Well written, I can remember working nights in the city and the magical qualities the lights had.

While I was building my house I worked part-time driving a mixer, aka "cement" truck and then became the "plant driver" on night shift. The plant I drove out of was almost downtown and along a river. It was next to an asphalt plant, and the entire complex covered maybe 12 acres of rock crushers, screens, overhead conveyer belts, cranes for off-loading barges and all manner of trucks. During the day no shopping mall was any busier.

At night it became a ghost town of various colored area lights, shadows and mysterious shapes. It resembled a small Egyptian pyramid town underneath a family of weird metal insects 50' high. Blots of light and sillouettes substituted for reality.

One night I drove a load of slurry out to a crew anchoring median barriers on a freeway. I got back to the "drivers lounge", management's term for the "dog house" about 12:30 AM and had nothing to do until 5:00 AM but I had to hang out. Couldn't leave, something about workers compensation.

I read, finally started wandering around. There was one fellow working, and he did the same thing every night, all night. He'd always seemed to be a loner, ideally suited for his isolated job. He hosed down the area under the rock crushers and conveyer belts, cleaning off the rocks and gravel which spilled. He had a huge area, around and under a lot of complex machinery. I could hear his hose over under the control tower and main crushers, and walked through the splotches of light in search of human company.

During the day with the cranes dumping rocks from barges into hoppers, the conveyers running, cones making little ones out of big ones, screens sifting and then more conveyers hauling the finished products out to the yard, dumping it, front end loaders and trucks driving everywhere the area was noisy, busy and a bit frantic. At night it seemed something out of a sci-fi novel, abandoned. You almost expect someone to yell "surprise", throw a switch and have everything come to life.

I followed the cleaned areas toward the noise and came upon Gordon. He'd seen me coming from a distance, had his back to me as I approached. I was glad for that, that was a high-volume, high pressure hose he was leaning into.

"Kinda lonely out here at night, isn't it?", I yelled over the sound of the water hitting the gravel. I thought that to strike a note of empathy, show my sensitivity to his solitary vigil.

Gordon didn't turn around, didn't shut down his hose, nothing. He did yell.

"Not if you stay busy!" That was it. There was no getting anything else out of him that night, or any other. With my hopes for company and conviviality squashed under that verbal bug I wandered back to the dog house and slept for a couple of hours, until the day shift started arriving.

Arf