The Ice Cream Man and Other Stories Read online

  Right into the ramekin.

  Water sprays back on him.

  He’s covered in a thin layer of sweat and scum.

  Feet slowly gliding out beneath him on the greasy floor.

  Tired and sore, hands raw from hot water.

  And oh, how he fucking hates you.

  Plate after plate after fucking plate.

  Small plates with shit on them.

  Medium plates with shit on them.

  Big plates with shit on them.

  Shit from the ever-needing assholes.

  They say there is an asshole that needs more shit than it gives, the dishwasher thinks in a voice he doesn’t recognize, then laughs.

  The dishwasher sprays more dishes.

  Carving away food with brilliant sprays.

  Side to side.

  Up and down.

  Different techniques and tactics.

  Spraying the dishes and then putting them on blue pallets to be slid underneath the doors of the machine dishwasher.

  Clamping down the door and hearing the engine activate, the water pour, the shaking of the dishes.

  ‘Homer, the dishes are singing to me, man. They sing.’

  ‘Quit smoking that paste then, nigga,’ says the cook, wiping his head off on his shirt and throwing chicken wings into batter.

  The dishwasher stares at the machine dishwasher.

  The machine dishwasher doesn’t really do much, just finishes off what the dishwasher starts.

  That made the dishwasher think they should sell the machine dishwasher and give him the money.

  Because the dishwasher hates everyone.

  So much.

  The hate slowly pours out of his face all day and night.

  A metal ball inside his skull, growing slowly.

  Staring at the container of dirty ramekins.

  Backed-up ramekins were kept in a small plastic bin off the side, full of water and detergent to prevent congealing.

  He reaches into the cold, filthy water.

  A clinking mess.

  Bullshit all over his fingers.

  He places the ramekins facedown on the pallet, then covers them with plates, to keep them from flying all over.

  And oh, how he loves the sound of the ramekins hitting against the plates.

  Like dull chimes.

  It’s so beautiful to him.

  Sometimes executing perfect rhythms.

  Which the dishwasher repeats in his head.

  Or adds to with his teeth, hands, and feet.

  Or drums to with knives on an overturned mixing bowl.

  Okay okay ramekins, he thinks. Okay you’re not that bad. I’m sorry. Okay okay.

  Because it calms him down.

  Relaxes the muscles.

  One long slow unraveling.

  To the dull chimes.

  Okay.

  And his heart would beat a little faster because he’d probably been holding his breath and finally let go.

  Okay.

  Okay, better.

  He opens the dishwashing machine door and slides out a steaming pallet, slides a pallet of plastic cups in.

  The cups.

  The cups are different.

  He does not hate the cups.

  All you do with the cups is dump them out and stack them on a pallet and put them in the machine dishwasher.

  In this way, the dishwasher is okay with them.

  For they mean no harm.

  A server and a sandwich maker come through the door.

  The sandwich maker punches in on the computer.

  The server screams and makes noises in a baby voice.

  ‘Look how many review cards I got,’ she screams, holding them out like a hand of cards.

  ‘Yo, fuck that shit,’ yells the cook.

  ‘Fuck that shit,’ yells the sandwich maker, checking tickets and opening the sandwich station.

  The server bunny-hops over to the dishwasher and holds the cards in his face and yells, ‘Looooook.’

  The dishwasher has no reaction and continues to spray the dishes.

  The server puts her finger in the ramekin-soaking container and swishes it around a little, making a face at the dishwasher.

  ‘Go get more dishes,’ he says.

  ‘YOU’RE A DISH!’ she says, and skips away.

  And the dishwasher unlatches the machine dishwasher and takes out the pallet and steam comes out and he stacks the cups and brings them over to the kitchen.

  ‘Thanks, Big Sexy!’ the cook says. ‘Yo why you gotta hide my buffalo sauce though, nigga? Can’t find that shit anywhere.’

  ‘I shit in it,’ the dishwasher says.

  He returns to washing dishes, picking through a bus tub, throwing the cloth napkins into a nearby laundry bin, stacking the plates on the filthy sink and hating everyone in the world, dead/born/not-yet-born/never-to-be-born.

