Goldsmiths - University of London

Above me, a raindrop pings the aluminum canopy, then a drop taps the pavement, followed by others. They splatter into half-dollar dots that evaporate almost as quickly as they've hit, steam lifting like smoke rings above the rough asphalt. I pull the car door back to keep it dry, and then the rain pours down. Water gushes, oily and colorful along troughs at the edge of the lot. A cigarette butt and a scrap of candy-bar wrapper get caught up in its flow, traveling along then sloshing together down a drainage hole. Out at the intersection, the traffic light turns green and a car with frantic windshield wipers moves forward, crawling toward the eight-lane road. Under the canopy, I'm dry, but my lungs are damp.

The music stops.

'Go ahead on Two,' says a voice from a speaker above the pump.

The music resumes.

Inside the convenience store, a young person with short brown hair and thick-rimmed glasses sits in a corner, wearing a red, sexless shirt. Behind him or her stands a wall of cigarette packs, stacked and white, and he or she just sits there in front of it, looking up – up at nothing really – just sits there lifeless, like human taxidermy. There may be a TV in the ceiling that I can't see.

I lift the nozzle, and the music stops.

'Go ahead and pump, Number Two,' the voice says. 'You're all set.'

'Well,' I mumble, 'thanks for letting me know.'

'You say something?' the voice says. 'Press the button, where it says talk.'

I press the button. 'Paying by card,' I say. 'By check card.'

'The card thing on the pumps don't work,' the voice says.

I look around. Inside, the employee leans across a black microphone.

'Come inside when you're done.'

I press the button. 'Okay.'

The Chrysler, which has a pretty big tank, was running on vapors when I pulled off the road to fill up. I watch the black numbers flip from one to the next on the gas pump display: $28.07, $28.08, $28.09. The trigger flips and the numbers stop at $28.17. I can't stand to look at an uneven number, so I keep pressing and releasing the nozzle until I get it up to $30.00. The last spurt is wasted, spilling down the side of the car and all over my shoe.

The person in the store is a girl. That's my conclusion after studying her neck area while she looks at me and says, 'Thirty even' (no Adam's apple). Even at close range, I'm not completely sure. Solid cheekbones, shapeless arms, not much of a chest. Lips as straight as two rows of dirt in a field just plowed by farm machinery.

She presses some buttons on an ancient-looking brown plastic box then punches 30.00 into the cash register.

'I'll take a hard pack of Camel Lights,' I say, and she turns back to reach for the pack. 'Actually, make it soft, since it's cheaper.'

'Will that be all?'

'No,' I say,' hold on.' And I limp to a corner display where there are tampons and Band-Aids, nail clippers and various other delicate items, most of them packaged up in ones and twos, specially for those who are traveling light.

'This too,' I say, handing her a roll of self-adhesive gauze.

'All right. That'll be $34.80.'

I take two hard candies out of a jar on the counter, to make it $35.00 even.

'$35.01,' she says. (Damn sales tax.)

I hand her my check card and she swipes it, looking at me with no particular expression while she waits for it to register a response.

'This thing's slow sometimes,' she says.

I nod.

The machine beeps.

'Declined,' she says, 'let me try it again.'

Blank look, beep.

'Declined again. You want me to try another card?'

And this is the thing. I don't have another card. There's a reason why I don't have another card, a credit card, but what point would there be in explaining it here? What good will it do for the gas-station girl to have my life story as well as having me by the balls?

So we wait in silence, while she tries my card again.

And what I'm not saying is this: Mom didn't believe in credit. Or anyway, she didn't believe in being seen to need credit, even if it meant giving up the exclusive benefits offered only to holders of a store card at Hudson-Belk. She paid for almost everything with exact cash, which she would count out from her patent leather coin-purse before approaching the register.

It was a thing she inherited from her father, who had made a guilty fortune during the Great Depression. He'd started the first little movie house in Adamstown, selling matinee tickets for five cents a pop. People needed to forget their desperation, so they'd gladly handed over the money they'd meant to spend on sugar or beef jerky or some other not-quite necessary foodstuff. My grandfather had struck celluloid gold. But only if he was willing to be ruthless and pay his staff way less than they needed just to keep their families in basic things like potatoes and cotton shirts. He built the business into a thriving chain of cinemas that ran from Richmond to Knoxville by way of several Appalachian towns. And as soon as things improved he divested himself of every one of them, gave a basket of cash to an orphanage and invested the rest in Adams Yarns so local people would have good jobs.

