Slide - Kyle Beachy [46]
We stepped toward each other as the catch wound down. I asked if he liked ice cream.
“See, that's a stupid question.”
“Yes. And we could get some. I feel like ice cream, I'm saying, and you could come with me. If you want.”
Ian held the ball. He looked at his house and then the ground. “I'm going to need some shoes.”
Ian fastened his seat belt without being told to. He ran a hand over the dashboard and fiddled with the electronic windows. He dipped his seat back and brought it back up. He turned the air conditioner on high. I'd never been more sensitive to the silly opulence of my car.
I said, “The difference between frozen custard and ice cream is you don't put custard in a cone. And it has more butter, or cream, I think. Or eggs. Ted Drewes is custard.”
“Is that where we're going? Awesome. I haven't been to Ted Drewes since I was a kid.”
“What are you, eleven? Twelve?”
“I'm going into fifth grade, which is almost junior high. I like to round up.”
There is a sort of history you can reach for and touch, the official chapters. Since the early forties, a shingle-roofed white house in the South County region of St. Louis has stood as the city's premier source of frozen custard. Forever averse to franchising, Ted Drewes endured populace migrations, regional development, countless diet crazes. In summer, herds of people amass in amorphous queues outside the stand's three service windows. Parents wait and study the hand-painted menu while children spastically circle their legs, chasing and fleeing. I parked between two SUVs that made mine look like a Matchbox toy and followed Ian to the back of the lines.
“Shit,” he said.
At what age do kids start to cuss?
“Pardon?”
“That girl. Shit. Shit.”
I wanted to hear him say fuck, asshole, bitch, bastard. He stepped around so that my body hid him from the girl. He ducked his head and his hair hung over his eyes. I looked at the girl, who was too busy with her parents to notice Ian.
“Who is she?”
“She used to live up the street from me until last year her parents got rich and moved to those big houses over by school. We used to go to the woods by the creek. We had two chairs. Then she moved and took her chair, and I stopped going there because what fun is one chair in the woods.”
“Do you still talk to her?”
Are you crazy? No way. She won't even talk to my friend Tyler, and Tyler was all she could say when we'd go to the creek. Tyler is so cute I'm gonna marry him and have his kids, Tyler this and that and Tyler everything else. She called him Ty-Ty”
Ian stared mainly at the ground, stealing occasional furtive glances at the girl.
“She probably misses you too,” I said. “Don't get wrapped up in the mythos of the female. I can't tell you how much it would have helped if someone would have explained this to me.”
“Are you serious?”
“I'm trying to destroy the mystique before you commit to it.”
“Do you even have a girlfriend?”
“Yes,” I said. “Do you know your order? You should decide what you want before we get to the window.”
Ian asked for an elaborate mixture of cinnamon custard and apple chunks and pie crust, cinnamon powder and a viscous brown topping. He was explicit, clear with his order. I, on the other hand, had no idea. The girl behind the counter tapped her nails on the counter. I asked for plain.
“We don't got plain. You mean vanilla.”
We sat on the hood of the car my parents bought for me and spooned frozen dessert into our mouths. I heard a woman yell to get Lindsay's shoes from the backseat. Two teenagers on what looked like a date passed by, laughing. Children scurried about while Ian methodically worked through his custard.
“My girlfriend left for Europe,