Devonne Brown

Ice Cream Dreams

The deadline was Wednesday, and judging from Mark’s anxiety and insomnia, he thought he’d missed it. Today was the last day he could apply. He wanted the job. He knew the owner, he had it, all he had to do was show up. The last thing he wanted to do was make another cheap mistake and burn the bridge behind him, he’d already done a good job of scorching it. He might as well quit anyway. He shouldn’t have spoken up at the last meeting. Speaking his mind had never won him any favors. He needed to be more delicate when asked his opinions, or not give them at all.

It wasn’t his fault the boss ran a shit show. As director of public relations, all he did was clean up the mess the CEO and other executives of the company created. Press release after press release, news interviews, public meetings, he was tired of covering their asses. It was rough being the press secretary, he vomited most days from stress. It was a shame the evil those men and women did wouldn’t let him sleep, no matter what he took, drank or smoked. 

The new job was managing a Dairy Queen. How hard could it be to wrangle teenagers or pull ice cream if they didn’t show up? The stress of covering an empty shift couldn’t be any worse than covering the ass of an executive who misappropriated funds. Besides, he could ride his bike or walk to work, whichever one pleased him. Sure, he’d take a cut in pay, but he could deal with it. If he could deal with educated idiots, he could deal with acne, braces, man buns, and braces. He needed a change, a big one. Change was his dream.

To be surrounded by ice cream, hot fudge, and teen aged angst, was, in his anxious mind, a blessing, not the blasphemous world he attended each day. He’d much rather fix an ice cream machine than explain why the CEO’s decision to purchase a new fleet of company cars in blue and sell off the white ones was necessary. It had to be done. 

He set off for the Dairy Queen and lit the match for the bridge.