Saying, “Damn, it’s hot” would be an understatement. It’s that kind of sticky, humid heat that feels as if you’re cooking from the inside out. It seeps into the pores of your skin and pulls out all the moisture from your body. Living in a desert like Las Vegas will do that to you, even if heat has been in your blood since you were born.
I wipe the tiny sweat beads from the top of my forehead with the back of my hand as I reach across the counter to turn on the tiny little portable fan I’ve hooked up to the shelf above my head. I briefly glance over towards the air conditioning controls. It takes literally everything I have in me not to turn that thing on. But I can’t waste money on running it today. Tomorrow’s supposed to be hotter, believe it or not, and if I’m going to get any business, I’ll have to survive through today -- sweaty hands and all.
“Miss Alana! Miss Alana!” I hear a faint knock on the metal window shade and my heart races. That’s money knocking and calling my name. I lift the latch, and the window comes flying open. Outside is a small boy about four feet tall wearing a red baseball cap, black knit tank, and shorts. Behind him stands a tall man with a completely disinterested look on his face. He’s texting on his phone, not even bothering to look up at me.
“Hey, buddy!” I shout as enthusiastically as I can muster. The heat from the outside is pouring inside as the mini fan struggles to keep going. “What can I get you? A Superman sundae? A bubblegum shake? I really love the pecan fudge sundae!”
“Whatever’s cheapest,” his dad mumbles under his breath, still not even bothering to look at me, or his son, who is practically climbing up the ice cream truck’s side to hand me a little stack of dollar bills. I wonder briefly if it’s his allowance. With a dad like that, I’m guessing this little guy doesn’t really get many treats without working for it. It was only a few bucks, not enough for some of the more popular ice cream treats I serve, but I could ignore that.
“Wow! Look at this. For this much, you can get anything on the menu.” The boy’s eyes light up like Christmas lights and sparkle brightly as he runs his fingers over the pictures of the options. Each one is more colorful and outrageous than the last. I love that handmade sign that my bestie Jana created for a graphic design marketing project. And by the looks of the boy with his mouth hanging open, he appreciates it just as much as me.
The boy’s father, however, is a bit more suspicious. He puts his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and grabs the boy’s hand. “She’s obviously joking,” he says, glaring at his son. “It’s just a joke. Get a scoop of chocolate or something. Don’t think you’re wasting my money.”
Something in me sparks up as I watch this father practically manhandle his son. With my own dad in the hospital and my frustrating wearing thin at not having a ton of customers, I was feeling awfully generous to little boys who deserve something more than a pushy, selfish dad. I look back down to the crestfallen kid and say softly, “No. I mean it. He can have whatever he wants. It’s on the house.”
The boy’s father finally looks up at me. And he does this thing -- I don’t know. Guys do it every time they first see me. It’s like a long double take. He scowls a quick reply to whoever he’s talking to and then puts his phone away in his pocket. His dark face and beady eyes somehow soften as he slowly looks back up at me. He moves from my elbows to my chest and then up my neck to my face. I try not to roll my eyes. Even if it’s two bucks, it’s worth not getting out of the truck and decking the dad right in the face.
The dad’s voice changes. It’s like he’s a totally new person as he reaches his hand towards mine and gives it for a long, gentle shake. “Well, that’s really sweet of you…” He glances over towards the side of my truck where my name is plastered in bubblegum-pink letters “... Miss Alana.” And then he does the most surprising thing of all -- he reaches towards his son and pulls him in close to him. “Aaron and I were just spending our weekend together when we thought we’d get a treat before his mom picks him up.”
“Is that so…” I say passively, totally uninterested in what was about to come next. It was the same each time. Single dads thinking that their terribly cute kid would actually land them some tail. Working in an ice cream truck in Vegas, I’ve seen pretty much every lame, skeezy attempt at this approach.
Still, my look of total reproach doesn’t appear to phase this genius. He manages to get even closer to me. His head rests on the side of the window as he twiddles his fingers on the rim of the opening. He pulls his designer sunglasses from the top of his head to cover his eyes as he boldly asks quietly, “After I drop him off, maybe I’ll stop by and get myself a treat for myself. Would it still be ‘on the house’?’”
What. The. Hell. It’s taking everything in my power not to laugh at this creep-tastic trainwreck. Instead, I focus down at his son who is looking more impatient than ever to score his free ice cream. This kid is getting extra toppings because he has to put up with a dad like this all weekend long. I ask Aaron, still smiling, “Did you decide yet?”
