Dreams, Part 3: Roger

When Karen woke up she was an hour late for work. She did not shower, she did not eat breakfast, and she drove faster than usual in the end-of-rush-hour traffic. When she got to work, she did not pour her cup of coffee; she went straight to her cubicle, slid off her shoes and went to work. She entered data for two hours, then went to lunch at the small café on the office building’s second floor (egg salad sandwich on white bread with pickles, Lay’s potato chips and a diet Pepsi), then returned to work. After work she went home, microwaved a frozen dinner, opened a can of beer and watched television until 9 p.m. At 9 p.m., Karen went to bed.

III. Roger

On morning of the fourth month, Roger woke up and realized that he was tired of the Day Care biz, and even the babysicles were not what they used to be. So, that day he took his leave of the other ice cream men and their burgeoning business, and went on the road, wearing his polyester suit, white suede shoes and SweetMan hat. He traveled on foot, eager to explore the far reaches of the country, seeing sights he had never seen.

But he when he reached the heart of the city it was dark and he was tired, and Roger soon realized that these streets were nowhere for a retired ice cream man to wander unprotected. As the night closed in, so did the walls of the buildings; from doorway to doorway, the former SweetMan bounced like a lost rubber ball. Finally, sometime after 10pm, he collapsed on the stoop of a tumbling down apartment building and fell asleep.