  Especially the never-to-be-born.

  A different server walks back into the kitchen.

  He looks around like a kid lost at the store.

  ‘Oh god oh god, Homer, did you get my aioli or no? I need two sides NOW! This person is gonna freak!’

  ‘What aioli, nigga?’ says the cook, narrowing his eyes.

  ‘Yeah what aioli,’ says the dishwasher, smiling.

  ‘I need some garlic aioli,’ says the server. ‘I asked for more aioli. You told me you had more aioli. I need it. Where is it? The guy needs more aioli and he’s gonna freak if I don’t get this aioli for him.’

  The cook says, ‘Yo, I don’t have your aioli, nigga.’

  ‘Who has it then? It’s somewhere. Why, probably in this very room exists my aioli. And I need it now.’

  The cook yells to the dishwasher, ‘Yo Big Sexy, why you taking everybody’s aioli, nigga? Haha you gotta stop hiding the aioli.’

  ‘Yo, Homer, fuck your aioli,’ the dishwasher says, smiling.

  He picks up two knives and drum-rolls them on an overturned mixing bowl, yelling, ‘Ohhhhhh-mare!’

  The server has both hands on his face. ‘Oh god you guysssss.’

  He runs back out.

  ‘La verga, guey,’ the cook yells. Then he sings, ‘She only think I’m sexy when I’m paiiiiiid.’

  The dishwasher grabs a plate and sprays it.

  Plate after plate.

  For hours.

  Carving away the mess.

  With tireless, heroic precision.

  No break.

  Feet and legs and back aching.

  Mindset of an abused dog and ignorance of a weed.

  Plate after plate.

  His entire night perfectly described through a list.

  A list of dishes.

  To be inscribed on his tombstone in very small letters.

  Spray hitting his shirt and face.

  Smelling like weak deodorant and strong body odor.

  ‘Yo, Oh-mare!’ he yells.

  ‘What it do, Big Sexy?’

  ‘Fuck your aioli. I’ll kill you.’

  The sandwich maker laughs.

  The cook—visible only as a pair of eyes below a heat lamp—points some tongs at the dishwasher and says, ‘That’s from the heart, Big Sexy. I like how you thinkin.’

  Then he grabs a ticket off the ticket machine and yells, ‘Turkey pesto!’ handing the ticket to the sandwich maker.

  Another server comes back and sits on the counter.

  She opens a plastic container and starts forking through it.

  ‘This fucking guy out there,’ she says, eating a grape, ‘he orders all these wings, but he wants two of these, one of those, three of this kind. I literally almost lost my mind.’

  She has one hand at the side of her head, in clawing formation, eyes closed.

  Nobody says anything for a second.

  Then the dishwasher says, ‘Yeah but it doesn’t matter because you’re gonna die.’

  ‘I know, right?’ she says. ‘You guys want some of this fruit salad?’

  ‘Yeah I’ll get a littla that
,’ says the dishwasher.

  He wipes his hands off on his pants and walks over and goes to bite the strawberry she’s holding.

  He makes clacking sounds, biting his teeth down hard.

  ‘Don’t eat me,’ yells the server.

  ‘Yo, eat that bitch, Big Sexy!’’ the cook yells, snapping his tongs. ‘Eat that bitch!’

  The server pumps her hand in the air, wobbling her head and yelling, ‘Eat that bitch, what? Eat that bitch, yeah!’

  The cook snaps his tongs along to the rhythm.

  The dishwasher finds himself staring at the cook.

  Oh my little crab, thinks the dishwasher.

  He feels something touching his head.

  The server is bumping another strawberry against his face, kicking her legs and staring at his mouth.

  ‘You need to fucking shave, you’re gross,’ she says, making a face of genuine disgust. ‘It’s like curling into your mouth.’

  ‘Are you eating gum and food at the same time?’ the dishwasher says.

  He leans over and touches his toes and groans.

  The server kicks him on the shoulder. ‘Move move! Work!’

  And the dishwasher walks back to the spraying station.

