Save Yourself Read Online Free

late, when everything else was shut down: like time had stopped and the rules no longer applied.
    When he walked through the door at Zoney’s at midnight, the blue-white fluorescents frizzled that nice blurry dreaminess into nothing. The back of his candy-striped work shirt was damp with sweat and his hair stuck to the nape of his neck. The guy he was relieving signed off on his deposit and left; Patrick counted the drawer, shoved it back under the register, and wiped the counter clean. It felt like he’d only been away from the store for a few minutes, like he’dstumbled through some reality loophole to a universe that was all Zoney’s, all the time.
    By the time the cop who stopped in every night for a scratch ticket and a Snickers left, Patrick had downed two cartons of chocolate milk, and no longer felt perched on the edge of his own grave. If it had been a weekend, a steady stream of drunks would have trickled in through the early hours, with a surge around four when the bars closed and then nothing much until sunrise. But on Thursday nights, even people who drank their paychecks were back in bed by two so they could drag themselves through the next day to get to the real weekend. The highway outside was so deserted that he could have stretched out in the middle of it for a nap. The classic-rock station playing in the store was automated, all music and condom ads. When Patrick had first started working at Zoney’s, there’d been a CD player, and he’d played Black Sabbath while he worked. The loud and angry was a nice antidote to the quiet and bright and made him feel more him , as if, candy-striped shirt or no candy-striped shirt, he could broadcast this little piece of his soul to every poor schmuck who came through the door for a Red Bull at three in the morning. It got people’s attention, reminding them that the world was real, that it was alive. But one morning he forgot to take the CD home with him, and when he came in for his next shift, the CD player had been replaced by a note from the manager about appropriate work music. So that was that. One more fragment of his being shaved away, and all he got in return was minimum wage and a nearly perfect command of every Eagles lyric ever. You could check out anytime you liked, but you could never leave: truer words, man. Truer fucking words.
    Things started to pick up around six, and by seven he’d fallen into a kind of waking coma of jingling change and beeping cash registers. When a voice in front of him said, “I brought you coffee,” he woke with an unpleasant start.
    On the other side of the counter, paper cup extended, stood the goth girl. Today she wore a purple dress with a half dozen belts hangingloosely from the waist. Her boots were big and cartoonish and she’d probably had to drive to Pittsburgh to buy them. The bag over her shoulder looked like it had come from a surplus store.
    She smiled. “A peace offering, okay?”
    Patrick didn’t smile back. He looked at the impatient-looking woman in panty hose and sneakers in line behind her, and said, “Come on up.” As he rang up the woman’s Slim-Fast and got her a pack of Capri cigarettes, the goth girl stood and watched with an almost anthropological interest.
    “What to avoid becoming, exhibit A,” she said, when the woman was gone.
    “Fuck off.”
    The girl rolled her eyes. “Relax. Do you want milk and sugar in your coffee? I left it black because I didn’t know. It’s the good stuff. From Starbucks.” When he didn’t move to take the cup she grimaced. “Look, you’ve got me all wrong. I’m not going to go psycho on you. It’s not your fault Ryan’s dead. You didn’t kill him.”
    This wasn’t happening. He was not standing here among the raspberry-coconut Zingers and jerky sticks, earning minimum wage and listening to her say these things. “Next,” he said, and sold a large coffee and a chocolate cream doughnut to a fat guy who didn’t need any more