The Ice Cream Man and Other Stories
Page 6
I had to last.
It meant something.
One legged.
Then the other leg.
Switching legs, running, whipping the rope side to side without jumping, back to jumping, couple more high jumps, et cetera.
Sweating insanely.
Mouth dry.
Blood flushing through my burning legs.
I ached.
Eventually, the lady closed the dumpster lid and secured her cart again, tossing a tarp over everything.
I landed on both feet, put my hands on my hips breathing hard.
Felt like someone had crushed my legs, but in a sexual way.
They twitched.
The lady smiled at me and began pushing her cart, crunching and creaking over rocks.
‘Thank you for performing for me,’ she said as she passed.
‘You’re welcome,’ I said.
She went down the alley as I limped to the fire escape and crawled up.
The Sandwich Maker
The sandwich maker hates you too.
He walks through a door into the kitchen area of a bar/restaurant in Lincoln Park and clocks in on a computer.
It’s the weekend.
‘Gentlemen,’ he says to the cook and the dishwasher.
Yes, the sandwich maker hates you and anyone that can be even vaguely associated with you.
He hates you as his duty—second only to making sandwiches.
Because these are your sandwiches.
Your mess.
You and anyone related to you by birth, your extended family, extended family’s friends, schoolmates, dentist, et al., fuck it, anyone you’ve in any way interacted with at all.
He finishes buttoning his work shirt over a dago tee, idly checking the sandwich station to see if anything needed to be sliced or refilled or whatever, fuck.
A shift’s beginning.
One of the worst feelings.
Peacefully surrendering to the mess.
‘I’m not going to do shit today,’ he says.
‘Thass right!’ yells the cook, snapping his tongs.
‘Fuck off, Homer,’ says the sandwich maker.
But then the cook extends his tongs underneath the heat lamp.
And the sandwich maker reaches his hand underneath the heat lamp, forefinger extended for the cook to gently pinch.
‘Yes, my son, yes,’ says the cook.
A ticket prints on a machine near the heat lamp.
‘Into the shit, gentlemen,’ says the sandwich maker, taking the ticket and pinning it on a track above the expo counter.
The orders.
The tickets.
Sandwich after bullshit fucking sandwich.
Standing in front of the station for hours.
Hours and hours.
The same fucking sandwiches every night.
Different asshole customers, same fucking sandwiches.
Fuck.
A server comes into the kitchen and leans against the handwashing sink, texting.
She says, ‘Ew it smells in here. You guys smell that? It’s like someone ate a fart then puked it back up.’
She’s laughing before she even finishes and then everyone else laughs too.
‘Goddamn,’ says the dishwasher, wiping his eye.
‘Turkey pesto!’ yells the cook, tearing off another ticket from the machine.
The sandwich maker takes out two slices of bread from a bag.
Fuck.
He makes between thirty and forty fucking turkey pesto sandwiches a night, and that’s not including the other sandwiches.
He brushes butter/garlic mixture onto each slice then puts them on a panini press, lowering the top.
He presses the top down and it makes a sound like tisssss.
‘Diiiieee,’ he says, smiling.
The server says, ‘Burn, die, you son of a bitch,’ typing an order into the computer.
The sandwich maker grabs a mixing bowl.
He fills it with ingredients from the sandwich station.
Turkey.
Arugula.
Red onion.
Poached cherry tomatoes.
Fresh mozzarella.
Pesto.
Plus all of the hate, poison, and death he can transmit through his hands, eyes, and heart.
Please—please feel my hate, he thinks.
He moves the ingredients around in the bowl.
Fingering the cold bullshit.
Not wearing gloves.
He never wears gloves.
‘Hey, put some gloves on, fuckface,’ says the chef, coming up from downstairs holding a bunch of ingredients.
The chef.
The chef doesn’t hate anyone.
Because he hates everything.
There’s nothing personal about it.
He hates people, of course, so like, you too, sure, but also rocks, trees, birds, ideas, whatever.
This afternoon he’s so hungover and baggy eyed and haggard it’s like a genetic reversion.