  He grabs the sprayer and sprays it directly into his eyes until his eyes shred apart and get pushed into his face and his whole face tunnels through his head and his brain slops out the back and slaps against the floor.

  Then he puts the sprayer over his heart and grips the lever and it sprays through his chest and his heart shreds apart and goes out the hole in his back and sprays against the wall, the slop slowly slipping down to the floor.

  He sprays downward and rockets through the building high into the air before coming down and smashing against the floor directly where he was standing, bleeding out into the drain.

  Totally fucking dead.

  Then someone brings in more dishes, and the dishwasher stands up and continues working.

  He sprays more dishes.

  A hundred more.

  And hundreds more after that.

  Spraying.

  Food and filth accumulating around the sink.

  Bloated chips.

  Shreds of lettuce.

  Clumps of pale ground beef.

  Chicken wing bones.

  Napkins.

  A sad Brillo Pad.

  Bullshit.

  Condiments.

  Noodles.

  Tomatoes.

  Onions.

  Liquids.

  Solids.

  A geography.

  Until, eventually, the dishes begin to dwindle.

  The dying pulse of the needy asshole.

  The sandwich maker clocks out along with a couple of servers.

  Only the dishwasher and the cook remain.

  Cleaning the kitchen.

  The dishwasher has to clean the sink.

  Corralling food with the sprayer into a grate in the corner.

  He sprays away a few big piles.

  Bites that couldn’t be eaten.

  Orders that didn’t please.

  ‘Oh-mare!’ yells the dishwasher. ‘I’m gonna fucking kill somebody.’

  ‘Don’t hurt me, Big Sexy, please,’ the cook says, making a praying motion. ‘I’m just a simple cook.’

  They both laugh.

  A bartender comes in, work shirt in hand and hair down, and leans against the counter, texting.

  ‘Hey,’ the dishwasher says. ‘You wanna run my face through that deli slicer there before you go?’

  She looks at the deli slicer and raises her eyebrows. ‘Yeah why not?’

  The cook laughs and says, ‘Hell yeah, kill that motherfucker, girl.’

  The bartender grabs an onion nearby and tosses it to herself a few times. ‘Let me practice with this first.’

  ‘No, wait,’ says the dishwasher.

  He grabs a knife off the wall and motions for her to throw the onion.

  She laughs and says, ‘Oh my god. This is going to be so great.’

  She bends her knees and tosses the onion like a softball.

  The dishwasher swings the knife with a sound like shish.

  The two pieces of the onion fall on either side of him.

  ‘Holy shit,’ the bartender says, eyes wide and covering her mouth. ‘That was even better than I thought.’

  ‘Did he do it?’ the cook yells. ‘Shiiiiiit. Big Sexy!’

  The dishwasher puts the knife down.

  He lifts up a huge grate and fingerfucks some food out of the drain so the filthy water will go away.

  There is always a right way to fingerfuck it.

  But you must listen with your fingers, thinks the dishwasher.

  ‘Listen with your fingers,’ the dishwasher says to the bartender as she stares on in disgust.

  When the water drains, he carefully sprays all the remaining garbage to one side of the sink so he can slop it out into a garbage can.

  And then everything is clean.

  The sink is shining and ready for the next pointless day of the endless journey.

  All that has been used has been prepared to be used again.

  The dishwasher stands there, holding the sink with both hands to help his aching back.

  His feet burn, hot and blistered and swollen.

  And he hates everyone everywhere, even the cook.

  No, not Homer, he thinks, looking at the cook’s eyes beneath the heat lamp.

  ‘What’s good, Big Sexy!’ yells the cook, tearing off a length of cellophane.

  ‘How much I love you.’

  The cook laughs and says, ‘It ain’t like that, BWAH. But thanks for playing.’

  The dishwasher stacks the last of the steaming dishes on a rack.

  He stretches.

  His back cracks with wet popping sounds.

  He slides across the floor toward the back door and grabs his hoodie off a hook.

  ‘Yo, you leavin me, Big Sexy?’

  ‘Yeah man.’

  ‘Who you gonna kill tonight, Big Sexy?’

