Merci, Bonne Nuit

Three in the morning and the cooler hums a note I could sing back.

I take the chocolate milk from the back where it's coldest. He rings it through before I'm at the counter. Merci, bonne nuit. Bonne nuit.

Three years of that. I don't know his name. He doesn't know mine. He knows I come in after one, that I take the second-to-last bottle, that I pay with the same twenty until it breaks and then with the change from the twenty.

Last week he put a Caramilk in the bag. Didn't ring it, didn't mention it, didn't look at me.

The next night I left a copy of Volkswagen Blues on the counter. Paperback, cover gone soft, my name not in it. He put it under the register without a word and I don't know if he's read it.

We have never had a conversation. We've been doing this since the year I moved here.

Tonight it's snowing the small dry kind that doesn't stick. He has the radio on low, a call-in show, somebody furious about parking.

Merci. Bonne nuit.