The Last Day of Work

 

"Are you tired of eating this stuff yet?"

 

     On my last day, I carry boxes of my things with me to the car as I head out the door to work.  There’s a spot open in front of the shop, so I park there, feed the meter, and walk inside, mumble-singing the song from the radio, “Two step, and let your shoulda lean.”  I say hello to Laura as I walk to the back of the shop.  I set my backpack down in the back, grab an apron from the hook on the storeroom shelf.  I walk into the bathroom.  I look in the mirror, splash some water on my face and smile at my reflection.  ”One more day.”

     I wash my hands in the sink behind the counter.  I wave my hand in front of the paper towel dispenser.  It spits out an eight inch sheet of paper towel.  I tear it off and wave my hand in front of the machine again.  Another eight inch sheet.  I tear it off and dry my hands with the two sheets.  Laura is talking to someone who looks like her brother.  Maybe it’s her boyfriend.

     “Been pretty slow?” I ask her.

     “No, it was really busy actually.  It just slowed down.”

     “Wow.  Well, the weather’s pretty nice.”

     “Yeah…  Last day, are  you excited?”

     “Oh yeah.  I can’t wait…”

     “I bet.”  She walks over to the table, under the pass-through window and starts packing her things.

     I look in the gelato case: fresh pan of cannoli, fresh pan of tiramisu, fresh pan of malaga, everything else is about half full.  I look in the sorbetto case: fresh pan of pineapple, fresh pan of tropical, fresh pan of pomegranate blueberry, fresh pan of lemon, everything else is running low.  I take a spoonful of pomegranate blueberry.  It’s cold and smooth, and as it warms the flavor melts across my tongue, sweet and a little bit tangy.  I swallow it down.

    Laura dons her backpack and walks out with her friend.  ”Have a nice life,” she says with a smile as she puts on her scooter helmet.

     “Nice working with you.”

     She leaves and I scoop a little bit of chocolate sorbetto and a little bit of pomegranate blueberry sorbetto into a small green corn-plastic cup, into a cupcake-like mound.  I sit at the little table under the pass-through window with my cup of sorbetto.  I run my corn-plastic spatula-spoon over the humping purple-chocolate meridian.  The schism smoothes and softens.  I round off the hump into a lump, into a bump.  I put the spoon, sorbetto-down, on the middle of my tongue, and pull it towards the front of my mouth, scraping the sorbetto from the corn-plastic spatula with my tongue.  Each frozen bite slips down my throat like a candy eel.

     I finish my sorbetto.  I take off my apron and set it on my chair.  I walk back to the storeroom and take an Altoids tin from the front pocket of my backpack.  I take out one of the cigarettes Andrea left there for me.  I put it behind my ear.  I walk to the front of the shop.  I pour myself a cold cup of coffee from the urn behind the counter.  I heat it up with a splash of boiling water from the espresso machine.  I walk out to the patio, set my coffee at the small table, in the back corner, and sit down.  I light my cigarette.  Across the street, I see the woman in the motorized wheelchair, rumbling towards me.  ”Goddammit,” I mutter, stubbing out my cigarette, “Goddammit.”

 

January 31, 2009

I’m Training People

     “Sorry, ma’am, but you’ll have to leave the pup outside.”

     “No I won’t.”

     “Excuse me?”

     “He’s a service animal.  I’m training him.”

     “Oh, I’m sorry.  Of course, he’s fine then.  I’m sorry.”

     “You’re supposed to ask, ‘Is that a service animal.’”

     “I’m sorry…”

     “He’s going to help people with epilepsy.  Here, do you want to see his service tag?”

     “No, no, I believe you.  I’ll take your word that he’s a service dog.”

     “Look, here.”  She shows me the round brass tag on the dog’s collar.

     “I believe you, really.  He’s fine, we welcome service animals.”

     “Is that a service animal.  Remember that.”

    ”Of course, of course.  What can I get for you today?”

     “Hmm.”  She looks at the motorized wheelchair with a raft of black plastic trash bags lashed behind and around it, parked in front of the sorbeto case.  ”It looks like someone forgot their things…”

     “She’s just in the bathroom.”

    ”Hmm.”  She looks intently into the gelato case.  ”What does the non-fat one taste like?”

     “It’s pretty good actually, here, I’ll let you try it.”  I take a small translucent corn-plastic spatula and scrape a thumbnail’s worth of non-fat, low-sugar chocolate gelato onto it.  I hand her the spoon.  ”Here you go.”

    She takes the spoon and turns her head away from me as she puts it into her mouth.  She swallows.  ”It’s not bad.”

    ”Right?”

     “I’ll have a small one of those.”