‘You look like ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag, BWAH,’ says the cook.
‘Fuck you, Homer,’ says the chef. ‘Just, die.’
And he stands at the expo counter for a second and closes his eyes, tapping the cutting board with his knuckles.
He opens his eyes.
‘Gloves, gloves,’ he says, whipping the sandwich maker with a hand towel.
Fwick.
The towel snaps against the sandwich maker’s arm.
‘No, fuck you,’ says the sandwich maker, snatching the towel away, then handing it back. ‘I never wear gloves.’
The chef considers it for a moment, then nods. ‘All right cool,’ he says, shrugging and laughing hoarsely. ‘What am I gonna do. I need the fucking sandwich.’
‘Exactly,’ says the sandwich maker. ‘I’ll seriously never wear gloves. I’ll quit. I’ll walk out. You can fire me. Whatever. I’m not wearing gloves. There’s nothing you can do.’
‘Tellem,’ yells the cook, wiping sweat off his head.
The chef raises his hands, shrugging a little. ‘Okay. Hey, look . . . that’s okay.’
He grabs some cheap promotional sunglasses from a tequila company off the ticket counter and puts them on to help with his hangover.
The sandwich maker takes the bread off the press, burning his fingers.
‘Goddamnit,’ he says, throwing the bread down onto the long cutting board in front of the sandwich station. He dumps the ingredients from the bowl to the bread. ‘I hope whoever eats this chokes on it, then falls and hits their head on the floor and dies.’
The chef hunches over, laughing and coughing.
‘You like that, huh?’ says the sandwich maker, smiling.
The chef shakes his head, coughing. ‘No. You have, the worst fucking attitude of any human I’ve ever encountered. Even the rats in the alley care more about their species. It’s actually impressive.’ He coughs terribly into his hand, adjusts the sunglasses.
The sandwich maker cuts the sandwich in half diagonally, using a seesaw motion and both hands, to avoid compressing it.
He wraps the sandwich halves with red and white checkered wax paper.
‘Holy fuck,’ says the chef, punching the sandwich maker on the shoulder. ‘Look at that wrap.’
The sandwich maker smiles and winks.
‘You go, babyboy,’ yells the server, putting her notepad into her apron then typing an order into the computer.
‘Hell of a wrap,’ says the chef, tossing a handful of chips onto the plate, then waving dismissively. ‘Now get it out of my face.’
A server takes it away.
The cook says, ‘Take them sunglasses off, nigga. Broke-ass Elvis-looking muthafucka.’
‘Make some fucking wings, Homer, or I’ll come back there and cut your fat-baby head off.’
The cook laughs a high-pitched laugh and stomps the floor, clacking the tongs. He points his tongs at the chef under the heat lamp and says, ‘This motherfucker
got jokes.’
A ringing sound comes out of a small electronic device hanging near the ticket printer.
It’s a device connected to an ordering service that delivers food for people who want food from a place that doesn’t deliver.
The sandwich maker says, ‘I’m putting razors and a fucking bomb in this order.’ He reads the ticket. ‘All right, Kenneth Hurley, I’m coming for you. Here I come. You wanted a fucking sandwich, well now you’re gonna fucking die.’
The cook wipes his forehead and drops some wings into the fryer, yelling, ‘Die motherfucker die!’
‘Shut up and just make the sandwich,’ says the chef, putting a cigarette in his mouth. ‘I’m going outside for a sec.’
The sandwich maker puts a sandwich on a plate and tosses the plate onto the ticket counter.
Clang.
He scrapes off the panini press with a bent-up, grease-caked grill brush.
‘The fuck do we still have this?’ he says to himself.
The brush is absurd.
It barely exists in any recognizable form.
Like an abomination that crawled out of a tar pit.
The tickets begin to print more rapidly.
Bigger orders.
More specifications.
Corrections.
Table changes.
Sides.
Carryout orders.
Ordering device ringing nonstop.
Another sandwich maker clocks in and mumbles hi to everyone, buttoning up his shirt.
The senior sandwich maker.
