Ice Cream Heart:A Romance

I don't think my new girlfriend likes me very much. We hit it off pretty well one afternoon (if ya know what I mean) in the storeroom at the Dairy Queen where we used to work together, but I got fired for stealing a 5 lb. bag of crushed Oreos and she's been sorta chilly towards me since then. Like, not nice at all.

It was a mistake, stealing those cookie crumbs. I thought the expiration date on the label said 11/01/08, not 11/01/10 and I was just trying to protect the customers and maybe even save DQ from a class-action lawsuit- I think shoulda got a raise for being so thoughtful, but I got fired instead.

Who knew that crushed Oreos have such a long shelf life? Not me.

It's ignorance of little things like that that cause so many problems for me. I'm not a bad person, I just don't know much about sundae toppings.

So I tried to explain this to my girl.

"It's a mistake", I told her. "I was only trying to help."

"You are my mistake", is what she said. "I don't understand what I saw in you."

I think she'd appreciate me more if she understood me better, but she won't answer my calls or return my emails, so it's pretty hard to explain things to her.

A while back, I saw a story about how a buncha guys were camping out at shopping malls in order to score Playstation 3's before Xmas and it gave me an idea.

My idea was to camp out next to my girlfriend's car overnight (she lives in a condo with an uptight security guard who won't let me in just because I don't live there) so that she would have to see me in the morning. Then we could patch things up and maybe I could borrow some money from her until I find a new job.

I thought that mixing Aristocrat Vodka with Full Throttle energy drinks would keep me awake all night and give me that little extra 'oomph' I need when I'm simultaneously hitting on a chick for sex and money, but I goofed up the mix with some pills I stole from my grandmother and I must have passed out sometime during my overnight vigil.

When I woke up, some old bald guy was shaking me...he was pretty mad. He was using really foul language, mostly saying "...gonna kick your motherpluckin' @ss"- except he didn't say 'pluckin'.
My girlfriend was standing behind him and she didn't look very happy either.
Of course, I thought she was mad at the Other Guy for being mean to me, her boyfriend.

Man-o-man, I was wrong.

She said, " This is that creepy guy from work that I told you about."

She said that to the Other Guy and she was talking about me. Ouch!

It really hurt my feelings- I mean, I thought we had something special, something real, something more romantic and meaningful than a dry-hump in the stockroom...but I was wrong.

I wanted to explain all this to her but the pills and vodka caught up to me and I puked on Mean Guy's New Balance sneakers instead.

Then he made it worse by calling me a pathetic p*ssy and a whole bunch of other stuff- words that look like #*^&#@! and *&$#%! when you see them in newspaper cartoons. He said I was lucky he was in a good mood, otherwise he'd f*ck me up.

What a bully! Couldn't he see that I didn't feel so good? If I hadn't been so sick I woulda beat him up.

Anyway, It turns out that she thinks that Mean Old Guy is her boyfriend and she wouldn't even listen to me explain how sensitive I was and how she'd be better off with me than with him-after all, he's old, probably at least 30, maybe 40-but she wasn't listening. She just got in her car-with the Mean Guy!- and kinda drove off. She kept accelerating and braking, start , stop, start, stop...I wanted to tell her that it seemed like her car was having transmission trouble but after the second start/stop I fell off the hood of her Taurus and landed on the asphalt.

I was only trying to give her some sound automotive advice, but she didn't listen- I coulda got hurt in the process!
She actually had the nerve to roll down the window and tell me that I was lucky she didn't run my @ss over- I already knew that, I could tell there was something wrong with her car just from the way it was acting.

But the window was down, so I made my move. As long as the Mean Guy had his seatbelt on, I figured I was safe.

I popped my question.

She wouldn't even loan me twenty bucks! What a b*tch!

She told me I'd better talk to her boyfriend from now on.

Huh? Until this morning , I didn't even know she had a boyfriend. I thought I was her boyfriend.

I think our relationship needs more honesty.

1: Alice Gets Ready

Alice Bradley hated the airport almost as much as she hated her husband, so dropping him off in front of the terminal entrance and pulling away from the curb without so much as a bon voyage seemed entirely natural to her.

Good riddance, she thought. Don't get hijacked.

The respite would be brief. Her husband, Bradley Bradley Jr., would soon be calling her to explain exactly how much it would cost to retrieve their teenage son from the Utah jail where he'd been held since the previous evening. He would probably have to spend the weekend in Salt Lake.

Most people, normal people, she sneered at herself, went to Park City to ski and to rubberneck at celebrities.

