Sweeter Than Summer

1 | peaches n' scream

Mill's Rock, Massachusetts – population 2, 388 – didn't have a church. If you wanted to worship God, or Jesus, or Buddha, I don't know, then you'd have to go to Elton, the next town over. It was better in every conceivable way.

Well, almost every conceivable way. Sure, Elton had a lot of stuff Mill's Rock didn't. (i.e. the aforementioned church, a real grocery store, the closest hospital, a park, a mall for pete's sake) But it didn't have the beach. The odor of ocean. A constant layer of sand on, well, everything.

And it didn't have Franny's.

In the absence of organized religion, the people of Mill's Rock worshipped the gospel of cold, creamy dairy products. They flocked to the sticky, linoleum floors of the local ice cream parlor every afternoon, the same way devout Catholics needed their daily dose of the Bible.

At least, it felt that way, on those days when the AC was shot, and the line snaked out the door, and I had one hand on the blender and the other in the cash box, trying to make change with a permanent brain freeze. On some days, it was worse; there were the regulars, the ones who came year-round, plus whatever beach-goers stumbled in, already burned and totally lost as to how anything worked.

"It's peach ice cream, mixed with vanilla ice cream, with peach cobbler and gummy worms," I explained.

The woman still looked dazed. Or, I assumed she did, just based on her half-open mouth. The entire top half of her face was concealed behind the biggest pair of sunglasses I had ever seen, bright pink and rhinestoned and huge. "Now, what's the name of that one again?"

"Peaches n' scream."

She wriggled her nose, making her sunglasses wobble. "That doesn't sound appetizing."

So far, I had managed to salvage most of my 'customer service face,' the bright, fake smile I plastered on whenever I had to deal with anyone unfamiliar and difficult. But it was starting to crack; I could feel my eyebrows drawing together, my eyes getting unsettling wide, the forced enthusiasm fading.

"It's a play of the name 'peaches and cream,' only updated to encompass everything you're getting with every bite. The traditional peach and vanilla, and the cobbler, only with a twist, the gummy worms. Traditionally, when you see a worm in your food, you scream, right? Only in this case, it's a treat, a gummy worm, which is where the name has been derived from. Get it?"

During my monologue, the woman had started to slip back into her beach haze, her train of thought loping back around to the sun and the water and tanning lotion instead of my well-composed description of the ice cream she was going to order, if I had any say in it.

Realizing I had finished, she scrunched her nose again. "No."

I let out one heavy, angry sigh, but before I could let loose a string of incoherent, frustrated syllables, Frank was leaning his forearms on the glass case next to me.

"Can I get you anything, ma'am?" he asked Sunglasses Woman, flashing her a smile.

Her expression change drastically, and suddenly she was coming forward, smiling in a way I didn't think was possible with such tiny, pursed lips.

"Two scoops of chocolate in a sugar cone, please, sir."

Frank gave her a little nod. "Anything for a beautiful lady."

I turned away before I could see her swoon, taking up the empty place behind the cash register. Apparently, while I had been trying to explain the Flavor of the Day to Sunglasses Woman, the rest of our business had paid and left, concluding the after-lunch rush. Poppy, the other girl on our shift, had vanished into the freezer, so the only thing to do was wait for the flirting to stop so I could charge her for her cone.