a.m. or p.m.

Dave shook my hand, as he always does.  

 I asked, “Hey, do you mind if we go to Family Dollar? I need sunglasses. The clouds  are too white today.”  

 Dave is your classic heavy metal dude, of the quiet variety. Imagine a stick figure  with lots of black hair pouring down: that’s Dave. He walks in quick steps, looks down,  and occasionally smiles under his too-long mustache.  

 “How’s it going?” I said as we walked.  

 “Not too good,” he said.  

 Dave has a miserable-sounding job with a 6 AM start time. It’s far away, and Dave  has no car. The job is testing construction sites for radioactive contaminants then giving  the construction workers the yay or nay. So a lot of pressure to get up in the morning. But  either Dave started sleeping late and then started drinking again or started drinking again  which led to sleeping late. Either way, bad.  

 “They’re like,”--(his bosses)--“‘We like you. We don’t want to fire you.’ But I just  can’t promise them I won’t be late ever again. I mean I’m really not a morning person.”   We were getting close to Family Dollar now. I asked, “Can you do the thing where  you go to HR and say, ‘I need to go to rehab’?”  

 “Not really...” Dave explained something complicated about his contract and the type  of insurance he has.  

 “Out of morbid curiosity,” I asked, pushing one of the double doors open, “what was  the relapse like?” Then the second door. 

Fake bell.  

 “What’s up, boss?” said the cashier.  

 Dave didn’t answer. He went and studied the iced teas while I went to the sunglasses  rack. I picked out a pink pair and took it to the counter.  

 “That be all, boss?”  

 “Yeah, thanks.” The sunglasses came to five something with tax. Dave didn’t buy an  iced tea.  

 “Sorry about that,” I said once we were on the street again. “Bad timing. So how was  it, if you want to tell me?” I put the sunglasses on--my world turned pink--then I saw the  crack. “Oh shit, these have a crack. Sorry. I gotta see if I can exchange these.”   “All right,” Dave said.  

 I have to admit it may have been a button on my bucket hat that made this crack,  along with a gust of wind, which for some reason, I didn’t tell Dave.   I pushed open one of the Family Dollar doors. Then the second.  Fake bell.  

 “What’s up, boss?”  

 “Can I switch these out? One of the lenses is cracked.”  

 “No problem, boss.”  

 I took a pair of black sunglasses off the rack to put the cracked pink ones back, found  another pink pair, showed them to the cashier as we left, and said, “Thanks.”   “No problem, boss.”  

 Back on the street, I said, “Okay, sorry. How was it?” 

 “Yeah, at first it wasn’t bad,” Dave said. “It was actually kinda good. But then pretty  quick, I started losing track of time and that’s when--”  

 “Oh god! I stole sunglasses!” In my left hand, I still had the black pair I’d taken off  the rack to put back the cracked ones. “All right, we gotta go back in again. I’m sorry.  I’m not going to say anything; I’ll just put them back. Please, continue.”   “Yeah no, like I was saying, I started to lose track of time. I wasn’t really sleeping  much, just like drinking and passing out and drinking again. And I was trying to, I guess,  outrun the hangover? Which never really works. I mean that gets to be a real bad cycle to  be in...”  

 “Yeah...” I said, and pushed the door.  

Fake bell.  

 “What’s up, boss?”  

 I nodded to the cashier and said to Dave, “Yeah I was never consistent about that. I’d  only drink in the morning if I couldn’t work a coffee machine.”  

 Dave snickered. I put the black sunglasses back on the rack and waved to the cashier.   “All right, boss,” he said which made Dave snicker again.  

 I pushed open the doors and dropped the pink sunglasses and one of the lenses  popped out.  

 “God damn it! I’m cursed!”  

 Dave laughed.  

 I picked up the frames and the lens and Dave and I kept walking.   “So what got you to stop?” I said. 

 “Well, I don’t know if this got me to stop necessarily but there was this one time  when I woke up and didn’t know whether it was AM or PM. Like it was all gray outside  and I honestly didn’t know whether it was day or night.”  

 “Oh yeah, that’s classic.” I popped back in the lens. My world turned pink. “Well,  I’m glad you stopped.”  

 “Yeah...” 

Crockett Doob lives in Rockaway Beach, NY, and does not surf. His work has been published in Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Querencia Press, Does It Have Pockets, Free Flash Fiction, and HiLoBrow.