Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun Read Free

from the pavement and maybe occasionally too close to the pavement or ‘kerb’ as you may call it, but surely these are just minor mistakes?’ I pause, waiting for him to laugh, and when he doesn’t I continue undeterred. ‘I suppose that once or twice my car might have stalled going up hill, but isn’t that to be expected in San Francisco? You see my car is a manual one. It’s an old manual car. It’s actually a collector’s item.’ But by now I’ve concluded that he won’t know what a 911 is, not to speak of my 993. He’s probably one of those that dreams of owning a Lexus with gold-rimmed hubcaps.
    ‘Yes ma’am, anything else I can do for you, ma’am?’
    ‘No, darling,’ I mumble. ‘No,’ I repeat, because now I’m annoyed at having slipped into using this endearment which was a mannerism I’d once vowed never to adopt. I saw how it aged a friend, even more than her smattering of silver hairs and varicose veins that she was so fond of bemoaning. Calling a young man ‘darling’ or ‘sweetheart’ made you sound old, but now I’d just done it myself, without even thinking. ‘Chouchouter,’ I whisper, failing to find a suitable English word. Belatedly, hearing the dull hum on the telephone line, I realize that my young American darling has hung up. ‘Fuck! Bugger!’ I add, startled by the crassness of my own language. Not as bad as the saccharine I’d used earlier, but still, my father would be appalled if he could hear me now. I wave the letter to the heavens in a gesture of apology before folding it and placing it back on the desk.
    ‘I’m not careless,’ I mutter to my friends on the shelves. ‘Whoever’s done this nasty thing of reporting me ought to be ashamed.’
    My new optician tells me there’s nothing he can do to stop the slow deterioration of my eyesight; and because I’d passed my last driving test without anyone noticing how I’d had to squint or lean forward to read the eye chart, I presumed that I’d be fine. I reckoned I had at least five more years of driving. ‘At least five,’ I tell myself firmly, deciding to deal with the letter later and take my walk before the fog rolls in. No point in getting my knickers in a twist over this. I fetch my keys, close the front door and take the stairs down to the lobby. On my way out I glance ruefully at Buttercup, my beloved old Porsche, parked admittedly a little more than eighteen inches from the kerb. But what the hell!

2
    Dawud is embarrassed at not knowing the woman’s name especially when she remembers his and even speaks a little of his language, so he hands her a flower.
    ‘As-salaam alaikum. Beautiful flower for a beautiful woman,’ he says in anticipation of the pleasure his words will bring.
    ‘Bellissimo!’ she smiles, flirtatiously tucking it above her ear.
    He chuckles, thinking that once upon a time she must have been stunning – such a tall woman with a fine ass, even now. She was probably even stylish, although now, at her age, all these bright colours with the pencil and flowers sticking out of her hair only made her look odd. And if she did buy something, which wasn’t often because she was one of those that preferred the organic place down the street, then it was always their cheapest flowers or a small packet of apricots. And this never made sense tohim because if she bought all that expensive stuff down the road, then why didn’t she also buy his expensive flowers? Amirah said the woman was just eccentric, but that was his sister being kind. Amirah never said a bad word about anybody, which is why he had to look after the family’s business, and that was a headache with the shop being so close to the Haight Ashbury with all the hippies and pot-smoking lazies.
    ‘Hey,’ he calls to a woman who has just arrived. ‘Can I help you?’ Not so much a question as a warning because he’s heard from the gym down the road that there’s an Asian couple going round, stealing phones – one to distract,