    ”You bet.”  I scoop the gelato into a small green corn-plastic cup, into a neat mound, one inch higher than the rim of the cup.  I take another little translucent corn-plastic spatula, scrape the rim of the cup clean, and stick the spatula into the mound of gelato.  I set the cup on the counter, by the register.  ”Three seventy-five.” I say, as I enter the sale into the register.

     She hands me a five.  ”We have problems with homeless at my work too.” she confesses.

     “Yeah, she’s a pretty good customer, actually,” I say, “she comes in every day, and she always has money.”

     “That’s not good for business though,” she says nodding at the wheelchair, “I work on 7th and C, and it’s a real problem there.  That’s the worst part of downtown.”

     “Yeah, there’s some hard cases down there for sure.”

     “I’ve almost been attacked several times.”  She takes a tighter hold of the service animal’s leash.

     “Yikes.”  I hand her a dollar bill and a quarter.  ”I’m surprised to hear that.  The homeless here are usually so tame compared to like San Francisco or New York.”

    ”They’re not all tame.”  She takes a bite of the gelato and turns to leave.  As she’s crossing the threshold, she stops and turns around.  ”Remember: ‘Is that a service animal.’  I’m training people to ask that first.”  She walks out leaving her used sample spatula on the counter.

     “Have a good one!” I yell after her.

 

January 13, 2009

The Parabola

     I lean my bike against the house and walk in through the sliding glass door.  I pant for breath and my stomach churns.  A dull ache goes through my teeth each time I inhale.  My face is cold and wind stung, my back is sticky with sweat.  I walk through the kitchen into the living room and see the back of Andrea’s head over the top of the couch.  She’s petting the dog.  Iggy stares into the orange glow of the directional space heater, obsessed.  I toss my backpack on the scuffed hardwood floor.  Thud.  Andrea turns around.

     “Hey baby!”

     “Hey.”

     I take the full ashtray from the black coffee table at Andrea’s knees and walk to the kitchen to empty it.  The trash can is already overflowing with coffee grounds and pizza boxes and vegetable scraps.

     “Fucking bullshit.” I growl.

     “What’s wrong baby?” Andrea calls from the other room.

     “Nothing.” I reply, “I swear to God, I’m the only person who ever does a God damned thing in this house.”

     “Come here baby, what’s wrong?”

     “Nothing.” I plop into the couch.  ”I’m sorry, I’m just tired.  Long day.  That’s all.”

     “Oh baby…” she massages my left shoulder with her right hand.

     “I’m so sick of my job.  I’m ready to leave.  It’s the same thing, every day, I hate it.  I hate all the idiots that eat there.”

      She switches to my left thigh.   “I know baby, but it’s almost done, one more month.”

     “I know, I know.  It’s so frustrating though.  I just don’t care about any of these people I see all day.”

    ”Babe… You don’t have to be their friend or anything.”

     “I know.  I can’t even be polite anymore though.  It’s getting bad.  I feel like an asshole.”

     “What did you do?”

    ”Nothing.  Stupid shit, this guy was taking forever to choose a flavor, so I gave him like half scoops in his waffle cone.  Not saying “goodnight” to people.  Just snarky bullshit.  But I hate people right now.  I hate it.”

    She smiles reproachingly.  ”You gave him little tiny scoops?”

     I smile guiltily.

    ”Baby…”

     “I just feel so… Un-empathetic.  I feel disconnected.”

     “Baby, come here, come here.”  She puts her right arm around me and gently pulls my head to her decolletage.  With my left ear pressed warmly and comfortably into her sternum, she runs her fingers through my hair.  ”I’m sorry you had a hard day baby.  Just relax, let me pet you.  We’ll get you some food, and something to drink… maybe a beer?  Huh?  And we’ll snuggle up in front of the heater with the pug and watch a funny movie, and I’ll rub your sexy little head.  Ok?”

     I exhale the day.  ”Ok.”

     “Ok.  Now let mama get up so I can get you some food.” She lifts my head from her chest and kisses it: “Mwah!”

     I lean back and close my eyes as she walks away.  ”Baby…”

     “Yes sweetheart?”

     “Thank you.”

     She laughs, “For what sweetie?”

     “I dunno.  For making me feel better.  For taking care of me.”

     “Oh baby.”  She dismisses me with a wave of her hand, “I love you.”

 

January 12, 2009

The Restroom Is for Customers Only

     On the radio, Cat Stevens sings “I’m being followed by a moon shadow.”  I hear a clang and look up.  I know it’s her as I do.   With one of the double doors closed, the entrance to the shop is too narrow for her conveyance.  I’m supposed to keep the left door closed when it’s cold.  She and her motorized wheelchair would fit if not for the raft of over-full plastic trash bags lashed behind and around it.  She takes hold of the closed door in her right hand, reaches across her lap to the joystick that controls the wheels with her left hand, and, holding onto the door with her right hand, backs the chair up.  The door cracks opens and she uses her left hand and the joystick to maneuver the chair and its attending sacs of miscellany into the opening.  She flings the door fully open, switches her now free right hand to the joystick and scoots across the threshold.  The door rebounds at the extreme of its hinges’ range and swings shut as rapidly as it was flung open, thudding to a stop against her chair’s trash-bag rear fender, dragging shut as she enters the shop.