Used to be a Hell’s Angel.
He has tattoos of devils and shit all over his arms and a big beard, in which he keeps the broken end of a plastic fork, for grooming.
He and the other sandwich maker bump fists, then stand side by side, making sandwiches.
The sandwich station: their palette.
The ingredients: their paint.
The thankless faces of the neighborhood: their canvas.
‘Kill everyone,’ says the Hell’s Angel, staring at the ingredients.
‘Turkey pesto!’ yells the cook, tearing off the ticket with his tongs. ‘That’s for you, sweetie.’
‘Man,’ says the Hell’s Angel, pausing to comb his beard with the broken plastic fork. ‘I fucking dream about making these motherfuckers. I hear phantom ringing for to-go orders.’
He tugs at his beard with the fork, making a sound like tzick tzick.
‘Shit man,’ says the sandwich maker. ‘You should probably kill yourself. I mean if I dreamt about that, I’d kill myself the second I woke up.’
The Hell’s Angel laughs and wraps up a sandwich. ‘Hey, hand me that tape.’
‘It’s right in front of you.’
‘Oh shit,’ says the Hells Angel, laughing. ‘Sorry, I’m fuckin blind.’ He squints his one eye a little. ‘I got a fucked-up eye.’
‘What happened?’
‘Got into a car accident and smashed it on the steering wheel. Peeled back my whole eyelid. I could see with it closed.’
‘Fuuuuuck,’ says the cook as he eats a chicken wing.
‘That’s fucked up.’
The Hell’s Angel takes out a big container of shredded lettuce from beneath the sandwich station and puts more lettuce into a smaller container. ‘Man, it was like some nightmare shit. I’m at the ER and they’re sewing it up and I can see the shit the whole time. Fucking needle coming right at my eye, over and over.’
‘There’s a needle in my eye dude!’ says the cook in a California-surfer accent.
More tickets print.
The dinner rush.
Cook swearing.
Dishwasher swearing.
Servers complaining.
Chef whipping everyone with his hand towel.
Fwick fwick.
The sandwich makers stand there, making the same six sandwiches, sometimes with extra whatever, or no whatever, or a side of whatever, or whatever whatever.
Sandwich after sandwich.
Toasting bread, throwing ingredients into a mixing bowl, layering cold cuts, spraying on condiments, assembling, cutting, wrapping, staring off, dying.
The same process.
Different ingredients.
No end.
‘Hey, I’m just gonna say this,’ says the sandwich maker, ‘but if you order anything from here, I don’t care if it’s the simplest order or whatever, but I fuckin hate you. I automatically hate you.’ He shrugs, holding a giant knife. ‘That’s it.’ He cuts a sandwich in half. ‘And that goes for you too’—he checks the ticket—‘Dorothy Wayne. You’re next.’ He scratches his beard with the blunt side of the knife.
A server rolling silverware stops and makes a disgusted face. ‘Everyone except me is so gross here, seriously. I bet your beard smells worse than his,’ she says, nodding toward the Hell’s Angel.
The Hell’s Angel laughs and shakes his head.
He picks at his beard with the broken plastic fork.
‘No I’m serious,’ says the server, doing a motion as if zipping air together sideways. ‘All of you should be in prison.’ Then she smiles and clasps her hands over her chest. ‘Unless one of you gets me that side of green ranch I asked for.’
The Hell’s Angel smiles, putting mayo on a sandwich. ‘I already been to prison, ma. You go there, you come back and be a nice little sandwich-monkey like me.’ He taps the clogged mayo bottle on the cutting board. ‘Having dudes jerk off while you’re trying to take a shit . . . fuck that.’
The sandwich maker says, ‘I feel like I wouldn’t want someone jerking off while I’m shitting, but I wouldn’t want to be told not to jerk off while someone else is shitting, if that makes sense.’
The cook says, ‘You get your ass beat?’
