Next Day of the Condor Read Free

couple who’d seen fifty in their rearview mirrors stepped out of their parked Chevy, slammed its doors and sighed as they shuffled in to use the bathrooms.
    My next is now
, thought Condor.
    Brian said: “Let’s get something before.”
    “Before what?” said Condor as his escorts walked him toward the facility.
    Doug said: “Before your transfer ride shows up. Should have been here already.”
    “What about you guys?”
    “Places to go,” said Brian, “people to see.”
    “Is this the time you’re going to do more than just
see
?” said Doug.
    “Shut the fuck up,” said his partner. Lovingly.
    Three soda machines selling bottles and cans of caffeine & sugar & chemical concoctions stood sentinel near the ramp Condor and his escorts took to the glass front doors, past a bench where three
probably
just graduated high school girls sat, two of them wearing
hajib
headresses, all of them smoking cigarettes.
    What struck Condor inside the rest stop facility was its atmosphere of closeness, of containment. The densely packed air smelled of…
    Of floor tiles. Crackling meat grease. Hot sugar. Lemon scented ammonia.
    Ahead gaped entrances for MENS and LADIES rooms. The wall between the restrooms held a YOU ARE HERE map and a bronze plaque with lines of writing that travellers hurrying into the bathrooms only glanced at but Condor read:
    Drive, drive on. These are the highways of our lives.
    Dwell not on the sharp quiet madness of our collective soul.
    Call us all New Jersey. Call us all Americans, as on we go
    alone together.
    Nick Logar
    Off to Condor’s left waited the gift shop, wall racks of celebrity magazines and candy, glass coolers with yet more cans of syrupy caffeine, displays of key chains dangling green plastic models of the Statue of Liberty, T-shirts and buttons that “hearted” New York, postcards that nobody mailed anymore.
    He turned right, toward the food court, a long open corridor with garish neon signs above each stop where money could be exchange for sustenance.

    There was ‘bucks, the coffee-centered franchise intent on conquering the world.
    DANDY DONUTS! came next in line, sold coffee, too, essentially the same concoctions as ‘bucks but somehow not as costly.
    The red, white & green logo for SACCO’S ITALIA seen mostly in airports, train stations or rest stops centered the food stops wall.
    Italian green gave way to broccoli green letters on a white background: NATURAL EATS & FRO YO, where display cases held plastic sealed salads and silver machines hummed behind the counter.
    Last in the line of eateries came BURGERS BONAZA, the third biggest chain of hamburger and fries and cola drive-ins of Condor’s youth, still clinging to that national sales rank partially because a dozen years remained on the company’s 50 year exclusive lease for this state’s Turnpike stops signed with an unindicted former governor.
    “Come on,” Brian told Condor.
    Gray tables lined the red tiles between the wall of eateries and the not quite ceiling-to-floor windows. Travellers sat on hard-to-shoplift black metal chairs.
    Brian took a chair facing those front windows. Condor sat where he could look down the food court to the main doors, or look left out to the front parking lot through the wall of windows, or look right and see Doug shuffling in service lines. Behind Condor, a door labeled OFFICE waited near a glass door under a red sign glowing FIRE EXIT.
    “What time is it?” asked Condor.
    “No worries,” said Brian. “We’re where we belong and when we should be.”
    Doug came to them balancing cardboard trays like a man who’d worked his way through college as a waiter. The trays held ‘bucks cups, plastic glasses of white yogurt and strawberry chunks, containers of raisins and granola, bananas, spoons, napkins, a white plastic knife almost useless for cutting someone’s throat.
    “And six donuts?” said Brian.
    “The secret to life is knowing how to mix and match,” said his partner.