No leaves hold on in the spring. The wind tears them off like old women’s hair. During
May the local gentry are plagued with asthma, mucus stuffs bronchial tubes. A nine-year
old says to me
“Vanilla”. People are frustrated by the automotive industry. Bills. Sexual assailants have
I-Pod playlists to color the hexes, curses, and commute to coin drop launderettes.
Charlie’s metronome clicks in apartment 9. He says I’ve got to clean. Used condoms at
the bus stop, hallucinations, crank, my prank calls. I’m working at this Carvel Ice Cream
downtown.
“You look worn out” he says. He has on black rim glasses that fall to the bottom of his
nose making him look like Burgess Meredith from “Rocky”. I give him his waffle cone
and he inspects it. Ants are crawling out of it. “Couldn’t ya put some sprinkles on it?” he
says. I put a good portion of sprinkles on it and back.
“That will be $2.45, sir,” I say.
Every ceiling fan you can hear creak and every tennis
shoe squeaking on the tile floor and then there’s the cacophony of the cars breaking
outside and the guy to my right making a vanilla milkshake. The scream of the machine is
driving me towards home. “Urrr, these aren’t evenly distributed, they are all sideways.
Can you see that son? Can you see that this is not what the customer wants? You kids
don’t know what customer service is. When I was eleven I was working at a shop and I
knew trade. My eye twitches and I daydream about this guy having a heart attack.
“Maybe, maybe I haven’t taken the time to get to know you?” He holds out his hand
“Evan Pillohs. Is something occupying your mind, all these skirts flashing by maybe? I
saw some saucy young thing on my way in. Saucy Puerto Rican sex puppy, mmm-mmm.
No, never had a problem with Mexicans.” He has all this hair shooting out of his nose
and his ears. At the moment I’ve been without the pills for four days, the point when most
people cave and go to an emergency room because the Internet convinces them they are
going to die. “Do you even get benefits here? I mean can you say that you put your heart
into your work, that you’re proud of it?” “Pills,” I gasped. “Pillohs. Evan Gaven Pillohs.
Son you have to enunciate.” “Evan Gaven Pillohs,” I say.
“There is a line forming behind you. Do you want me to make you another cone?” A
couple strung out kids in line are listening to one i-pod. “No. This is my cone. This is the
cone I bought, I’m stuck with it. It’s going to melt on me when I walk back out into the
sun. It’s 86 degrees today. You can’t waste things. For God’s sake don’t be wasteful.”
“If you don’t want anything else that will be $2.45, sir.” “Now wait, see, I’m an
unsatisfied customer, I’m in this predicament because you haven’t served me properly.”
What I say next is, “You wrinkled whore, go fucking buy your own sprinkles and glue
them to your xxxx.” The manager is standing behind me. The manager who suspects me
of illegal parking. The manager who said that I spend too much time in the bathroom and
