ICE CREAM
ICE CREAM
I’m sitting on the roof in my underwear. The moon is high and in its reflection I can see the neighbors in the street and all the tiny clear hairs on my belly. The summer has my freckles clustered around the roots. Up here the roof is steep, and the shingles are rough under my feet. I have to keep a constant gentle pressure to make sure I don’t slide off. I stick my head back through the open window to taste the temperature. I’d like to go inside, but I can’t. The heat lives inside. Here September is the hottest month. Today it was a splendid one hundred and five degrees. If things continue at this rate I surmise, I’ll be dead come Christmas. I’ve lost interest at one hundred. The extra five might as well be two thousand more. 2,105 degrees. I might as well be riding a bicycle up the side of the sun. Two flat tires and a satchel full of school books. I cannot hide from this heat.
Four times today the ice cream man circled. Usually he only swings around twice. It’s nearly an even exchange for the heat. A city block off and his loudspeaker is looping “It’s a Small World,” in a tone which by now must be driven so far into his brain that he either no longer hears it, or he has begun using it in place of methamphetamines to keep his eyes open and his pulse at an even thump. For him there is no other song, and for Southern California there is no other season. Every sunny day for the past two years, and before that I’m sure another ten, judging by the long since canceled cartoon characters which peek out from the rusted grill of his rolling freezer. Every day. All day. It’s a Small World. This must be his only music, his only feeling, and his only drive. That funhouse jingle repeated every eleven seconds, at a volume sharp enough to set the neighbor’s dogs barking through the window glass. He must have the lyrics tattooed inside his lower lip, in a wet faded green-black ink, and a font tiny enough to have been detailed on a souvenir grain of rice. He must be deaf, tortured, and mentally unstable. He must be an android. He must have been surgically altered. He should not be allowed to distribute frozen snacks to children. No bomb pops, no cookie sandwiches, no green sherbert frogs with mint chocolate chip eyeballs. Not from this man. This is a man who has seen past the torture chamber and built a thick concrete wall around his emotions. This man draws no distinction between pain and pleasure. This man is an assassin. This man is the outdoor mall, with violent swarms of pastel Mickey Mouse and water fountains trained to dance. An entire Midwestern state’s worth of people, arms linked, hopping in chorus step in a magnificent display of brotherhood. Our divine sea of waste. Our petite Los Angeles wedding cake figurine with details down to its red bow tie and etched plastic grin, machine stamped in Mexico. This man is the throwback theatre where the ushers wear twill coats with brass buttons, and box hats with gold rope, and where it is the fifties once again. Oh how I adored the fifties; with their THX sound, and their stadium seating, and their sequels. This man gives me all of their sequels. Lets me gobble them up. Remakes their Chinese films, and lets the sequels dribble down the sides of my cheeks. He wants their sequels in the fat folds of my neck.
It is too hot to think tonight. I am on the roof in my underwear.