Late-Night Ramblings from Town

We exit the theater. The last usher chats with the person cleaning up the concessions space. The usher is waiting for one more theater to drop before he can go home. I pause to try and say goodbye, but the two are preoccupied. I do not interrupt them.

(Play music while reading for best effect.)

We exit the multiplex. The distinctive lights of Sonic that normally greet me when I leave are off. Evidently it does close sometime around 11. We walk to our cars. There are a couple of guys joking next to theirs, off to the side. We ignore them and drive off.

Driving through the parking lot, I pass Dollar Tree and Books-A-Million. Their lights are on despite the late hour. It’s spooky, in a way, like the stores have a life of their own, and they wait for us to leave the strip center before they can live it. I am privileged to see it now. With the music, there is almost something sad. Do stores get lonely?

I drive around the back end of Wal-Mart. There are no cars, but floodlights illuminate an empty parking lot. I turn right when a left would have taken me around the front. Only one more turn before I get to the on-ramp.

Something is in the middle of the road. I slow down; I don’t want to run over any animal. It is popcorn. Some poor fool dropped or threw their bucket out the window before getting on the highway. Normally when there is a spilt bucket of popcorn, it would be my job to sweep this up. This is not the time or place, however. I am somewhat relieved. The popcorn remains, a transient monument to the human pursuit and subsequent waste of happiness. Or perhaps simply to fatigue and clumsiness.

I enter the on-ramp. It is twenty to one. Twenty miles to home. Twenty minutes to bed.