Their only child, Bradford Bradley, had gone to Utah to meet a girl he'd met on the internet. It hadn't worked out like he expected, but he'd decided to stay in Park City . He'd found work as a dishwasher at a ski resort , where he had had managed to break his ankle by falling on ice in the parking lot while ostensibly taking out the trash.

While her son was in the ER, his manager found a half-pound of marijuana in Brad's locker and called the police. Apparently, Brad had been exiting the rear seat of a pot dealer's car and somehow gotten his left foot tangled in the front passenger seatbelt. His right foot lost its purchase on the icy pavement and presto twisto , his left ankle snapped. He managed to limp into the back door and stash his newly-acquired dope before the pain and shock kicked in.

Young Brad didn't have much tolerance for pain. He passed out on the kitchen floor and curled up on the greasy friction-tape in front of the dishwasher machine.

He lay there for several minutes before one of the busboys called the manager, who called an ambulance; then the police, who had been following the dealer on his route.Undercover agents had already taken him in.

The elder Bradleys learned about this via a collect call from their incarcerated son, who insisted that the manager had planted the dope in his locker so that the resort wouldn't have to pay Brad worker's compensation for his broken ankle.

Alice suspected Bradford's story was bullshit.

How could she have given birth to such a fuck-up?

At first, during her pregnancy, she had a private fear that Bradley wasn't Bradford's real father; perhaps Baby Bradford was the result of one of her anonymous pre-marital flings. Once she realized what a complete idiot she had married, that fear turned to hope, then flickered and died as young Bradford grew older and more like his father.

Her husband purchased a pellet rifle for Bradford on their son's fifth birthday.

Alice reminded her husband that his own father had given him a snub-nosed .38 revolver for his own fifth birthday, almost as if the senior Bradley wanted the accident to happen.

That's not true, her husband had protested- the accident didn't occur until after his seventh birthday, an occasion on which he received an 88cc gas-powered chainsaw from his father,the late Benton Bradford.

This is different, Bradley continued. This is a pellet rifle, not a Saturday Night Special, and no way was Bradford getting a chainsaw for his seventh birthday. An ax would be much safer.

The first thing young Bradford did upon receiving the gift was to stare down the barrel of the cartridge gun.

Alarmed, Bradley snatched it away from him, then proceeded to peer into the weapon's barrel. Bradley pulled the trigger. It didn't budge.

See? It's not loaded.

He handed it back to Bradford, who flipped the safety and discharged a pellet into King, the family dog. In hindsight, thought Alice, poor King got more attention with an eye-patch than without.

Great conversation starter, that eye-patch.

After King's mishap, there was no doubt that Bradford Bradley was Bradley Bradley's son. To Alice, they were dangerous, oafish idiots who deserved each other. Only Bradley would have chosen 'Bradford' as their son's name- so people don't get him confused with me, Bradley had explained- and only a true son of Bradley Bradley would get arrested for felony drug possession by being clumsy and stupid.

Bradford doesn't even know how to ski, she told herself.

Her only son broke his ankle at a ski resort, got arrested, lost his job- and he doesn't even ski.

Jesus wept, thought Alice.

No matter.

Brad would deal with Brad when he got to Utah.

Privately, she felt no need to rescue her son. He was an adult, let him deal with his own mess. Bradley however, knew that Brad wouldn't survive long in jail and cared enough to intervene.

Alice didn't.

Alice had other things to do.

2: Bradford Gets Busted

Bradford Bradley couldn't move.

The cold stainless rim of the seat-less toilet was biting into his ass and thighs and the stool's low height forced his gangly knees to rest several inches above his pelvis. He was very uncomfortable.

Brad stared across the yellow cell at the door opposite his seat. There was a small opaque window in the upper third of the metal portal, through this pane the young man could sense eyes watching him...or maybe that was from the ceiling camera in the left-hand corner. It was trained directly at the cell's far wall, where the open toilet was. Where Brad sat, crapping and exposed.

Brad could only feel one of his feet and it was rapidly falling asleep but he barely noticed the tingling, his attention was split between the catapult warfare taking place in his guts and the storm of panic-driven despair that was occupying his thoughts.

He felt an urgent pressure somewhere deep inside his stomach as a battalion of armored elephants charged across his intestines, then a series of jarring, convulsive pains as the besieged defenders of his lower bowels dropped the gates, a spiked iron portcullis slamming shut moments before the attackers could break free into sweet relief.

