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IT IS HOT AND I AM SWEATING

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, I was still standing in line outside Starbucks, but I had almost made it to the door. A mass of sweaty people were shifting on their feet and jostling each other all around me and trying (unsuccessfully) to cram themselves into the sliver of shade along the edge of the building.

  “What the hell is taking so long?” screeched a woman behind me in line, “It’s hot.”

  No one answered her directly but she commanded the sympathy of the crowd. Everywhere, over-heated and under-caffeinated tourists were fuming and pawing the pavement like a herd of cattle working themselves up for a stampede.

  “It’s hot,” the woman squawked again.

  I picked her out of the crowd quite easily. She looked exactly how she sounded, like a flustered seabird, long neck stretching to its mighty zenith, beak agape, bellowing bloody murder out at world in general. She had designer sunglasses and a handbag hanging off her elbow that must have cost about $600.

  She had her husband with her, a brow-beaten old man with a yellow Hawaiian shirt covered in little pictures of parrots and a ostentatious fanny pack bolted onto the front of his torso, packed so tight it bulged at the zipper.

  “Harold,” she pleaded (not “Harold” specifically, of course. I feel like it should be obvious by now I just make these names up (he looked like a Harold, though)).

  “Harold,” she pleaded, “It’s hot.”

  Poor Harold. He couldn’t even slump his shoulders. They were already flaccid and resigned. Every wrinkle on his weary face testified to a long past year as the Mighty Stork’s pet husband. All the pluck had been sucked out of the poor bastard a long time ago.

  “Well, honey,” he said, in a tone much too exhausted to be consoling, “It’s Palm Springs.”

  Bird Woman dabbed at her cheeks and forehead.

  “I’m sweating,” she said.

  “I thought you liked the heat?” suggested Harold, that poor fool. Even I could have told him that an attempt at optimism constituted a tactical misstep.

  Her mouth dropped open and she just looked at him. It was enough. Harold shrank and even I felt like I should apologize, just a sort of sweeping apology on behalf of my entire sex.

  Hot as she may have been, at least her glare was still chilly.

  “Go find somewhere to sit, if you want,” suggested Harold. A feeble attempt at peace and even he knew it, “I’ll find you when I make it through.”

  Poor, poor Harold. It wasn’t a bad suggestion on the surface of things, but he’d really gone and stepped in it now. The only bench around was about twenty yards up the street but, unbeknownst to Harold, it would do him no good.

  There was a girl in a brown bucket hat sitting on one end of that bench, her hands clasped in her lap and her feet, in big hiking boots, crossed on the sidewalk beneath her. She had laid out a piece of cardboard and a green beach towel and scattered a collection of bits and bobs across it; creations of twisted brass wire, shiny dangles of hammered copper, and glass beads.

  She propped a torn cardboard sign up on the far end of the bench that read “Homemade Jewelry?—?$5” in bold Sharpie.

  The stork-woman found the bench as quickly as I did and her lip immediately curled up into a snarl.

  “There is some tramp hogging it up,” she said.

  Harold looked down the street. He shrugged.

  “Maybe there is another one?”

  “Do you see another one?” she chirped, “Bet she doesn’t even have a permit to peddle that garbage out here like this. Just what we need, more trash cluttering up the place.”

  I hoped she was talking about the jewelry, but I was beginning to doubt it. I had a feeling things had taken a turn into “riff-raff” territory again.

  Harold sighed. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Tell her that other people want to use the bench, too.”

  Harold looked at that steaming pile of wife of his, then back at the little transient-looking girl quietly sitting beside a mismatched assortment of homemade trinkets.

  Maybe the contrast in image of the girl hocking her little inventory on the sidewalk just outside the doors of the one of the richest and most expansive franchise brands in the world got to him.

  Maybe it occurred to him, for a moment, the absurdity of sneering down at a girl selling her odds and ends for less than the cost of the coffee he and his wife were waiting in that hot, sweaty line to pour down their gullets for no other reason than whimsical indulgence.

  Maybe I’m projecting. Maybe Harold was just a decent guy. Whatever the reason, a little bit of rebellion flickered to life in him.

  “No,” he said, flatly, “I’m not going to do that.”

  An ugly noise came out of the woman then. Harold didn’t acknowledge it.

  "I guess I’ll just stand, then,” the wife muttered. She folded her skinny arms over her chest and pouted like only a woman in designer sunglasses and a $600 handbag can.

