The Petrol Station Between Years

Night drives are my job — I move equipment between venues. I know every all-night fuel stop on the east corridor, which is why the one that should not be there bothered me even before it wasn't.

Around 3 a.m., low tank, I saw a lit canopy where I would have sworn there was nothing but pine and dark. Old-style sign, just the word FUEL glowing white. The pumps were the tall kind with rolling number wheels — I had not seen one working since childhood. The price per litre was roughly a third of what I had paid that evening.

An attendant came out. Nobody has pumped my fuel for me in decades, but he did it with the bored competence of a man who does nothing else, cap pulled low, humming. The numbers rolled and clicked. The total was so small I laughed; he did not.

My card was in my hand and he looked at it the way you would look at a foreign coin — polite, unfamiliar — and said cash was fine, next time was fine, I looked tired. I had a few notes and paid with those. He took them without checking them.