Luka grits his teeth against the night air as he drops
down from the cab of the lorry. Hitching was slow tonight and he needs to be
brisk as he walks across the frosted tarmac towards the back-entrance doors
marked staff. The doorway smells of
piss, diesel and fag-ends. He types in the joke of a security code. 1234. The blast of heated air comes as a
relief, but only temporarily. The place stinks of citrus floor cleaner and
already he is starting to feel hot, his skin clammy, his face desiccated.
He opens his locker, drags out the plastic-feel tunic and peaked
cap that form his uniform and shoves his jacket and rucksack in. He reports to
the manager on duty, then makes his way towards the food court, taking his
place behind the counter.
It is midnight, hour zero, the start of his eight hour
shift. Alena, he thinks, I am doing this for you.
Hour one
He’s been here for nearly an hour now and the food in
hot trays has been there much longer. Heat rises from the metal surfaces along
with stench of burnt oil, stale fish and onion gravy. People come and go, in
through the entrance doors, out the exits, transiting this nowhere place.
Custom has been intermittent. Slow, slow; fast, fast; slow. Endless minutes
tick by with nothing for him to do other than occasionally running through the
chips or peas with a slotted spoon, redistributing moisture. Then all of a sudden
there will be a rush, with half a dozen people expecting that he can grow
octopus arms and serve them all simultaneously.
A couple of trucker types are approaching, guys with
pregnant bellies and arms the girth of a thigh, the exposed skin covered in
intricate tattoos.
He stirs the pot of gravy which has thickened to the
consistency of snow-sludge.
‘This all there is?’ one of men asks, gesturing the spaces
between the trays.
‘It is the night-time menu we are serving now.’ Luka has
practised this sentence out loud, over and over in the tiny room he co-rents
with someone who works day-light hours. It never sounds quite how he would like
it to.
The two men exchange a glance, bristling at the sound of
him. Bloody immigrants. He’d like to
protest that he has entered the country legally, is here because of the bits of
paper that the elected government of the United Kingdom has freely signed, and
because no one born here wants to work in a place like this.
He knows as he dishes it up that the battered fish will be
soggy and the chips will taste of cardboard. The overpriced, substandard food
is not his fault. His place is simply to serve.
The man prods the fish with a stubby finger. ‘Bleeding
cold,’ he says.
Luka looks back neutrally. He offers to put it in the
microwave, aware that doing so will remove whatever remaining texture there
might be.
The customer doesn’t want it f-ing microwaved; he wants it fresh. Luka holds himself tight,
keeping his surface-self polite and calm as he says he is very sorry but this
is all there is. The customer kicks the counter and he keeps cursing. Luka’s
fingers inch towards the red panic button concealed beneath the work-top. For emergencies only. Eventually the
truckers move onwards towards the tills. Luka remembers too late that he should
have said have a nice day, or evening, or – in this case – night. He runs his slotted spoon through
the boiled-to-oblivion peas. He thinks of Alena standing at the stove, raising
a wooden spoon to her lips, conjuring a wholesome feast from leftovers. Once he
has covered the basics of rent and food, he has nothing but scraps left. I’ll send money as soon as I can.
He is one hour down and an eternity to go.
Hour two
Trade has slowed even further. Staff have been reduced
to a skeleton, none of them fully alive, all of them with hopes that got
trampled on somewhere along the way.
A mobile rings. Not his. He should ring Alena. His phone is
inside his uniform, pressed against his heart. He thinks how the sound of her
voice would lift his day, or rather night. She’ll be asleep, of course, the
difference in time-zone not long, the distance between them much further. He
thinks of her hair spreading over the pillow, of the way one arm will be curled
behind her head, of the peaceful rhythm to her breathing.
With no customers in view, he is free to dream. Being here,
this job, it’s a gateway to somewhere better, the first step that will open the
door to grander things. In his mind he is explaining that to Alena. If he
didn’t believe this, he doesn’t know how he’d get himself up in the evening,
how he’d make it through the night.
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