How hot is it? 'The Phoenician': a satire of Phoenix heat
"Or maybe faces weren’t melting off skulls..."
For those wondering, “What’s Phoenix like in the summer?” — and those suffering through “upper hell,” a fictional satire on Valley heat called The Phoenician.
“Something something something.”
A leather-faced man at the corner of Scottsdale and Indian School made an utterance more or less to me; I smiled tensely, assuming he was a street person asking for spare change. He took a step toward me, and I prepared myself to say, “Sorry, no.” Or maybe I would give him a buck? Probably not; probably just some half-hearted rejection, a lie about not having any money (not that I had much, but I did have some). I tried to look at him but not directly; I’m not sure why, but I think that’s the proper social form. Of course, I could be wildly wrong; I often am.
“It’s too hot,” he said. Surprised, I looked toward him, and noticed he had a rough beard and was wearing a short-sleeve, button-down polyester shirt. “It never cools down, even at night” he said, somewhere between a matter-of-fact statement and a complaint. “It just stays hot all the time!”
I couldn’t agree more! It was my first summer in Phoenix, and June had just about killed me. Now, it was mid-July, and pathetically enough I was pining for the relative cool of June.
And yet I had been doing my best, my level best, to ignore the heat, which wasn’t so much as an elephant in the room as an elephant sitting on my chest. Until this over-heated, ironically cool-looking man, who summarized things so succinctly.
As I was walking away, I gave him some sort of tepid counsel about this just being a temporary condition, soon enough it would be over. Was I talking about mortality? I wonder, now. Perhaps he was an Angel. He put the thought of death in my mind. He was warning me. As such, what, precisely, was the heat he was discussing?
A chill ran up my spine, but only made it halfway, before melting.
Whoever he was and whatever his mission was, my dulled senses suddenly opened. The denial in which I was living snapped open like alligator jaws.
As I made my way, first west on Indian School, then north on Marshall Way toward the galleries, I took a good look at the people walking toward me. Good God! Their faces were melting right off their skulls! Not dramatically, granted; and by tilting their heads back just so, or positioning a hand underneath the chin, true, they were able to keep their skin from sliding away. Some, I hypothesized, were adept at quick, birdlike head movements to “catch” their faces from sliding away, without the use of their hands. Others seemed to dive into air-conditioned stores or cars in just the nick of time.
Or maybe faces weren’t melting off skulls. It’s quite possible that my brain was boiling inside my own skull, causing me to misinterpret signs, or simply impacting my vision.
I realized I had to get out - the destination didn’t matter, anyplace had to be better.
Passing the Brave Boy Who Melted In Place statue, I headed for the Greyhound bus station - six blocks away, I hit a mass of people as thick as flies on a dead horse. “What’s going on?” I asked a tired old lady, as I was afraid of all the other desperate looking younger people. “We’re all just trying to get out of here,” she said. A rat-faced young man turned to us and laughed ridiculously. “We’ll never make it,” he said, rather gleefully. “I heard all the busses are booked for the whole summer!”
Even if I could have afforded to fly, after a few planes combusted on takeoff, all flights had been cancelled, so I was stuck. I started plodding away without much direction, as I didn’t feel like sitting around my living room in a pool of my own sweat again. So when I peered up past my soggy hat and saw a big H across the street, I figured I would try to sneak into the Emergency Room. It proved to be another in a long line of bad decisions. Sure, it was cooler in there; at first, the cool air made my lungs hurt. “It must be 95 in here,” I involuntarily said. “Actually it’s 98.6,” said a worried-looking man that I sat next to. The seat opened when a little woman he was with who was writhing in agony was taken away for apparent treatment. I felt a certain social obligation, as the seat was still hot from her body, so I asked the man what was wrong with his woman. “She just had a baby,” he said with a sigh, “only instead of lactating, she’s percolating.”
It was crowded, and a man with two stumps for hands wrapped in bloody bandages came over and asked in a rather demanding sort of way if he could have my seat. He went into some horrible story about how his car had been out in the sun all afternoon, he’d been drinking and without thinking turned the car on and gripped the steering wheel to drive away, but his hands instantly fused to the steering wheel. I didn’t believe a word he said, and even if his story was true, what an idiot! But I didn’t feel like arguing with him, after all he had two bloody stumps and there was absolutely nothing wrong with me, and I could sense the whole room staring at me, so I reluctantly got to my feet. “OK,” I said, then lied in a whinging sort of tone, “but my doctor said I have pretty bad heat exhaustion . . .”
“Who doesn’t?” cackled a beautiful young woman with a hatchet sticking out of her skull a couple of seats down. “Do you think I tried to chop my head off for laughs?” I whispered an apology and, coming closer, asked if I could pull the axe out of her head for her. “Oh I bet you’d love that you perv,” she hissed, snapping her head away from me and spraying me with hot blood. A mixture of rage and disgust came over me, as I was wearing a white shirt and Little Miss Hatchet Head had completely ruined it! I shot her a severe look and hoped that she would stay like that for the rest of her life, and have to marry a lumberjack; and that her children would be born with little cleavers stuck in their heads, and that she would always regret that a sweaty knight had volunteered to service her, but that she rejected my Arthurian advance and therefore was doomed to having a sword forever plunged in her stonehead!
Almost instantly, I regretted my thoughts, and was on the verge of apologizing for them when I realized they were just that, thoughts, and that she hadn’t heard them. In any case, she was flirting with a striking male nurse, so I decided on a private prayer of penance. No sooner had I closed my eyes than my nostrils were filled with an exotic scent, soothing yet scintillating. “Sir, what are you doing?” I heard a buttery smooth voice whisper in my right ear…
…to be continued…