"Owwww" moaned Brad as the defenders dumped flaming oil onto the fighting pachyderms, melting the attackers into a foul gray stew that forced its way through the bars of Brad's lower gate.

He lowered his head, lost in misery, pain and stench. When he looked down he saw that his numb foot and ankle were tightly wrapped in a mud-colored Ace bandage. There was no sign of his shoes.

A phalanx of pikemen planted their weapons in Brad's guts and braced for impact.

After a lifetime, the battle subsided. Brad reached for a handful of the wispy-thin toilet paper on the nearby plastic hanger. It seemed to be water-soluble, but he cleaned himself as best he could , always mindful of the invisible eyes watching him. He tried cleansing his befouled hands in the tepid soapless water dripping from the tiny metal sink but the smell remained, mingling with the wet-food reek of his dishwasher's pants.

Brad had stopped noticing it. He was tired and hurting. He drifted away.

Yesterday, he'd had it made. He'd decided to invest his first paycheck in a fairly large quantity of the local marijuana after a co-worker had introduced him to a dealer in nearby Salt Lake City. It was much cheaper there than in his hometown of Chicago, so he'd buy it, then ship it home to his friend Paul, who would sell it. They'd split the proceeds 50/50. Simple.

Brad hadn't planned on breaking his ankle during the deal. He had stepped out the kitchen door of the ski resort where he worked and into the backseat of the dealer's Pontiac. An exchange was made, Brad went to exit the car, a plastic bag of skunky green buds tucked underneath his grimy apron.

His foot slipped on the ice on the parking lot, his other foot caught in the old car's seatbelt.

Twist. Snap.

Brad fell out of the car- he was pushed, maybe- and onto the dirty, graveled ice. The weed dropped and slid a few feet away. He stood to fetch it, fell as his broken ankle gave way.

Fuck, fuck...he picked up the sack, hobbled to one foot and half-hopped up the short flight of corrugated metal stairs to the back entrance. Once inside, he tossed the dope inside a sheetmetal locker marked: Brad. B.

He covered the contraband with his heavy winter coat and fumbled with the combination lock. His trembling hands couldn't work the dial so he slammed it shut and walked through a storeroom and into the kitchen.

"Dammit Bradley, I need salads- four dinner, four garden", yelled Don, the restaurant's owner, as Brad entered the fluorescent chaos of the bustling resort kitchen.

Don owned the place, leased it from the resort actually, but he still waited tables, choosing the two largest tables in the semi-private room for himself. He never told his customers that he was the owner and he pocketed the 18% mandatory gratuity every night, usually making more than the ski bunny waitresses who served the smaller, less profitable tables.

"Don, I hurt myself. I fell down."

Marie, one of the waitresses, looked up from her tray of desserts and got an eyeful of pale, sweaty Brad. His limbs were visibly shaking.

"You poor thing", soothed Marie, taking his elbow."You are in shock. You need to sit down."

"MARIE!" Don thundered through his deceptively friendly-looking Santa beard. "Service first, nurse later."

"Yes, Don." She headed back into the dining room, casting a worried glance back at the wobbling Bradford.

"You too , Bradley."

Bradley is my father's name, he thought. He tried to speak, but the pain became too bright to feel and the darkness rushed into the numbing void.

Brad fainted.

Don and a bartender carried Brad to Don's truck and took him to to the resort clinic, where waivers were signed and Brad's ankle was set.

A localized pain-killer reduced the daggers of pain to pinpricks, then to a dull throb of relief.

The doctor asked him where it happened.

Behind the dumpster, he replied.

"What slope is the Dumpster on?", she asked, assuming his injury to be ski-related.

"It's behind Don's. It's Don's dumpster. I works at Don's."

"Oh."

She paused, looked at Brad. Made a note on her clipboard.

"Well, tell Don you need to stay off your foot for four weeks, maybe five. I'll give you some crutches and you can get this prescription filled in town if the pain is a problem. Make an appointment for a week from now and we'll check it, makes sure it's mending ."

Whoo , thought Brad. Four week vacation! He pictured his massive bag of dope. He was gonna get soooo stoned...and pills too!

Brad had always wondered why people said: "break a leg" when they meant "good luck", now it seemed like he knew.

This was turning out to be a good day after all.

Just as he stepped out of the clinic's sliding doors, the County cops arrived. Don had gone into Brad's unlocked locker and found the weed. Two officers stepped out of a Jeep and approached a frightened Bradford.

