The Night Owl

The door of Stan’s 24 Hour Diner whooshed open and then sucked back in against its casing. Cara quit bitching to Keith, the chef, and hurried out to greet the customer. She had an inkling who it was and she was right. The night owl. Four nights in a row now. She watched him lower his hood and cross the diner and sit in a booth by the window. She grabbed a menu from the bar.

‘Evening,’ she said.

He looked up at her, seemingly startled.

‘Hey.’

She let out a matronly tut and placed the menu on the table.

‘You not got no better place to be?’ she asked, smiling.

He smiled too, a quiver in otherwise stagnant water, but didn’t say anything.

The night owl was a lanky youth with nervous eyes and below-par personal hygiene. Tonight, Cara noticed, his mid-length dreadlocks were pasted to his head and his sweaty brow was glossed by the bulbs of the diner. Even his hands looked disheveled. They were slender and delicate – like a pianist’s – but he had ruined them by covering them in tattoos of strange symbols. She didn’t know what the symbols stood for.

Cara removed the notepad from her red apron and – a cute touch – the pencil from behind her ear. She didn’t need to do this but it was part of the ritual, the performance that customers wanted when they came to a diner. And in an all-night diner, where customers were few and tips only sporadic, the performance was more important than ever.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘what’s it gonna be today? Or tonight, even.’

She felt a blush blooming inside her. Something about this youth made her awkward.

‘Mmm,’ he said, ‘the usual, I think.’ He let out a sudden laugh. A strange sound that filled the empty room. ‘I’ve always wanted to say that. But I’ve never stayed anywhere long enough, you know?’ Her gave her a shooting worried glance, as if to check that she did know, that he wasn’t on a different page or planet altogether.

She winked.

‘Relax, hun, you’re a regular.’ She flipped a page of the notepad. ‘So – we got pancakes, extra syrup, three hash browns on the side, and a pint of milk to finish. Anything else you want?’

He swayed his head from side to side.

‘No, ma’am.’

She tapped the menu twice against the table.

‘Be right with you.’

He’s got the munchies again, Cara thought, as she glided away over the chessboard lino. She had a son, Jerome, around the age of the youth and she knew the signs. She wondered where the youth’s own mother was; who there was in the world to care for him.

When she returned with the food ten minutes later she found him sitting straight-backed and alert, staring out of the window. Hardly the look of a weeded out teenager. It was like he had been plugged in to charge. She placed two plates on the table, one containing the pancakes, the other containing the hash browns.

‘You okay?’ she asked.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Just…watching.’

She had left the pint of milk on the bar. She went over to fetch it.

‘What you watching?’ she asked on her return. She looked out of the windows herself. There was nothing worth looking at as far as she was concerned. Only the silhouettes of the mountains, and the polluted glow of Albuquerque, and then all the rest was desert. He turned his head towards her and frowned. He seemed unsure about something.

‘It doesn’t matter.’ He looked down at the menu. Began to read from it: ‘Not responsible for foreign wars or misspelled wurds.’

She shook her head.

‘Stan, the owner here, thinks he’s some kind of comedian.’

‘God Bless America,’ he read, ‘and Stan’s Diner too.’

She sighed.

‘Pain in the ass, that man.’

‘He doesn’t come down here, in the night?’

‘Hell no,’ she said. ‘Now there’s someone who really does have better places to be.’

The youth didn’t say anything else. He looked mournful all of a sudden. Cara had a desire to pull him into a hug, and yet she also wanted to be free of him, the cloying weight of his presence. She was relieved that, this being her last night shift for a while, she wouldn’t have to deal with him for much longer. Thinking this, she felt guilty and experienced a surge of pity.

‘You not sleeping again?’ she asked him.

He narrowed his eyes and shook his head. He tongued at a sore on his mouth.

‘That sucks. Any more of those dreams?’

He nodded once but said no more.

For the last couple of nights the youth had described the dreams he had been having. Crazy things like the McDonald’s Golden Arches going up in flames and the Grand Canyon sinking into sand. While it wasn’t usual for people to volunteer information on their dreams, Cara had enjoyed it. It was certainly more interesting than the things that people normally spoke about, especially as the boy’s dreams were so immense and vivid that they had a kind of cinematic quality, like the White House being blown up by aliens. There was also something weirdly soothing, she thought, about imagining everything coming to an end like that – a macabre kind of escapism. She was working two jobs and raising two kids singlehandedly. The youth’s dreams reminded her that stress would not last forever.

At the same time, she sensed the impact the dreams were having on the youth, who seemed to be driving out here each night to avoid them. It was probably connected to trauma, she felt. She had watched a documentary on trauma once and had learned that it often emerged in people’s dreams, taking strange and terrifying forms, haunting the dreamer. He probably wanted to talk about it but was waiting to be asked first. Her twelve year old, Meghan, did the same when she was upset about something. For some reason, the youth reminded her more of her daughter than her son.

‘What was it?’ she cooed. ‘Some kind of nightmare?’

He laughed to himself and took a sup of milk.

‘You wouldn’t understand,’ he said.

Cara wiped down her apron and took a big breath. In her other job she worked as a helper for an afterschool program. She knew how to handle youngsters.

‘I don’t know about that,’ she said. ‘Try me.’

He turned slowly towards her. His eyes were bloodshot and watery. He looked scared.

‘I dreamed of us,’ he said. ‘Having this conversation.’

‘What?’ She laughed a little and then stopped.

‘Yeah. Only in the dream,’ he continued, ‘a pickup pulled up outside. A guy got out. He had a shaved head and carried a kind of black holdall.’

Cara bit her lip. The youth spoke in a dull monotone, as if he was narrating something that had already happened rather than making something up. She could tell he wasn’t lying.

‘Okay. And then what?’

The youth tucked his hands inside his sleeves. The sleeves were frayed from chewing.

‘And then he came inside. He took a rifle out of his holdall. It was big – a semi-automatic.’

She felt the hackles on the back of her neck.

‘A semi-automatic,’ she repeated.

The youth closed his eyes and nodded.

‘Yes.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be telling you this. I should stop.’

She tried to take a breezy tone.

‘No, come on! Don’t leave me hanging. What happened next?’

‘I don’t want to say.’ His eyes were still closed. ‘I shouldn’t be here, I think.’

‘What happened next?’ Cara persisted. She had to know now.

The youth opened his eyes and looked at her. His gaze was steady and cold.

‘He blew your fucking brains out. Along with Keith in the back.’

She rocked back onto her heels, grabbing the table for support.

‘Wait, what?’ she said. ‘How do you know Keith?’

The youth lowered his eyes and began mumbling. It was like he was reciting a prayer. Cara heard the sound of a vehicle pulling up in the forecourt, and then silence as the engine was killed. She felt as though she was suspended in water. That she was inhabiting a different medium. She placed her hand on the youth’s shoulder.

‘It’s only a dream,’ she said. ‘It’s only a bad dream.’

The door of the diner whooshed and sucked.