  A few sweaty minutes later, though, she brightened again.

  “Oh, now look here!” she said excitedly.

  Her old eyes had spotted a police officer on patrol, a few blocks ahead, making his way down the street. With his sharp, tight uniform, and firm jaw he looked like an apex predator, a shark cutting the swarming waters of a geriatric reef, and he was on a straight intercept course with Jewelry Girl who, to Stork-Lady’s point, almost certainly did not have a permit.

  The woman smiled triumphantly. At she had to do now was wait for her moment and then pounce. The officer glided over to the girl’s bench. His shadow spilled over her and she looked up at him nervously. When he spoke, it was the voice of the law.

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  “Did you make all these yourself?” he said.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Looks good!” he said, “Nice work.”

  “Thanks.”

  Then he kept walking.

  He walked right past Stork-Lady. He didn’t give any impression of feeling the daggers her eyes were shooting at him through those gold-rimmed designer sunglasses. He breezed right past, off on some mysterious errand of The Badged (probably a triple-homicide involving lost Nazi gold or cable television has taught me nothing about law enforcement).

  Stork-Lady simply trembled with rage.

  “What the hell do my tax-dollars even go for?” she retched.

  “Our taxes pay the police in Montana,” said Harold, “Where we live.”

  “It’s the principle, Harold!”

  “Honey, please, calm down-”

  Another misstep by Harold.

  “Harold!” retched the woman, “It is hot and I am sweating.”

  Her fury proved contagious. The masses were stirring now, their brains all fried up like eggs on that sun-soaked California sidewalk. They snorted and growled, working themselves into some kind of pagan frenzy.

  “What the hell is taking so long?” someone screamed.

  “They might at least offer us some water,” said another.

  “Can’t they call for more help?”

  “What the hell is taking so long?”

  By this time, I had all but reached the doors. I was right outside them, I could see the counter through the glass.

  But Stork-Lady and her ilk made me nervous. I began to have terrible premonitions of a howl rising up through the ranks as the grey hordes surged forward and stormed the gates of Starbucks, like vikings hellbent on enacting some righteous slaughter. I feared an outbreak of ugliness in the medieval vein.

  Someone must have informed the manager that the heat-stroked tourists bordered on turning savage. A few minutes later a wild-eyed employee emerged from inside carrying a tray with a pitcher of ice-water and a column of paper cups.

  He said all the things Starbucks corporate would have wanted him to:

  “Thank you for your patience,” “Sorry for your discomfort,” “Going as fast as we can,” et cetera, et cetera.

  He began making his way down the line, handing out paper cups full of water to eager, grasping hands. He kept on talking all the while, soft and soothing, like a farmer boy talking down a skittish colt. He must have said the right things, nobody called for him to be drawn and quartered

  I stopped listening to him pretty much right away. As he made his way down the line, I saw my chance and slipped behind him and through the front door.

  As soon as I stepped inside, the sweet, cool, air-conditioned air rolled over me like a wave. I gulped down a couple mouthfuls, practically drank it in.

  The euphoria wore off after that and the line continued to move slowly. Without the intense heat of the sun to distract me, I soon found a whole new reason to be uncomfortable.

  And that reason was… everything.

  I suffer from a sort of body claustrophobia at the best of times. Put me in a box and I’m as happy as a clam but surround me with a few slabs of human meat-suit and all of a sudden I begin to go to pieces. I became very aware of those glistening chest-bristles poking through the fibers of the undershirt of the man standing so close behind me I can feel a tickle on my neck every time he blinks. The air feels heavy in crowds that dense, heavy and wet, and it gives me the ugly sensation that I’m sucking in other people’s stench fumes which, in turn, is a thought so ugly my brain wants to puke itself out of my mouth and crawl out a window.

  I don’t handle crowds well, is the point. I get jittery. I start to feel a little bit like screaming, “What the hell is taking so long?” at no one in particular, just to make my discomfort heard.

  I fought down that impulse, thank Heaven. I started fidgeting and looking around for something to look at, anything that would distract me from all those sweaty bodies that kept bumping into me and breathing on me.

  I found a brochure hiding under the edge of the trash can and squatted down awkwardly to pick it up. I had to squat because the bodies were packed so closely together in that interminable line -for what, exactly, I could only dimly recall- that I didn’t have room to bend over without planting my face against someone’s sticky chest. Or worse.

