At two in the morning there are always the same two people in the shop: me and the cashier.
I do not go there because there is nowhere else. I go because next to my flat it is the only place that is open, and because at two in the morning a person cannot stay at home.
That is how it is in a city. By day you are among millions and you do not feel alone. At night you are alone and you feel that the city is alive, just not with you.
The cashier was young, and always did the same thing: when I came in he looked up, nodded, then looked back at his phone.
That was the whole of our communication. For four months.
Then one night I did not buy the usual thing. Not a roll and mineral water, but a frozen pizza and a bottle of wine.
The cashier pulled a face.
“That’s not a good combination,” he said.
“Sorry?”
“The frozen pizza is bad. The one behind it is better, and cheaper too.”
I looked. He was right.
“Thank you.”
“Not at all. At two in the morning a person helps if they can.”
That was our first conversation. The second was a week later: he asked why I always came so late.
“Because I can’t sleep.”
“Why not?”
“Because the flat is empty.”
He nodded as if this were entirely natural.
“I work at night because I can’t stand noise during the day.”
I did not ask what he meant. It emerged later: he had played in a band for three years, and then one day he could not bear it any more, that something was always sounding.
That kind of thing does not come out in one conversation. It came out over four months, at night, ten minutes at a time.
One night in summer I did not go. Not because I did not want to. Because I fell asleep.
The next night, when I walked in, he said:
“You didn’t come yesterday.”
“I fell asleep.”
“Good.”
“Why good?”
“Because you’re starting to get better.”
That sentence surprised me. We did not know each other. For four months I had seen him for five minutes a night, and he still knew about me what my friends had not noticed.
“You don’t think I’m all right?”
“I think that for the past four months you came at two every night and always bought the same thing. That’s not what a person does when they’re all right.”
I did not know what to say. He was right.
In September he changed jobs and no longer worked nights. On the last night, as I paid, he said:
“From now on, be awake in the daytime.”
“Why?”
“Because the daytime is good too. It’s just noisy.”
He left. I did not ask for his number, and he did not give it. At the time I did not know that this was a mistake.
For a month I did not go into that shop. Then one day I went in during the day, because I needed something, and he was not at the till.
I asked the other cashier where he was.
“He left. He works somewhere else now. But he left something here, in case anyone asked.”
It was a note, with a name and a phone number.
Since then we are together. We did not meet in the night shop — there we only learnt each other. The meeting was when we finally recognised each other in the daytime too.
Sometimes, when I cannot sleep, we go out for a walk. And then we always pass the old shop, because it is good to remember that in a city there is somebody even when everyone else is asleep.
