Everything had been drawn with great skill and attention to detail—much more carefully than an ordinary advertising picture. The artist, seemingly, enjoyed the process.
And, probably, drew from nature.
And, Tony heard sounds causing frost to settle again in his entrails.
Though, actually, in these sounds there was nothing awful. Nothing connected with pain, death or even mystery. These sounds are perfectly familiar to millions of Americans and, to tell the truth, pester many of them.
The simple melody played by ice cream trucks.
Surprisingly, devised to attract children and not at all to frighten them, this melody always seemed ominous to Tony. He did not know why, but he heard something insinuatingly eerie, mystical, otherworldly in it. Certainly, being a sane person, he never had been actually afraid of ice cream trucks (though, even in his childhood he had not been a real fan of their goods, and almost never bought from them). He only thought sometimes, hearing this tune, that in a horror film it would come in handy. Clowns, also apparently intended only to amuse, for a long time held a firm place in such films. Why are ice cream men worse?
And it seemed now he would learn why.
Certainly, these trucks aren’t out late at night, especially with the sound on. But this one was.
Judging by sound, it moved—slowly as they usually do in search of clients—on that street from which Tony had just escaped. Logan flattened himself against the glass of the ominous nail salon, hoping that the truck would pass by without turning into this street.
But it turned.
Tony saw it. To the sight, it was the usual angular white truck with a serving counter on the right side surrounded by posters with pictures of different kinds of ice cream. Even the headlights burned, as they should. And the sign on the roof said “ICE CREAM”—not “I SCREAM” or anything like that. But Logan still mentally begged it to go farther along the street without stopping.
The truck passed him by a couple of yards and stopped. The music played several more bars and ended. Only the taillights silently flickered.
“Well, and what to do now?” Tony thought. “To go back to that street with the hospitably opened door of Scar Service? To go forward in order for that truck to follow me again? But to be at a stop, apparently, is the silliest…”
“Mister,” a quiet hoarse voice, almost a whisper, came from the truck, “you want ice cream.”
It was a statement, not a question.
“No,” Tony squeezed out. “Thanks, but I already feel cold.”
“Cold,” repeated the voice as a sad echo. “Always cold. Nobody wants ice cream. A bad business.”
He became silent, and Logan wanted already to sympathize politely about his problems, but the ice cream man started talking again:
“Then a hot dog?”
“Hot dog?” Tony was surprised. Usually they are not sold from ice cream trucks, though, of course, there were trucks that sold all kinds of food… “Is it indeed hot?” Logan felt that now he wanted to eat something warm and with meat. Perhaps at least this would help him to get warmed up at last. Though one hot dog is probably not enough for this purpose…
“It’s my hot dog,” the driver answered in the same sad and low voice. “I took it for myself. But I can sell it to you. And I’ll eat ice cream.”
“Mmm…” Logan was not inspired by this suggestion, “I think, you’d better keep your meal for yourself.”
“Don’t worry, mister, I haven’t touched it yet,” simply answered the driver. “It’s a good hot dog. Even still in a bag. Only one dollar.”
“Perhaps, I’d better take it or he won’t get off my back,” Tony decided. “Eventually, I always can throw it away, and one dollar isn’t a lot of money.”
“All right, give it,” he approached the window. There was not any light in the truck, but Tony could hear the driver move from the front of the truck to the serving window. Then he began to rummage in the depths of the truck body; Tony heard a muffled gnash, like a sound of a blunt knife on something firm. Though, probably, it was just a squeak of an opening box.
“Tell me please,” Tony decided to use the situation, “What is this place? Looks like I’ve lost my way. Is it Manhattan?”
“It’s Downtown,” hoarsely reached from darkness. Logan had a quick thought that the ice cream man is, seemingly, chilled—possibly, from recently eating too much of his own goods.
“Downtown of Manhattan?” specified Logan. Brooklyn has its own downtown, which, however, is not a bit like what Tony has already seen this night…
“Downtown of New York,” the ice cream man obstinately answered; a low buzz similar to the sound of a working microwave reached Logan’s ears. Tony decided not to engage in geographical disputes and asked a more practical question.
“How I can get from here to Brooklyn?”
“You can’t get anywhere from here except in the morning.”
“And what time is it now?”
“Midnight.”
Have they all agreed together on the time or what? Tony angrily thought, but aloud he only politely said:
“I’m afraid your clock is slow.”
“I don’t have a clock,” the ice cream man objected and rustled with something. “Your hot dog, mister.”
Though Tony was not a prudish adherent of formalities, this vulgar “mister” without a surname began to irritate him. They haven’t spoken this way in God knows how many years, he thought. Wasn’t he taught to say “sir” when addressing a customer?
From the dark window (why doesn’t he turn on the light?) a plastic bag emerged. Tony, reaching in his pocket for his wallet, remembered his newly gained wisdom of thinking about the literal meaning of words. What if he indeed was going to be fed a piece of dog? Although Koreans and Chinese eat dogs, they also eat insects…
With some caution he took the parcel. No, inside was apparently quite an ordinary hot dog, warm to the touch and generously covered with ketchup splotching the package from within. Tony, holding his purchase in the left hand, began to roll back the bag neck with the right one—carefully in order not to touch his meal with dirty fingers. Feeling how hungry he indeed was, he brought the hot dog to his open mouth and…
A moldy smell stopped him. And just in time to understand that the dark red was not ketchup at all. Now Logan saw that the “sausage” sticking out between two halves of a roll was crowned with a dirty chewed nail.
Tony reflexively flung away the “hot dog,” struggling with an emetic spasm which had rolled up his throat. The chubby cut-off finger fell to asphalt separately from the moldy bread. Logan backed away from the truck, but a hand shot the window with surprising quickness and seized his wrist.
“Hey, mister!” The voice was still hoarse and low, but all melancholic grief had disappeared from it at once—now it was a spiteful hissing. “Who’s gonna pay?!”
But neither the intonation of this voice, nor that he had almost become a cannibal, made Tony stare in mute horror at the hand holding his wrist. The wooden-rigid fingers of the ice cream man were not simply cold—they were literally ice cold. And his hand—it was clearly visible even in the dark—was absolutely white. Not just pale, but white.
Because it was all covered with hoarfrost.
Tony, acting reflexively, not rationally, pulled his hand at first upwards, and then sharply and with all his force—downwards, striking his opponent’s wrist against the window edge. Subconsciously he expected that it would weaken the ice cream man’s grasp, but the effect surpassed expectations. The crunch of breaking bone sounded—and, obviously, not only bone—and then the frosty hand simply severed, still hanging on Logan’s wrist like an ice handcuff. There was not any blood, and could not be—only dark frozen shards scattered every which way.