     Inside, she parks her rig, stands up and examines the display case.

“Oh, they all look so fluffy, like colored whip cream,” she says to me.

“Yeah, I like the way they look too.” I say.

“Can I try a couple?”

“Sure.”

“How’s that pineapple?  When I lived in Hawaii, they  always had pineapple ice cream.”

“Oh.  I bet it was good, Hawaii, and pineapples and everything…”

She stares intently at the case.

“Do you have a coconut one?”

“Yeah, right here, in the back.”  I put my finger against the freezer case’s sliding plastic doors, pointing at the frozen white waves on the surface of a pan of coconut sorbeto.

“You could make like a-uh pina colada.”

“Yep.”

“Do you like those?  I mean the drinks.”

“Not really, too sweet for me.”

“Me too.  I never really liked alcohol.  Beer I guess, but I never liked alcohol.”

She stares into the case.  I stare into the case.

“Which one do you want to try?” I ask.

“Just give me the four-seventy-five cup, with the pineapple and the tropical.”

“A medium with pineapple and tropical?”  I take a pink cup, made from biodegradable corn plastic, from the top of a two-foot tall stack of inverted pink cups that sits between a one-foot tall stack of smaller green cups and a three-foot tall stack of larger blue cups.  With my left hand, I grab the top pink cup and flip it top-side up.  With my right hand, I open the plastic sliding doors of the smaller of the shop’s two freezer cases, the one that holds the sorbeto, the one she stares into so intently.  I look at the metal pan, with a small plastic lean-to placard in front of it that reads “Pineapple” on both sides,  a quarter full of pineapple sorbet.  I look at the tropical, nearly full.

     With my right hand, I pull the red handled spade from the pineapple sorbeto, like sword from stone.  I scoop the pineapple first because it is older, and I know it will be harder, less malleable, than the fresh, airy tropical.  If I reverse the order, the serving will not find its form: a cupcake-like half-dome, an inch over the pink corn-plastic rim, forming a sticky equator between hemispheres of pastel orange and yellow.  Without the constraint of the week-old pineapple in place, the tropical will not hold its shape.  It will flow over the edges of the cup and stick to my hands.  I’ll have to give her the cup and the sugary soup will stick to her hands too.

      She’ll touch her money with her sticky hands, and it will become sticky, and I’ll have to touch the sticky money.  She’ll touch the chair she sits in, because she does not sit in her wheelchair while she is in the shop, and the chair will become sticky, and I’ll have to clean the chair.  She’ll put her hands on the bathroom door before she leaves, and I’ll have to clean the bathroom door, after she’s used the bathroom.

     I slice through the frozen mixture of pineapple, water, sugar, syrup, dextrose and air with the edge of the equally frozen spade.  A jaundiced iceberg breaks away from a pineapple glacier.  The atoms of the iceberg are cold and slow and so adhere to the cold slow atoms of the spade’s metal concave.  I scrape the chunk of pineapple sorbeto into the pink cup against its plastic rim.  It slips into the dish and lies on the bottom.  I pick it up with the spade the way one picks up a sleeping drunk, and lean it against the wall of the cup, mashing it in a bit with the back of the metal scoop, so it knows to stay up.  I replace the spade, convex down, handle resting on the clean back edge of pineapple’s metal pan.  I reach for the spade resting on the clean back edge of the metal pan with a small plastic lean-to placard in front of it that reads “Tropical” on both sides.  When she sees I’ve got the flavors right she begins pulling crumpled bills from the folds of her clothing, and half-heartedly straightening the bills.

     I pull the spade from the tropical with a slurping suck.  The softer stuff is the fresher stuff, the right stuff, possessing the texture it’s meant to have.  It  scoops less like an iceberg than beach mud, bits of blended seed and pulp for the grit of sand grains.  With the pineapple retaining wall in place, the tropical mudslide fills into the neat mound I mean for it.  I use the nose of the metal scoop to scrape the pink-plastic edge of the tropical hemisphere.

“Could you put one of those cones on there sweety?” she asks.

“Sure.”

