Even though the Square was right outside our building, I rarely visited it. Maybe my husband did. But I did not. It was too loud, it was too confusing, and the crowds and the smells and the vendors’ shouting—Brii-iing me your metal! Brii-iing me your metal!—and the sounds of hammers constantly tocking against wood made me nervous. And it was so hot, the fire turning the air watery, that I thought I might faint.
I wasn’t the only person the Square made uneasy, which was silly, really, because there were at least twenty Flies that monitored the area, buzzing back and forth from one end to the other, and if anything really bad were to happen, the police would be there in an instant. Still, there was a group of us who regularly walked the sidewalk that encircled its perimeter, looking at the activity through the fence but not stepping into it. Many of these people were old and out of work, though I didn’t recognize any of them—they might not even have lived in Zone Eight but came from other zones, which was technically illegal but only rarely enforced. The southern and eastern zones had their own versions of the Square, but Zone Eight’s was considered the best, because Zone Eight was a stable and healthy and calm place to live.
After walking around the Square several times, I was desperately hot. On the southern edge of the Square was a row of cooling stations, but there was a long queue for them and it was foolish to pay for one when I could just walk back to the apartment. When Grandfather was my age, there were no cooling stations and no vendors. Back then, the Square had been planted with trees and covered with grass, and the pit in the center had been a fountain, where water erupted in bursts and then fell back into the pit again. Over and over the water exploded and fell, exploded and fell, for no other reason than because people liked it. I know this sounds queer, but it’s true: Grandfather showed me a photograph of it once. Back then, people lived with dogs, which they kept as companions, like children, and the dogs had their own special food, and they were all named, like they were people, and their owners would bring them to the Square and they would run around on the grass and their owners would watch them from benches that had been placed there for exactly that reason. That was what Grandfather said. Back then, he would come to the Square and sit on a bench and read a book, or walk through here on the way to Zone Seven, which wasn’t called Zone Seven but had an actual name, also like a person. A lot of things were named, back then.
I was thinking about all this as I was walking along the southern side of the Square, when a group of people who had been gathered around one vendor close to the entrance moved away, and I saw that the vendor was standing near an instrument shaped like a giant metal clamp, and in the clamp he was fitting a large block of ice. It had been a long time since I had seen a piece of ice that big, and although it wasn’t quite pure—it was a very light brown, and you could see little specks of gnats that had been trapped in it—it looked clean enough, and I was standing there looking at it when the vendor turned and saw me.
“Something cold?” he asked. He was an old man, older than Dr. Wesley, almost as old as Grandfather had been, and he was wearing a long-sleeved sweater, even in the heat, and plastic gloves on his hands.
I wasn’t used to having strangers talk to me, and I felt panicked, but then I closed my eyes and breathed in and out, like Grandfather had taught me, and when I opened them, he was still there and still looking at me, though not in a way that made me nervous.
“How much?” I finally managed to say.
“One dairy or two grain,” he said.
This was a lot to ask, because we only got twenty-four dairy coupons and forty grain coupons a month, and it was more so because I didn’t even know what the man was selling. I know I could have asked him, but I didn’t. I don’t know why. You can always ask, Grandfather used to remind me, and although that wasn’t true, not anymore, it is true that I could have asked the vendor. No one would have been mad at me; I wouldn’t have gotten into any trouble.
“You look like you’re hot,” the man said, and when I didn’t reply, he said, “I promise you it’s worth it.” He was a nice old man, I decided, and he had a voice a little like Grandfather’s.
“Okay,” I said, and I reached into my pocket and tore off a dairy coupon and gave it to him, and he tucked it away in his apron pocket. Then he positioned a paper cup into a hole in the machine directly beneath the ice and began to turn the crank very fast, and as he did, shavings of ice fell into the cup. When the ice had reached the top, he tapped the cup rapidly against the clamp, tamping it down, and set it back in its place and began turning the crank again, rotating the cup as he did until there was a mound of ice. Finally, he patted the ice into place and picked up from next to his feet a glass bottle containing a cloudy, pale liquid, which he poured atop the ice for what seemed like a long time, and then he handed it to me.
“Thank you,” I said, and he nodded. “Enjoy it,” he said. He brought his arm up to rub at his forehead, but when he did, his sweater sleeve drooped, and I saw from the scars on the inside of his forearm that he had survived the illness of ’70, which had mostly affected children.
Then I felt very strange, and I turned and walked away as fast as I could, and it wasn’t until I reached the west corner, with the queue of people waiting for the cooling stations, and felt the ice dripping down my hand that I remembered the treat. I licked it and found that the ice had been doused with syrup, and the syrup was sweet. Not from sugar—sugar was too rare—but from something that tasted like sugar and was almost as good. The ice was so cold, but by now I was upset, and after a few more licks, I threw the cup into a trash can and started moving as fast as I could toward our house, my tongue numb and burning.
* * *
I was relieved when I was safely back in our apartment, and I went to the sofa and sat there, taking deep breaths until I felt better. After a few minutes, I did, and I turned on the radio and sat down again and breathed some more.
But after a while, I began to feel bad. I had gotten scared for no reason, and I had spent one of our dairy coupons, and it was still only the middle of the month, which meant we would have to go an extra two days without milk or curds, and not only that but I had spent it on ice that was probably unhygienic, and to make matters worse still, I hadn’t even eaten it. And I had gone outside, so I was now very sweaty, and it was only 11:07, which meant I would have to wait another nine hours, almost, until I could take my shower.
Suddenly I wished my husband were here. Not because I would tell him what I had done but because he was proof that nothing bad was going to happen to me, that I was safe, that he would always take care of me, just as he had promised.
And then I remembered that it was Thursday, which meant it was my husband’s free night, and he wouldn’t be coming home until after dinner, maybe even after I was asleep.
Remembering this gave me the funny, jumpy feeling that sometimes came over me, which was different from the nervous feeling I sometimes had and which occasionally even felt exciting, like something was going to happen. But of course nothing was going to happen: I was in our apartment, and we were in Zone Eight, and I would always be protected because Grandfather had made sure of that.