This One's Free.

These stories always make me want to vomit.

Here’s how it all went: Every day I dragged myself into the same low-grade convenience store for the same low-grade sandwich. Every day. And for a while I didn’t mind it, but then that stupid girl showed up and everything went to s**t. She bounced or jumped or made some inappropriately energetic movement into the store, my ground, and poured herself a cup. She did the same motion over to the cashier -- a man no older than fifty with hair grayed by time and a face weathered by an unfortunate existence -- and tried to coerce the old man into giving her some free coffee. Yes, of course she’d pay for the cigarettes (she’s really only a social smoker, anyway) but please could he just let the coffee slide?

Now this was a girl who could easily afford enough coffee to kill herself, but she was giving this a shot (for the romance of it all, I’m sure.) That cashier should have laughed or yelled or told her to get the hell out, but he didn’t. He said I’ll tell you what. He said she could get free coffee, but only sometimes. Any time she came in and bought coffee, he would write a single word on a little card. Each card would eventually hold a sentence; with each end of a sentence came a free coffee. Hell, he’d even make her weekly pack worth at least a few words. This could all happen as long as she kept the cards. Deal?

She agreed because this is what she loves; this is the s**t she could write about. I saw all this happen and it made me think that maybe something beautiful could come out of all this. Time after time in this convenience store has taught me that this cashier is the kind of person who just needs to share the sob story of his life, so I knew what those little cards would amount to.

For weeks she came in to buy her way towards the end of each sentence. At the end of each sentence the cashier slapped on a stupid smile as he punctuated, refused her payment, and handed over a free coffee and a piece of his mind. She had no idea what any of his chickenscratch sentences meant; they meant free coffee and nothing more.

LIFE IS HELL. Free coffee.

I REMEMBER THOSE DAYS. Free coffee.

I WANT TO KNOW THAT FEELING AGAIN. Free f*****g coffee.

For weeks this girl thrived on hot coffee and nicotine. She was discovering that poor man’s story in the residual sugar at the bottom of each cup.

I almost began to feel something for that girl; after all, she was drinking in whatever this man had to say on slow sentence at a time. I almost loved the idea, so it’s a damn good thing that I saw her toss one of his sentences into the trash. I didn’t laugh or yell or tell her to get the hell out, but maybe I should have. I went back into the store and tried to get some free coffee. I didn’t care about free coffee and I sure didn’t care about that cashier or whatever he had to say but maybe I could learn to care and I thought he deserved at least some audience.

The dumb old sad sack told me he’d get fired if he just handed out free coffee and what’s next, free gas? I turned to leave when i saw the girl come in. She poured her coffee and slinked over to the cashier. She asked for her pack and he got it for her, but when she made to pull out some cash, he bore that stupid grin and handed her a card. This one’s on me, he said. This one’s on me.

She threw it out and she never even read it so she doesn’t know that it said THE END in his terrible handwriting. Of course it came to this. It always comes to this. I bought a coffee and walked out the door.