The Hell’s Angel says, ‘Dude, first week I’s in, they take all the new people into the bathroom two at a time to fight someone who’s been in for a while. I had to fight this fucking huge-ass dude. Guy was totally ripped and greased up and ready to fuckin kill me.’ He cuts a sandwich in half and puts the knife next to it to keep it from falling over. ‘They send us into the shower area and I’m fuckin—I mean I ain’t no bitch—but I’s worried.’ He tears off some wrapping paper. ‘So we go into the shower area and I’m like, fuck. This guy looked like he was gonna destroy me, but I at least wanted to hurt him somehow. You gotta makem pay. So this motherfucker comes rushing at me and I just moved a little and my fuckin hand, like’—he does a motion as if about to fall off a skateboard—‘slipped off his head and he lost his balance and fell, busted his face on the ground, knocked himself the fuck out.’
‘Oh shit,’ says the sandwich maker, laughing.
The Hell’s Angel nods. ‘Me and him walk back out a half minute later, him lumped up and confused and me totally fine. Nobody fucked with me after that.’ He laughs.
‘Haha you lucky bitch!’ yells the cook, pointing with his tongs. ‘I’dve fucked you up.’
The Hell’s Angel smiles as he finishes the wrap.
‘Supposed to be no vinaigrette on that boss,’ says the chef, coming back in, checking the tickets.
The Hell’s Angel says, ‘Goddamnit,’ and throws the sandwich against the ground.
Fwump.
The server laughs. ‘The sound that made was hilarious.’
And the dinner rush continues.
Tickets.
Orders.
Tables.
Orders.
Tickets.
Sandwiches.
Tickets.
Tables.
The mess.
Eventually, there’s a lull.
And the sandwich maker wipes down the deli slicer, knocking small shreds/paste/lumps of different deli meats—in various stages of dehydration—onto the floor.
A server, cashing out nearby, yells, ‘Ahhhh ahhhhhh, fuckkkkkk,’ dancing around a little and holding her arm out.
There’s a white, fatty paste stuck to her.
‘Ew fuck!’ she yells. ‘What is th
at? Get it off get it off!’
She retches a few times.
Everyone laughs.
The server flicks it off her arm and it sticks to the area the sandwich maker just cleaned.
The sandwich maker says, ‘I have to take a shit,’ and goes downstairs.
He passes the Hell’s Angel, who is on his way up the stairs from having just taken a shit.
The staff bathroom is a special place.
A sanctuary.
The sandwich maker sits on the toilet and shits.
Sweat runs down his neck into his chest hair.
Feet aching.
Vaguely pissed off.
But, for a second, transported.
Away.
Gone.
Somewhere else.
Surveying the clouds above during a beautiful sunset, on a planet all his own.
Inhaling the neon clouds as he passes, blowing them out as rainbows.
Happy.
Removed.
And when he opens his eyes, he notices a roach near his foot.
The roach is very still, on its back.
Then, a slight movement in one of its legs.
A dying twitch.
Like waving goodbye.
‘Yikes!’ says the sandwich maker, sitting there sweating.
He wipes his ass and flushes.
Takes a deep breath and exits the bathroom, returning to the mess.
Back upstairs, it’s time to take out the garbage.
He grabs the giant trash can situated where the dishwasher works.
Every night it’s full of the worst shit.
Just a giant, heavy, dripping, greasy bag of terrible shit.
Like if Santa were evil.
The sandwich maker rolls the can away and the Hell’s Angel joins him and they go to the back door.
‘Ready?’ says the Hell’s Angel.
The sandwich maker nods solemnly.
The Hell’s Angel kicks the back door open hard.
A shitload of rats run by the doorway.
‘Fuuuuuuck,’ says the Hell’s Angel, shaking his head.
He shivers.
He taps the dumpster with a broom handle.
More rats eek out from under the lid of the dumpster and fall to the ground, running away.
‘I swear, sometimes when I’m out here alone, they do some mind-reading shit,’ says the Hell’s Angel, combing his beard with the broken plastic fork.
‘You’re just weak,’ says the sandwich maker.
He unchains the second dumpster lid and opens it up and there’s a huge rat sitting atop the garbage, eating something, looking stunned to have been discovered.