     I press an inverted sugar cone into the surface of the mounded cupful of sorbeto.  I’m supposed to put it on the counter by the register.  She’s supposed to walk over and give me five dollars.  I’m supposed to put it on the counter by the register because it’s bigger, so the cup is less likely to be knocked over onto the floor, which would make a mess I would have to clean up.  Also, my tip cup is by the register.  I don’t get tipped as often if people don’t see the tip cup while I’m taking their money and giving them their change.  I take the cup of sorbeto to the bit of counter that she’s leaning on, in between the two freezer cases, and set it down.  She gives me five crumpled singles.  I take them to the register.  I press a button on the register with the number “2″ on it in bold black lettering.  Then I press a key marked “PLU”.  Then “6″, then “1″, then “PLU” again.  Then a button marked “CA”.  The drawer of the cash register springs opens with a thud.  I put the five crumpled bills on top of a crisper stack of the same denomination.

     She ambles to a table in the middle of the dining room, cup in hand.

“Do you drink alcohol?” she asks me.

“Sometimes,” I answer, “Not hardly at all lately.”   I take a spray bottle of kitchen cleaner and a rag from under the counter, beneath the register, and start cleaning the espresso machine.

“My daddy owned a bar, in New Jersey, that’s where I’m from.  So I grew up seeing people drinking and everything.  But I think sometimes the beer actually makes people go crazier than the other stuff even.”

“People drink so much of it.” I say, staring in to the already shiny chrome of the espresso machine, searching for water spots, for any dried flecks of steamed milk.

“There was one guy, he came in all the time.  I would come home from school, and he’d be there in my dad’s bar, and I’d have to go move his car from the middle of the street.”

     I turn my head to look at her and she shakes her head and laughs.  ”He got drunk and left it there?” I ask.

She stares into her cup, “I was seven I think…  when you’ve served drinks most of your life, which is what I did, you see the way that people are when they drink alcohol, you know?

“Yeah.”

     I put the spray bottle and the rag back under the counter.  I sit at the table, under the pass-through window to the production room, where the gelato and sorbeto are made, where I have my computer set-up.  I sit and start typing:  

     “On the radio, Cat Stevens sings “I’m being followed by a moon shadow.”  I hear a clang and look up.  I know it’s her as I do.   With one of the double doors closed, the entrance to the shop is too narrow for her conveyance.  I’m supposed to keep the left door closed when it’s cold.  My boss says it’s to keep some heat in, but still let people know we’re open. She and her motorized wheelchair would fit if not for the raft of over-full plastic trash bags lashed behind and around it.  She takes hold of the closed door in her right hand, reaches across her lap to the joystick that controls the wheels with her left hand, and, holding onto the door, backs the chair up.  The door opens and she uses her left hand and the joystick to maneuver the chair and its attending sacs of miscellany into the opening.  She flings the door fully open, switches the joystick to her now free right hand and scoots across the threshold.  The door rebounds at the extreme of its hinges’ range and swings shut as rapidly as it was flung open, thudding to a stop against her chair’s trash-bag rear fender, dragging shut as she enters the shop.”

     I hear her clear her throat and look up.  She’s standing by the small freezer case again.

“You want another one?” I ask.

“Mango and wildberries.” she says.  ”Here’s the money.”  She lays more crumpled bills on top of the freezer case.  ”And can you scoop it, but leave it in the case for me while I use the restroom?”

I close my computer and stand up.  I wipe my hands on my apron.  ”Sure.”

In Service of the Sleeping

     i sit in the cold of new night.  an older couple walks briskly by and i nod to them, unrequited.  the darkened side street is quiet.  there is a small aluminum floodlight in a cabinet inside.  i am supposed to attach it to the top of the one of the double doors that is closest to the outlet above the cabinet.    there is a rubber-coated clamp welded to the aluminum floodlight for this purpose.  i am supposed to attach the floodlight to the top of the door, thread its cord over the door’s top hinge, through the gap between the open door and the jamb, and plug it into the outlet above the cabinet.

     i am supposed to make sure the conical flood of light it emits falls on the cardboard cut-out of a six-scoop waffle cone as tall as i am.  the light is supposed to make it easier for people to see the sign.  seeing the sign is supposed to make people want to eat ice cream, which we sell inside.  if passers by succumb to the sign, i’m supposed to scoop the flavors they choose, into the vessel they choose, and give them that vessel.  they, in turn, are supposed to give me money, in an amount corresponding to the vessel they have chosen, which i am supposed to place orderly, according to denomination, in the cash register.

     i’m not going to plug in the floodlight.  i don’t want to sell any more ice cream tonight.  not that the floodlight works that well, not when its cold like this.  i smoke a cigarette and my stomach agitates at the settling darkness.  a group of arab men passes in tight formation, tersely debating the youngest war as they go.  a sliver of the conversation lingers after them and finds my ear: “what peace…”  the way they’re dressed reminds me of the secular muslims who smoked cigars at the Café Bassam, when it was still downtown, when one could still smoke inside.  when i worked as a valet.  when i was supposed to park people’s cars.