"Well boys, I wish I could say it's been fun. I've got to run," Duncan says, standing. And then, affected by that highly communicable, contagious quality of departure, Ellis feels he must leave too: "Sad to say it, but I'll be going too. Take care old man, I'll see you soon." Ellis always uses the phrase old man, despite the fact that none of them are particularly old. Especially Gérard, who is nearly ten years his younger. Alone again, he sits and sips the end of his coffee, which the melted ice has mostly diluted. A new cashier has taken the old one's place; a mustached man with a shiny, bald head, glasses and sailor's tattoos. He looks like Popeye drawn as Bluto. The glasses give him an odd, distinguished air that seems somehow ironic considering how burly and gruff he is. Perhaps he thinks himself dignified, Gérard muses. The man is a walking simile, like an old man at a garage sale displaying a table full of children's toys. But surely it is not strange to sell children's toys? His age is predicated on his youth, so he must have been a child at some point. They are the discarded possessions, perhaps, of now grown grandchildren; cast off and estranged from the sticky fingers of youth.
Gérard gives the ice in his glass a last little shake. He sucks the cold, caffeinated marrow from its bones and is out the door. The sky is blue and blazing. He lights a cigarette. There is traffic on the street, and an ambulance up ahead. People sit in their cars, forced to wait for what is either the sweet roaring siren of salvation, or a hearse painted up like an angry ice cream truck.
It's easy to spot the poor people in their cars. They are the ones who sit with rolled down windows, wearing sweating furrows, dripping. No one with a working air conditioner would have the windows down on a day like today. He remembers Gloria has a nice car. It might be worth taking the drive just for that.
He calls her and she tells him she's on the way.
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