The boy sounds like a deflated balloon as he points towards the green slime ice cream. It’s an invention I made up myself -- mint ice cream with green chocolate sauce. I usually serve it as is, but I’ve been shelving some hard candy insects in my van for an experimental ice cream lately, so I top off the extra scoop with a few spiders and ladybugs along with some chocolate cookie flakes. As I hand it back to him, I shout in fake surprise, “Oh my gosh! Aaron! I think there are some bugs in this ice cream!” I pick out one from the top and pop it into my mouth, smiling widely, “They’re delicious, though! Taste just like chocolate. You wanna try some still?”
Aaron goes back to looking like a kid at an ice cream truck as he bounces up and down. I reach down and hand him the ice cream and watch him skip away towards the picnic tables I’ve set up. His dad smiles back at me, and I wonder if he thinks my kindness was to attract him. Ugh. My lips twist as I imagine that. I have some pretty horrible taste in men, but I’m not that stupid. I quickly shut the window to the truck to drown out the guy’s voice as he tries to play father-of-the-year for me.
In my nice little ice cream truck cocoon, I take the few dollars the kid handed to me and place it in the safe under the bench. The ice cream would have cost at least six bucks, but it was worth it. Everyone deserved a dad like mine, and it honestly made me heartbroken to see someone who wasn’t as blessed. I just wish mine were here. This truck was his first-born baby. He built it himself, regularly outfitted it with the latest in food truck refrigeration, and drove it all around the country when I was growing up -- just the two of us.
I used to sleep in a cot where the new cooler is. He’d take the helm, sleeping in the front seat. When money was good, we’d get a motel room. When money was tight, I would shower at the YMCA. It wasn’t exactly ideal, but it was all my dad knew to do after my mom died. All he wanted in life was to make sure that I was safe, fed, and dressed, and to turn his ice cream truck into an old, 1900s-era ice cream parlor near the strip. He would call it ‘Miss Alana’s Ice Cream Stop,’ just like what was written on the truck in the bright pink lettering.
But when it was time for me to go to school, he knew he had to quit that dream. He took the money he had saved up, bought us a little condo on the west side of town, and stuck to driving the truck in town so he could always pick me up after school in it.
When I started at Las Vegas University, he still always drove by at least twice a day to check in on me (and make a quick buck from the hungry college kids). The day he didn’t come was the day my heart broke into a million pieces. I knew something was wrong when, by 4 o’clock, he hadn’t once texted or rang his distinct ice cream bell music down the campus main way.
I had frantically called him for at least two hours, but each time, it went to voicemail. Later, the cops would say that when a phone is crushed into a billion pieces, it doesn’t even bother to ring on the other end. It just goes to voicemail. I should have known. But I waited a full twenty-four hours. Jana finally convinced me to go over to our old condo. Nothing was there -- just the ice cream truck in the parking spot. From the condo, we called every single hospital we could find until we got one who recognized the name, “Leo Bloom.”
I’m still not sure how it happened. A semi, a motorcycle, my dad’s beat up sedan he bought from a friend for $500 a few years ago… when I saw the pictures in the paper the next day, I couldn’t tell which one was which. It looked like a massive ball of steel that made up some weird art project. The truck driver died. The motorcyclist fled on foot and wasn’t found. And I was left with my dad in an unresponsive, medically induced coma in which no one, not even the best-trained doctor in Vegas, could tell me when he would come out of.
A few days after my dad’s accident, I got the first bill from the ambulance company. It was more than my tuition payment. I tried calling and negotiating… okay, begging, but it did no good. They wanted their money, and they wanted it now. Failure to pay or show insurance meant my dad would be transferred to the county hospital where he’d be doomed to get the worst care possible. I had to do something to stay on top of the bills now piling in like rain in buckets.
So, here I am in the back of my dad’s “Miss Alana” ice cream truck. My makeshift accommodation, a fold out mattress on a pull-down Murphy bed, sat upright in the corner next to a bag of clothes I had grabbed from my dorm room. I have a chair in here along with my laptop and textbooks, but that is about it. While I came up with many of the flavors, I had really never run the show before. This place, without my dad’s laughter and silly songs, was incredibly lonely. I hate to admit that I’m not quite up to being “Miss Alana.”
I turn and look at the pile of books stacked next to me and back up at the clock. I’ve got three or four good hours of ice cream truck time before I can actually do my studying for my midterm exams next week, but it wouldn’t kill me to use the lull in customers to read a few chapters of the text. I open up to a folded back page and begin to read to myself. I’m about a page in when I realize that this isn’t working at all. I can’t focus. I can barely remember the last word I read. I’m too focused on that poor boy and his asshole dad and my own father with the tubes and wires attached to his beat up body.
