The Clouds

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He finds himself already at the corner by the ice cream stand, shielded from the sun by the broad red-and-white-striped awning. Before moving out of the shade to the sunny sidewalk across the street, he anticipates the feeling of heat-softened asphalt beneath the soles of his brown loafers. And now, on the gray sidewalk that shimmers and burns in the summer siesta hour, his shadow pools at his feet as if shriveled by the sun as it finally begins to sink, slowly, from its high point.

He is about to eat a double-scoop of chocolate and vanilla, his unusual lunch, and if he’s waited this long to leave his office to buy it — it’s nearly two-thirty — it is because he’s decided that the ice cream ought to get him by until dinnertime. Doubtless, the heat is the primary cause of such frugality, but a sort of athletic stoicism, as he imagines it (a result of the day’s caprice rather than habit), colors this stratagem of his ever so slightly with virtue. So he is pleased for the moment: content, spry, and healthy, and, not yet too far into his fifties, he believes he has great prospects, both immediate and long-term. He feels tall, bright, and vital, as if a red carpet stretched from the tips of his toes on to infinity. But almost immediately the harsh summer weather, the tumult of the street, and the black, noxious exhaust fumes carry him back to reality, to that midpoint in his soul between anxiety and euphoria that acquaintances — and he himself, grown convinced by what began as an idle joke — refer to with unjustified certainty as his temperament.

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