  The brochure cover had a photo of downtown Palm Springs with a conventional and happy-looking family superimposed over the top, kids and parents mugging for the camera with big, dopey smiles.

  Across the top, big yellow letters read:

  HISTORIC PALM SPRINGS - PLAYGROUND OF THE STARS!

  The brochure advertised a local walking tour of the must-see sights of greater Palm Springs that would be “fun and informative for the whole family.” Highlights included Bob Hope’s house and the favorite hangouts of legendary icons of Americana like Cary Grant, Kirk Douglas, Lucille Ball, Frank Sinatra, and other black-and-white antiques your kids have surely never heard of.

  Intrigued, I was scouring the brochure fine print for a ticket price when a voice interrupted me, chirping “What can I get you?”

  I had made it. I had made it to the front of the line.

  But, in all that time, never once had it occurred to me to actually look at the menu. And now there I was, at the gates of the Promised Land, the exhausted barista looking at me with the cold dead eyes of a zombified wage-slave, a savage mob at my back half-crazed from heatstroke and blood-lust and foaming at the mouth to burn the whole place down… and I had no idea what I wanted to order. I could barely even remember what store I was in at that point.

  “What can I get you?” she said again.

  I panicked. All I once I couldn't remember any coffee words at all.

  “Coffee,” I blurted.

  She blinked.

  “Like a drip coffee?”

  “Yes?”

  “You know it’s like 90 degrees out there?”

  “Yes?”

  “And you want a hot coffee?”

  “Yes?”

  She started to turn around.

  “No!” I said, as my brain critically replayed the entire previous conversation like a judgmental elementary school teacher adjusting his glasses and asking the class, “Now what did we do wrong here?”

  Barista Girl was not impressed. I was running my charity threshold pretty thin by this point and I knew it.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “Could I make that a- a, uh-” I still hadn’t looked at the menu.

  I admit I was confused. It was the heat. And the pressure. And all those sweating, huffing, gassing, belching bodies pressing up behind me in a stinking, retching tide. Give her something. anything, screamed my brain, very helpfully, for God’s sake, just get me out of this bacterial orgy tent.

  George’s wife came to my rescue.

  “Caramel macchiato,” I said at last and congratulated myself because I was pretty sure those were real coffee words.

  Barista Girl just blinked. She was not in the congratulatory mood.

  “Hot?” she said.

  “It sure is!” I said.

  She briefly looked like she wanted to say something else but decided against it. She just shrugged and pushed a few buttons on her console.

  The drink cost me about six bucks after tip. Of course I tipped. I’m not a monster.

  I finally got my drink about an hour and twenty minutes after getting into line. I ducked out of there just as fast as I could, back into the scorching sun where at least I could move my arms freely without committing a felony.

  I took a big gulp of my well-earned coffee and immediately doubled over and spit it all over the sidewalk. I had burned my tongue pretty bad.

  Good old Brain fired up the projector and clasped his hands together at the front of the class. “Now what did we do wrong this time?” he asked.

  Inwardly, even I had to cringe.

  “Hot?” she’d said. Meaning the drink, you imbecile, not the weather.

  “Very good,” said Mr. Brain, “And what did we learn?”

  An excellent question from Mr. Brain. What did we learn?

  So far, we had mainly learned that Palm Springs was whirlwind of aggressively spoiled tourists so desperate to enjoy themselves they were making themselves (and everybody else) miserable.

  They didn’t like the long lines, they didn’t like the riff-raff, and most of them didn’t even sound too keen on California itself, on a conceptual level.

  And yet, here there were. In droves. The great migration of the Grey Hordes going through all the rituals of their annual pilgrimage.

  Why? To wait, hot and sweating, in line for the same Starbucks coffee they could get in a hundred thousand other cities and towns across the country? To kick, claw, and scream in a mad scramble to achieve a the appropriately extravagant state of vacation bliss or die trying?

  There must, I decided, be something I was missing. There must be something beneath the layers of tourist smog, beneath the gaudy shirts and woven straw hats. There must be a beating heart at the center of this town that started the whole thing.

  Then I recalled the brochure in my pocket. I pulled it out and took another look at those abnormally cheerful faces. They looked like they knew something I didn’t.

  With new direction in mind, I took another, more cautious, sip of my 120-degree caramel macchiato and headed off down the sunny sidewalk, with the brochure clenched in my fist.

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