The morning sun flashed off a window on the top floor of Brooklyn Tech. The reflection flooded through my westerly windows. My bedroom is on the top floor of a Fort Greene brownstone. White light saturated my eyelids. The distant fireball crisped the iris, retina, and finally my optic nerve. It was dawn.
Temperature already over 90.
I skyped Fenway’s mom in Jomtien. Monsoon season. Heavy rains. 89F. Mam was thinking about moving to Si Racha. I liked that town. It was Thai. We were planning to make the move in a month. Fenway for once wasn’t busy. We spoke about e-lang. Birds scare him sometimes. They scared me too.
I tried to return to sleep. HAYDAY, a novel about 1848 America, proved a powerful somnifer. Another 45 minutes of unconsciousness. No dreams, no demons, no desires. My body thermometer needed a shower. 30 seconds under the spray of cold water. Catskill water chilled to Niagara cool.
I dressed light. Long-sleeved white shirt. Jeans. Tan sandals. Straw hat to keep off the sun. The atmosphere had ceased to offer protection from the cosmos. I walked down Lafayette to the Academy Diner. The waitress took my order. The same every Saturday. Vera knew it by heart.”The usual.”
“You got it right.” Bacon, eggs over easy, home fries, rye toast, coffee with milk. My seat sat in line of the air condition. 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
“Hot out there.” Vera delivered ice water and OJ.
“Feels like Venus with a little less toxicity.” Sci-Fi movies famously portrayed the solar system’s second planet as misty. Water was not in the chemical make-up of the intergalactic fog.
“The air is so thick you could pour it.” Vera had a way with cliches. the 40 year-old was pure Brooklyn. Carroll Gardens. 3rd Generation.
“Last year it never got hot.” June had been rainy and cold. July had seen one 90-plus day. August had seemed more like September. My eggs were up. Vera left me with the New York Times. She respected the silence of a man eating breakfast.
I scanned the front page, the sports, and lit on the weather report. The heat wave stretched across every state east of the Rocky Mountains. The torrid pressure zone was centered west of Wichita. Kansas prairie. Tornado Alley. South lay Oklahoma. Tulsa had spent the entire month of July in the 90s.
I paid my bill. The tip was 20%. Vera asked about my kids. She knows that they are on the other side of the world. I stepped outside the diner. 70 to 95 in a second. This was the hottest July on the records for New York. ConEd was taxed by the relentless heat. I didn’t have AC in my apartment. I was trying to sweat off the winter three months after its demise. I was down to 190. If this weather held up, then I’d be down to 185 by Labor Day.
“Hot.” AP greeted me on the steps of his brownstone. His two kids wanted to go swimming. The nearest pool was on Adelphi.
“Be hotter later.” My two fans were my favorite possession. “Strange you don’t see any debunking about global warming in the newspapers.”
“Not the right season.”
“James Inhofe is strangely silent.” The Oklahoman senator was the GOP’s pitbull on climate change.
“Skeptics hide during the hot.” AP wiped his forehead with a small towel. It was our fashion accessory for the last month.
“I’m no skeptic.” I was melting from the heat like the Wicked Witch of the West at the end of THE WIZARD OF OZ, although I had no intent of clicking my heels twice. that only got me to Kansas. I wanted Greenland. My friend Fabo is drilling oil exploration off of Thule.
Temperature.
41F.
Drive fast. Bigger cars. No fat people.
Paradise.
To the end of time.