I work the night shift because I can never sleep normal hours. Since I was a kid. I’d always fall asleep in class, my head propped up with one hand so that the teacher thought I was taking notes.

Anyway, I make two fifty per hour more than I would working during the day. That meant that I could turn my heat up when the frost began to creep inward from the corners of my window frame. That meant when I get into bed as the sun began to rise, I fall asleep to the sound of the radiator clanking and hissing like a cat. I dream of felines and trash compactors. Almost all the time.

At the gas station I can tag whoever walked through the door almost immediately. I can predict their purchase, and whether or not they will give me correct change. With the late night crowd you don’t get many surprises. High school boys reeking of weed, buying Mountain Dews and flipping through the porno magazines with wolf-like smiles. Then looking at their shoes as they hand me a twenty, get change, saunter out. Lushes who throw coins on the counter and tried to count it out but always screw it up. They can’t look me in the eye, either.

That I didn’t mind. It isn’t a problem when men don’t look me in the eye. But sometimes it becomes a problem when they do.

I talk to my mother once a week, usually on Sundays. She talks about my brother applying to colleges, the weather, my relatives. I always try to picture what she’s doing as we talk (sitting at the kitchen table, fingering the floral edges of a placemat. Standing up to peer out of the window into the backyard, at the gleaming snow that covers the ground, untouched. Lifting the lid of a pot to see if the water’s boiling yet).

“How are you?” she asks me.

“I’m good, Mom.”

“Good, honey. I’m just making dinner here…are you still working at that, uh…”

“The gas station? Yeah.”

“Oh, OK. Have you been looking at the classifieds at all?”

“Yeah, Mom, sometimes I look at them. I don’t know.”

“Oh. Well…how’s William doing then?”

“I told you he left, we broke up. I already told you that.”

“He hasn’t called you or anything? That’s very strange, that he wouldn’t even call you…well, ok. I’ve got to go now, your father just walked in the door…the water’s boiling…I need to take the dog for a walk…”

Sometimes I don’t hang up the phone right away. I cradle it between my ear and my shoulder for a while, humming along with the dial tone. Like white noise, you forget it’s there if you listen to it long enough.

One night a woman came in at one in the morning. Her heels clicked against the floor as she passed the Slurpee machine. She brought a bottle of water to the register and asked me for a pack of Camel Filters. Wide.

I knew she was watching me as I grabbed her cigarettes from the shelf above my head and slid them across the counter. She glanced down and said,

“Your hands are filthy.”

“What?”

“Your hands are filthy. I can see the dirt under your nails, it’s disgusting.” She pulled a twenty out of her wallet and dropped it in front of me, looking me straight in the eye. I didn’t move. I stood statue-still. I felt the words scurrying up my throat like spiders. They fell from my mouth without my consent, or knowledge of what they even meant. I spoke them quietly at first, almost whispering. Then louder.

“I’d like to know who you think you are. Really, I’d like to know. Do you think that because I wear a nametag you can come in here and criticize me? Do you think that I am a machine, that there is no blood pumping underneath my skin? Only wires and electrical current? I am not a part of this cash register.

“I see you. Forty K salary. PTA meetings. You married your boyfriend the minute you both graduated from Business School because he was on the Dean’s list and he got you off. You guys got married and you had a big reception, your dress fit perfectly. Champagne, a three course dinner. ‘Salmon, steak, or lasagna?’ the waiters asked everyone. Then you had kids and enrolled them in day care as soon as possible so that you could get back to work. And you don’t really know what you do, exactly. But you know what to wear and who to talk to and when to stay quiet.

“You cook a big meal every night. In the spring, all the women in the neighborhood compliment you on your beautiful garden. ‘Those roses,’ they gasp. ‘How do you get them to grow like that, so red. So tall.’ They smile at you but you can see their serpent tongues flicking behind their teeth. You shrug, smile back. ‘Just lucky.’

“But you keep your jaw set tight at board meetings when your boss accidentally runs his hands up your thigh, and his thick, cold fingers feel like coal against your skin. You clear the dishes from the table after dinner, scrape his leftover food into the garbage disposal and try not to smash the plate against the floor. Your son, your son is becoming his father. You can’t stand to see your son become his father.

“Do you think I don’t know you? Do you think you’re so fucking different from me? That you’re happier? Free? That your dress suit makes your cunt tighter than mine?”

When I got off work that morning I didn’t go to sleep like I usually do. I rode my bike out to the waterfront, the wind stinging my face as I pedaled. I rode past big abandoned factories and decaying buildings. When I got to a boat dock, threw down my bike, and inched my way through a gap in the fence, turning my body sideways to fit. I sat with my legs dangling over the river that rushed under me. Muddy brown, unmerciful.

There was so little space, really, between my body and that water. It seemed to roar below me. Just a little shift and that roar would get louder and louder, until it enveloped me. Until it was all I could hear. Nothing else.