That's the story anyway.

This grandfather had been ashamed of his money, and he had drilled this shame into my mother, who had made me feel from an early age like any exchange of money should be dealt with as quickly and discreetly as possible.

I bring all this with me to the cash register in Alabama, standing there waiting with an empty stomach, a contracted heart and no credit cards, to hear whether my check card has been declined for a third time.

I'm rich. Rich enough. I know it, whatever the machine says. I'm also supposed to be Lucky. So when Susie at the bank had said there was a slight chance such a big check wouldn't go through right away, that it could take (she'd picked up the phone and called somebody in Charlotte) up to five business days, I had smiled and said That's okay and asked her how Matthew was doing. Fine, she'd said, winking as she handed me the complimentary sucker (lime, same as when I was four) and my receipt. Then I'd limped out to the car, never giving a second's pause to the idea that mine might be the check that would get held up in the system.

'Declined,' the girl says, laying the card face-up on the counter and sliding it toward me.

'Can you take a check?' I say.

'Are you from Alabama?' she says.

I look at her, hoping she'll think of something. This can't be the first time something like this has happened here.

'Well, unless you're planning to move in,' she says, 'no, I can't take a check.'

As she says this, her finger taps a sign attached to the cash register with two strips of yellow tape. 'No out of state checks. The management.' The word no is underlined twice, in two different inks.

For a second, I see myself living here, unfolding a cot each night in a room stacked with cardboard drink boxes and empty motor oil bottles, a five-year-old pin-up calendar above my bed.

Behind me, a man clears his throat. Great, I think, I've got an audience, and worse than that, I've already made him wait. And even worse than that, I don't know what I'm going to do. I rifle through my wallet, pretending to look for cash I'd somehow missed earlier. I wonder about having a heart attack. Then I unload the contents of my pockets onto the counter. A pile of coins, mainly pennies, three creased receipts, the flattened nickel Dad gave me when I was seven, half a roll of mints, and a thimbleful of lint. The girl helps me count the coins. Together, our portions add up to $3.22. The sticker on the bandage says $1.99.

I smile my sweet-young-man smile, the one I keep in my back pocket for occasions such as this, but it gets no response. I tell her I think I've got some money in the car. 'If I don't, I'll call somebody. I'll be right back.'

Leaving the coins on the counter, I shove the bandage-roll into my jeans pocket and reach for the cigarettes, but her hand gets to them first. I grin the same way I used to grin at my wrestling opponent after a losing match, when I knew my coach would be watching to see that I was gracious in defeat. Then I hop pitifully toward the door, which swings open as a little girl with a purple butterfly on her cheek bursts through. 'Daddy,' she cries, 'Jason won't give me back my game!'

The rain has turned to a mist, almost breathable. I open the car door on the passenger side and busy myself with the search for nonexistent cash. When the glove compartment opens, stuff pours out of it. Old ATM receipts, a pocket atlas, a DVD, a crushed McDonald's cup with my name scribbled in the wax. Through a gap in the clutter, I can see the grip-work on the handle of my pistol. Remembering the voice over the intercom earlier, I wonder whether this place could be rigged with cameras too. It's possible, I decide, and stuff the junk back into the glove box and slam it shut. Under a floor mat, I find a corroded dime. In the groove beside my seat, a new penny.

And that's it.

Sitting in my seat, I'm close to tears, the kind of tears that could almost choke a person. But for some reason instead of sobbing I start to giggle. Poor little rich boy, I think, in a car filled to the brim with gasoline he can't afford. Then, remembering the intercom, I shut up.

With my shirt, I wipe the moisture from my eyes. But the laughter's still got me, and some of it bursts through my clinched lips and sprays across the inside of the windshield.

A car, a brown Cadillac, pulls in behind me. In the rearview mirror I watch the driver get out. He has a red moustache and he's wearing a yellow ball cap. As he lifts the rusting nozzle and stretches its rubber cord toward his car, he sees me watching him and he nods, grins a little. Then he reaches through his car window, pulls out a white styrofoam cup and spits tobacco juice into it. The second he smiles at me again, I know what I'm going to do.

I start the engine, pull the passenger door shut and drive off.