There’s a small building in the desert. It’s two floors with a little rooftop patio. There’s a small convenience store on the ground floor, and a few offices on the second floor.
Outside there’s a small parking lot, but no cars. The parking lot isn’t actually even connected to a road. Surrounding the building, in all directions, are dunes. They’re a short distance away. Walking distance certainly, but no one I know has tested that.
I first arrived as anyone does, walking the aisles of the convenience store, looking for something I couldn’t quite remember. I was shy when the shopkeeper asked me what I was looking for and told them I was just browsing. They smiled and disappeared behind the counter.
I read every box of cereal, investigated the caloric contents of every sleeve of cookies, sniffed the scents of each dish soap, laundry detergent, deodorant and shampoo bottle, and pondered the flavours of all the energy drinks in the fridge. I was trying to remember why I was there, how I had got there, and what I’d been doing before I was wandering those aisles. I couldn’t remember.
I bought a drink and decided to look around. With a little bit of difficulty, I pushed open the front door. It was being held back by a strong breeze. I got outside and a gust of wind blew sand into my eyes. With one hand, I tried to rub the grains out. The sound of a windchime startled me and I dropped my drink.
There was still a little left when I picked up the can, but it didn’t taste very good anymore.
I sat down at a dusty plastic table, on a dusty plastic chair, and tried to remember why I was there. The soft song of the windchime accompanied the wind as it whistled past my face. I watched patterns move in the sand on the pavement. They looked like hieroglyphics telling stories of ancient civilizations.
As I sat there, staring into the distance, two paramedics dragged a man through the doorway and outside. He was shouting, “I know what this place is! I know what this place really is!”
I watched them drag him outside and around the corner, but when I got up to see where they had gone, no one was there. It would’ve been nice to know what he meant. I looked around a bit and then walked back to my table. There was a woman sitting across from where I’d just been sitting all alone. She beckoned me to sit back down.
“Don’t worry, he’ll be back,” she said, “we’ll see him in the store soon enough.”
I nodded, unsure what to say and certain that I shouldn’t say anything.
“You’re new though,” she said after a minute of looking me up and down. “Check out upstairs when you’re tired of being here. There’s a nice little patio up on the roof I think you’ll like.”
I said thank you and asked where the washroom was, then said I’d see her later.
The washroom had one of those old air dryers, no paper towel. The water pressure at the sink was good, but the soap smelled like a cologne a teenager might wear to a night club.
After that I went up onto the roof. There was a man there sitting at the same type of plastic patio set that was out front of the shop. He was humming to himself as he sliced into a pile of ground meat in front of him. He kept cutting it into strips and then folding it back into itself. I sat across from him and watched.
“It’s my dad,” he said to himself after a while, “he passed away recently and this was his dying wish.”
I shrugged.
“Who am I to say no to my dad’s dying wish?” he said.