"Son, we need to talk to you", the older of the officers had said. So they drove him to the County jail, put him in a cell and ignored him for hours, letting him sit and worry.

The stress gave Bradford a stomachache. It always did.

Much later, he was allowed to call his parents. Collect. Just as Bradford hoped, his father answered.

Alice, his mother, would probably have refused the call-she was never the nurturing type- but Mr. Bradley took down the information as provided and told his son to sit tight.

In the background , Brad heard his mother's voice. Is Brad in trouble? Tell him to keep his mouth shut.

There was a moment of silence. His dad had cupped his hand over the phone. A second later he returned. His mother wasn't audible, but Brad could swear he heard breathing on another line.

Whatever you do, said the Mr. Bradley, don't say anything until I get there. Is that clear?

The sound of sliding metal bolts being drawn roused Brad. A county cop entered, gestured for Brad to turn around. He was told to hold out his hands.

He was handcuffed, led down a short, bright hallway and into a room much like the cell he had just left. Instead of a bunk and toilet, it had a small table, two chairs and mirror.

Just like on TV, thought Brad, idiotically.

There was a short greasy man in a baggy suit standing in the corner. He had a number of official looking badges on a lanyard around his neck. He spoke without looking at Brad. He was watching the mirror.

"Son, I'll be honest with you. You are in a world of shit. I can put you in prison for twenty five years."

Brad made a whimpering sound of supplication.

"Or," the greasy man continued, turning towards the frightened teenager and tapping Brad's cheek with a stubby, hairy forefinger," you can tell us what we already know. About where you got this". He produced a Polaroid photo of Brad's open locker, the marijuana sitting in plain sight on top of Brad's coat.

Whatever you do, don't say anything. His father's warning washed through his porous mind.

"Well?" asked the detective, thrusting his face forward, an inch from Brad's.

Brad told him everything.

(continued here)

3: Marie Gets Involved

Marie was scraping the inside of a catsup bottle with a butter-knife when the police arrived.

Don, Marie's boss, insisted that the waitresses extract as much catsup as humanly possible before disposing of the empty bottles. Food costs. That was Don's mantra. Pay attention to the food costs. Catsup costs money, Don liked to remind his staff. At night, Don insisted that the closing waitress consolidate the condiments before being allowed to clock out. Marie was paid $2.13 an hour to salvage hot sauce and catsup while Don pilfered the tip jar. She hated her job.

Marie was attempting to transfer the last globs of dark red ooze from a drained Hienz bottle into a newer one, but the sudden arrival of the police Jeep outside caused her to lose her grip on the knife. It dropped into the empty bottle with a glassy rattling sound.

Don was hurrying to the restaurant's front door, keys in hand, ready to admit the Sheriff and his deputy. His rat-like eyes gleamed with a happy energy that only showed when he was preparing to make someone miserable.

It's the same look he wore on the day that he hired me, thought Marie. Somebody's life is going down the toilet.

With Don distracted, Marie tossed the bottle, knife clanking inside, into a wastebin and covered it with soiled paper napkins. She hated Don, his miserly rules and his condiment obsessions. Throwing his knife away brought her a sense of guilty pleasure; more pleasure than guilt, she admitted to herself.

Why are the cops here? I wonder if Don knows that I threw away two forks and a chipped coffee mug last night?

She had a brief but vivid image of herself out at the County Landfill, looking through endless piles of frozen refuse for Don's forks while the Sheriff and his men watched, shotguns poised. Brrr.

"Gentlemen", said Don to the jacketed officers, opening the door. Cold air pushed into the eatery's vestibule as they entered. The Sheriff, a thin man with a squarish head two sizes too large for his body, merely nodded. The shorter, fatter deputy tried to look important, but his eternally youthful babyface didn't reflect authority. Deputy Hogue, who was 35 years old , was accustomed to being asked for ID if out of uniform when purchasing beer, cigarettes and pornography; his three passions in life. Beer and Camels keep me young, he was fond of saying. He never talked about the porn.

Sheriff Clatterbuck carefully adjusted his belt, ran his fingers over his holstered gun. He removed his wide-brimmed winter hat and looked at it, then put it back on his head.

Urgency was not Sheriff Clatterbuck's strong suit.

"What's the trouble, Don?", he eventually asked.

Don giddily rubbed his soft pudgy hands together.

"Well, gentlemen", he started, pausing for effect, "I have done your work for you. I have foiled a narcotics operation in progress"

Sheriff Clatterbuck didn't react. Deputy Hogue, taking his cue from Clatterbuck's stoicism, did nothing. He was thinking of his new VCR and the pile of adult tapes that came with it.