  The dishwasher stares off for a second. ‘I’m gonna kill everyone.’

  ‘Kill everyone, dude!’ the cook says in a California-surfer accent, playing his tongs like a guitar.

  The dishwasher goes back to the sink and sprays hot water into his cupped hand and washes off his beard, lips, nose, and eyes.

  Everything feels better, except now he is more fully aware of that creamy/oniony smell that stains his clothing and skin and hair and beard every night.

  The same staining smell.

  A disgusting stain at the center of the mess.

  Smelling like garbage.

  Looking and smelling like garbage to keep shit not looking and smelling like garbage.

  For one more fucking day.

  Each day, one more fucking day.

  ‘Everyone, Homer. Everyone.’

  ‘Later, Big Sexy.’

  And then a busboy comes through the doors and drops a huge bin of dishes on the clean sink.

  The dishwasher looks at the dishes.

  He looks at the busboy.

  Eventually, the busboy says, ‘Fuck life, right?’

  The dishwasher says, ‘Yeah man,’ and stares at the bin of dirty dishes like it’s a thing staring back at him.

  Then he washes the dishes.

  Yop

  Walking home from work tonight, I crossed through an alley where my friend Keith usually slept, to see if he was still awake.

  But instead there were two kids, probably eighteen or so: a girl sitting on a parking brick and a guy in Keith’s bed of broken-down boxes.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, waving to them both. ‘I know Keith.’

  ‘Hey, I’m Samantha,’ said the girl. ‘Here, du.’

  She reached into her backpack and gave me a tallboy.

  She laughed like teh-ha.

  I sat down on an overturned bucket and opened the tallboy.

  The other kid said something to himself.

 
He was drawing on blank postal service stickers, talking to himself.

  He talked like someone was pinching his cheeks in on either side.

  We sat there drinking.

  There were rats running all over—out from dumpsters, under cars—converging and scattering as they fought for scraps.

  One much smaller rat kept going in and out of the crowd, moving in small hops.

  I laughed.

  Samantha laughed too.

  ‘That small one,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, du,’ she said. ‘Teh-ha.’ She adjusted her lips over her braces and took a pull off the tallboy. ‘But yeah,’ she said. ‘I stomped a rat before. It was easy, du. Like, I stomped him and shit, and he went, Eeeh-ya, Eeeeeh-ya and then that was it, du. When I checked a few days later or whatever, he was still there just like, laying there dead. Er . . .’ She looked up for a second, then nodded. ‘Teh-ha, yeah. Then this one guy I know, I showed him the dead rat and he showed me a video of a rat getting lit on fire. And like, it was screaming for a few minutes and shit before it died. I was like, “That’s not cool man, nah.” I like animals and shit. It was lame, you know?’

  I was about to take a pull off the tallboy but I stopped the can by my mouth and said, ‘I don’t know.’

  Couldn’t stop watching the small rat.

  No one would let him in.

  He couldn’t get anything.

  Come on, let me in, let me at that sweet garbage.

  Moving in and out of the group with small hops.

  Trying different entry points.

  Scurrying.

  But no.

  The kid who was drawing said, ‘Jeeth, that one little guy keepth zumping around and thtuff. Be thweet to thee him zump into a, um, the back pipe on a car, the tailpipe thing, naha.’

  I laughed, imagining a small rat jumping into a tailpipe, to the sound of a slide whistle sound, for some reason.

  Samantha was looking at me.

  She smiled, closing her lips over her braces.

  I smiled and looked to the side, took a pull off the tallboy.

  This guy came walking down the alley.

  He wore tight neon-green pants and a tight T-shirt tied into a ball around the belly, his hair in a small ponytail.

  He held out a phone in one hand, gesturing to it with his other hand. ‘Please pardon me, but, any y’all need a internet phone? It’s a [brand name and model of phone].’

  We all said no.

  The man breathed out loudly and said, ‘Oh well, thanks, have a pleasant eve-nin,’ and walked away.

  Samantha laughed and lowered her head, shaking her long hair.

  I smelled cheap flower shampoo.