground, a soft gasp when he shoved her out the way.
“Damn Foreigners,” he muttered, shouldering past her for a soda.
Noah still didn’t look up from his book, recognizing the man’s nasally voice and the stink of cigarettes accompanying his words.
“Newports,” he set his snacks on the counter.
Noah held in a sigh. He hated almost everyone, but he especially hated this customer. The patron who scared away the others with his small minded, bigoted mouth, referring to immigrants as dirty workers and blacks as thicklips, calling every man with a sway in his walk a twinkie, or shoving past a Muslim woman and knocking the items from her hand.
“Newports,” dirty fingernails tapped the counter impatiently. “Hurry up.”
Though you couldn’t tell through Noah’s icy gaze, he was more than bothered to pull away from his book. Not a word exchanged as he clicked the archaic register’s buttons, exchanging his goods for cash.
The customer took his items with a grunt, hanging a cigarette from the corner of his mouth as the lady approached the counter with her dented bottle of brake fluid. In an assertive motion, he knocked shoulders with the lady, facing the register again.
“Got a light?”
Noah frowned at him, waving the lady forward with skinny fingers.
“I asked a damn question,” he stepped in front her.
Yet Noah didn’t grace him with even a glare, snatching the brake fluid from her. The buttons of the register popped, the drawer sliding open. Brake fluid for cash.
She walked around the man as if he were a murky puddle on the floor, and he responded by lobbing a glob of spit at her feet.
“Got a lighter or what?”
Noah glanced at the purple lighter between his fingers, a heavy smoker since his dishonorable discharge and purple was always his favorite.
“Let me borrow your lighter,” he approached the counter.
“No.”
“What do you mean no?”
“No, means no,” a snarky smile crossed his face, “doesn’t it?”
“I’ll be quick,” the customer reached a hand over the counter.
But Noah snatched the lighter tight as his fingers brushed it. “No.”
He threw back his shoulders, enlarging his frame though he wasn’t nearly the height of Noah. “Give me the damn lighter!”
With the same stony expression and flat tone, “no.”
The convenience store was silent, even the buzzing lamp stalled under the weight of their exchange. The customer swiped a Ruger LCP from his hip, aiming the muzzle at Noah’s chest. Surely the state didn’t allow wear and carry permits for the sake of taking lighters.
“Give me the fucking lighter.”
Noah leaned an elbow on the counter, stifling the pretentious smile spreading across his face. “Would you like to buy one?”
“Now,” he held out a hand, voice hard so he knew he was serious.
But so was Noah. He grabbed the customer’s wrist, pressing the muzzle of the gun into his own chest, eyes bright. “Or what?”
Silence persisted, thundering. Noah’s stone-cold eyes locked with his, swearing he heard the customer’s heartbeat through his chest. Noah—he was still, his heart near silent, shallow breath but steady.
“Or what,” he flatly reiterated.
The gun trembled in his grip, a polite smile finding its way on Noah’s face again as he set a shiny green lighter on the counter. “$2.99.”
A second passed, then another, then sweaty hands holstered the gun and the buzzing lamp returned to its obnoxious state. A fleeting glance over the lighter, and the customer set a five-dollar bill on the counter, snatching it without a word. The bell tinkled softly at his exit, only the maddening buzz filling the shop as Noah returned to his book.