Marie wiped catsup off her fingers and feigned unawareness.

"Let's hear it", the Sheriff finally responded. He didn't much care for Don. Don was the only restaurateur in town that charged the police full price for coffee. Don's 911 calls were never emergencies and were seldom treated as such.

"Yes. Well. It's seems that one of my employees is a criminal mastermind. A major player in the drug game. A big wheel direct from the mean streets of Chicago."

Clatterbuck shifted his belt again.

Hogue rolled his eyes. Mean streets? Don was an idiot, he concluded.

"I have the contraband to prove it," continued Don."It's in the back. Follow me, please."

Employee? Big wheel? Chicago?, wondered Marie. Was Don talking about Brad, the 19 year-old salad boy/dishwasher? Brad was from the Chicago suburbs. The poor kid had broken his ankle earlier that evening and fainted from the pain. He had been taken to the ski resort's clinic, which specialized in leg and ankle injuries.

Brad, she had observed, could barely set a table. Marie generously estimated Brad's IQ to be in the high 80's, making him an unlikely candidate for a big wheel criminal mastermind.

She sneaked over to the kitchen's doorway and watched as Don led the two policemen through the darkened kitchen's greasy yellow twilight and into the stockroom that doubled as the employee break area.

She heard the sound of a metal locker being opened.

Her heart skipped. There were three Valium in her purse that she had received from another waitress as barter for switching shifts. Had Don raided her locker? She needed her coat and bag anyway, so she strolled casually down the short hallway, pretending she hadn't seen the Sheriff arrive.

In the stockroom, Don had one of the lockers opened. He was gleefully pointing inside.

"Here, gentlemen, is the contraband."

The officers peered into the locker, then looked at each other. The Sheriff shrugged. The deputy reached in and retrieved a Zip-Loc freezer bag full of marijuana.

On TV they put on gloves before they touch the evidence, mused Marie, watching unnoticed from the hallway. Life is pretty much not like it is on TV, she considered, not for the first time.

Hogue looked at the Sheriff.

"It's just a bag of weed, boss. Half pound, maybe. Looks like good stuff."

"Hmmm...go out to the Jeep and get the kit."

Hogue turned to exit the room and Marie reflexively ducked into the dishwasher station, out of sight.

Sheriff Clatterbuck looked at the pot and sighed in resignation. This meant paperwork. Might as well take advantage of the late hour. If he bided his time and took a number of unnecessary steps, he could turn in some overtime and turning the stockroom into a crime scene would add a few extra hours to next Friday's check.

Hogue returned momentarily, carrying a grimy dufflebag bearing the County seal. Marie snuck back to the hall and observed as he rummaged inside the sack and produced an ancient-looking Polaroid camera, checked it for film.

Flash!

He took a snapshot of the crime scene, pulled the film out and waved it around in a futile attempt to help it dry.

"This", explained Don, pointing to the dope, "is the property of Brad Bradley, who is currently a guest at the Resort Clinic. These drugs will never destroy America. I have intercepted the shipment."

Sheriff Clatterbuck removed his hat and scrutinized the rounded felt interior. There was a dark gray ring around the headband, he noted. Perhaps he would buy a new hat next winter. Or in the spring, when they are cheaper. He contemplated his hat for a moment longer before he spoke.

"Don, can we sit down? I need to get your statement."

"Certainly, Sheriff. We can sit at the bar. Coffee is on the house tonight."

"Great."

Marie slid into the dishroom as the trio of crime-stoppers returned to the dining room.

After they passed, she entered the stockroom and nervously opened her own locker. Her purse and coat were just as she had left them. She pulled the Navy blue peacoat on and tucked the leather bag under her arm.

That poor kid, she muttered, thinking of Brad. First he breaks his ankle, now this.

She looked at Brad's open locker. The bright green marijuana was still there.

Nice buds, she noted.

Marie glanced around her. She was alone.

She grabbed the dope, slipped it under her coat and walked towards the rear exit. As an afterthought, she picked up a heavy cardboard case of 20 oz. catsup bottles and carried it outside with her.

She set the box on the ground behind the building and lifted the metal lid of the restaurant's dumpster.

With some effort, she hoisted the case of catsup up and tossed it over the rim and into the filthy blue container. She could feel Don's food costs rising as the carton bounced on the refuse and clanged against the cold metal dumpster's side.

Catsup costs money.

I quit, thought Marie.

But she had only begun.