Whew !

HOT STUFF

 

It's summer. The sun is so hot I believe I can actually see it quiver, hide behind a lone gray cloud. The cloud is stirred by the wind that is high, very high above the earth. Not a single tree shakes. Not a single drop of rain falls.

 

Our kitchen window is open. The smell of what my Mom is baking tantalizes me. Not so my Dad. His gruff voice is angry. 'Sophia, what the hell are you baking ? Isn't the house hot enough without you setting us on fire?' She swings her head around, calls to me, ignores him. 'Come in, Sweety. Sit down with us and we'll have a good, cold glass of iced tea. On the table covered by a plastic cloth is a large thermos jug, 3 tall blue glasses wait for us. Lipton tea and cubes drop in, clunk and bang. It's like music to my ears. I recognize Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. Little taxi horns beep and I am there in Paris. The Eiffel  Tower is aglow. Honeysuckle climbs thru the steel, winds its way up, up until it is out of sight.

 

Flecks of burning charcoal fall from the sky, foul the air. What is on fire? Engines fly wildly down the Champs Elysee. I am caught in a crowd of lovely young girls holding hands, skipping down the wide street, hastily stepping onto the cobblestones to let the firemen do what they do. Huge brown hoses unwind themselves, reach across L'Avenue Deux. The lovely girls let go of each other, chase the handsome firemen. They look hot. Their blouses are low cut supposedly keeping them cool. Instead they and the firemen lose their way, let the wooden barrels roll down to the arch. Their motion brightens the flames that suddenly die in the grass.

 

There is much shouting and applause from the tourists enjoying the odd spectacle, getting more up-set moment to moment as the elevators stop running and they must walk down 502 steps before they are able to smell the green trees instead of gray smoke. I do not hurry, don't mind the smoke that curls into snakes. It hisses at me and I curl into myself, wait, wait, wait for the gray smoke to evaporate. My wait has to end soon. I am seating like a pig roasting over red embers. There is a sound, a push, a shake and I feel hands around my shoulders, hear a voice from a distant place.

 

'Jeff, Jeff! Open your eyes! Where has your unexpected nap taken you?' My shirt is soggy. My mouth is dry. I obey the voice and open my foggy eyes just a slit. Raising my head, I make out the closed oven door, recognize my mom's voice, see the tall blue glass of cold iced tea just a few inches from my finger tips, raise it and down it in one long delicious swallow.

 

My mom is standing close to me, a plate of chocolate cookies still slightly warm from the oven, is laid on the plastic table cloth. I need no invitation to partake of the treat, wash the deliciousness down with the tea. Looking all around me I see no lovely curvacious girls , no French rues, no fire men, no Eiffel tower

 

–and no father. Where was he while I was in Paris? The patter, the splatter of the rain storm cools the kitchen, the paved streets and Mom pours the last of the iced tea in my blue glass.