Tales from the Nightside Read Free

through the door, a punch to his arm and a smile and a nod. Wes didn't speak to him. There was nothing to say. Hawkins had known him for less than a week, and since they'd never shared coffee, they never shared dreams.
    Terry was already sitting at a long and low table, a paper cup in front of her, steaming grey.
    Wes sat, rubbing gratefully at his stomach, scratching at his thick neck. He remembered a time, when he was reasonably thin, but with money tight only starches and the like were easy to come by.
    "Wes, I've been had again."
    "Again?” He couldn't believe Terry would allow herself to be cheated more than once a month. But twice? Twice in the past two days some jokers had driven through her lane and had given her fake coins in place of the real. And they weren't even imitations of quarters, but only the same size and texture. On their front a small stylized pyramid, on their backs various designs he hadn't understood.
    "Wes, what am I going to do, huh? I can't keep putting in my own money this way. I need every penny I can get. You know that. Four dollars' worth in the last two weeks. You know how much I can do with four dollars and six kids?"
    Wes nodded, and a strand of black hair dropped to his forehead. He pushed at it, waited with one hand poised until he was satisfied it would stay. "They must know when you're on, Ter," he said finally. "They must think you're a sucker—"
    "I am, obviously."
    "—so they'll keep at it until you tumble at the wrong time. Wrong time for them, I mean. Don't you ever look at the money first?"
    She laughed and shook her head. "You like people too much, Wes, and you trust them too far. Someone could hand you a boiler plate and you wouldn't know it until they were in Canada. Of course I look at them, but they're silvery and they weigh the same. Only when I got time to count and stack, then I notice. Damn, Wes, what am I going to do?"
    You're going to get fired, he thought, when Pete finds out and tells the right people—for him—what's happening. And she must have sensed it because immediately her eyes filled with watery light.
    "If Lou were still here, or Jess—"
    "Or Mac or Dave," he finished. "But they're not, Terry. They're gone."
    Over the past four weeks, as many workers had walked off their jobs. Wes, who had been on the booths for just over three months, had gaped in astonishment every time it happened. It was, invariably, in the middle of the shift, somewhere near three when the road was at its most still, its most invisible. The lights from the gas station a mile east were out, the goosenecked lamps overhanging the broad toll plaza had been reduced to one on either side, and all the toll lights were red save one green facing in either direction. One by one, tben the men had climbed out of their booths and into their cars. Backed them up, went through the lanes like ordinary commuter travelers or tourists, and vanished beyond the edge of the light.
    Not a word to anyone, not a letter once they had gone.
    And each one had passed to Terry one of the bogus coins."
    "Listen, Terry," he said when the silence began to unnerve him, "tell you what I'll do. I'll switch booths with you, all right? And when one of them jerks tries anything on me. I'll..."
    "Break their arms?"
    "Sit on them," he said, and spread his arms to display his bulk.
    She pushed at her hair, shaking her head but smiling in spite of herself, and Wes relaxed. It would have been a hell of a long night if he and Terry hadn't been able to call to each other from their respective stations. Jokes. Stories. About her kids, his jobs, complaints about traffic and the lack of it... anything at all to keep from turning on the portable radio. Radios were death in the middle of the night. The music was loud enough to keep him awake, but the jockeys kept telling him the time he didn't want to know until the sun broke over the horizon.
    He supposed, he knew , it would have been cheaper just to keep the exact-change lane open,