I close the book and pull over my laptop instead, resting it on my lap. Flipping the lid up, it powers on almost immediately to the homepage of my website, Graduate Level Ice Cream, or as Jana calls it -- GLIC. Jana’s been working on it from behind the scenes all day as a favor to me. I’ve been writing in it for about two years now, and I’m just starting to get readers. It needed a bit of sprucing up, and Jana is the one to go to with anything design-orientated. She has always had an eye for that sort of stuff.
And looking at the end result -- I’m completely amazed. It looks exactly like a website version of my ice cream truck down to the pink lettering and the mint green drips of ice cream coming from the header. Then there is the cartoon version of me leaning up against the letters, holding an ice cream cone to her ruby red painted lips (my signature color!). My blonde hair is pulled back into a vintage ponytail with the curl at the end, and I’m wearing a pair of tight jean leggings, black sneakers, and a black and white top. It was like she managed to transform me. I don’t know how I will ever be able to thank her for this, but I make a note to think of a new flavor of ice cream and name it after her. Maybe chocolate rum or something funky like that…
I push aside thoughts of ice cream and begin to type into the blog post box. At first, I write about my dad. I get out about four paragraphs of writing just about him and my fears for him. I write about him not being able to hold my hand and the feeling of walking into the ice cream truck alone for the first time. I write about being worried that I will never be able to pay these medical bills despite working almost every waking minute of my life (outside of class) in the back of this truck. I write about how I wish someone were here to support me or at least tell me that everything was going to be alright.
And then I delete all of it. I do this a lot. I write and write and write until my fingers want to bleed, but then I erase everything. This blog, while about my life, is anonymous. Sure, people know me as the “ice cream girl” but that’s about it. I’ve only given away bits and pieces of how I look, how I am a graduate student and how I work in the ice cream truck my father owns. Names, places, and other identifiers have been changed to protect myself from the backlash.
So instead of pouring my heart out, I stick to what I know best -- quick wit observations:
Holy hell, you guys. Let me tell you about scumbag dads. You know the type -- guy comes in with his son/daughter, and isn’t even paying attention to them. They do the bare minimum. And then… BAM! They notice the pair of boobs in front of them. But do you think a scumbag dad cares that he couldn’t give his special snowflake two minutes of attention? No. He cares more about his chances of nailing the tits owner.
True story. This all just happened to me as I tried to serve this poor kid a scoop of ice cream. And no, that dad will not be getting my number. Nor will he be stopping over here once he’s done dropping his kid off to his real parent. I’ll be long gone before then. Creepers do not apply here. Adios. Good luck, kid. You’re going to need it with those genes.
I smile as I press send. All that anger I felt earlier about that dad has washed away with the woosh of the submit button. Writing was that kind of relief for me. And even though I had to censor myself, it was still a version of me online. I could be saucy like Jana and funny like my dad. I could be Alana 2.0. I could be GLIC girl.
I close the laptop as I hear a group of kids bombarding the truck. Swim lessons over at the Rec Center must be getting out because there are at least ten kids in swim trunks and half covered bathing suits dragging annoyed parents behind them as they point excitedly at me. One by one, I scoop and serve with the brightest, most loving smile I can muster until they’re gone as fast as they had come -- just enough of a rush to get me through my day.
With music blasting in my headphones, I lock the truck up starting with the windows and back entrances, leaving the front unlocked. I pack up my supplies, quickly washing everything and putting the scoopers and stirrers away. The cups go back in the drawers while the leftover ice cream treats are pushed into the labeled bins in the freezers. The chill of the open doors gives me enough relief to get the end of day work done.
When I’m done, I walk around to the front of the truck and slip off the apron, tossing it mindlessly into the front seat as I pull up my phone’s GPS in search of my next destination. I’ve got to park this thing near the fairgrounds tonight with the carnival opening tomorrow before the regular school year begins. With directions in hand, I open the driver’s door and leap into the high seat.
As I turn to grab the apron that has slid down the back of the seat, I feel something completely new and unfamiliar. Well, it’s not completely unfamiliar. I recognize the grip of someone holding my wrist. But it’s the face attached to the hand that scares me the most. Two piercing green eyes glow in the darkness of the back of the truck, and the stranger firmly commands me, “Don’t say anything.”
I feel the cold steel of a gun placed directly at my head as the faceless man points towards the highway. I put my shaking hands on the steering wheel, swallow the lump forming in my throat, and head out onto the road.