Heatwave (Where's Wally)

Something had to give.

The heat hit the city like a flood, rising
dangerously from first light to swamp even the chimneys and TV aerials
by noon. Downtown they put out plastic chairs on the kitchen roof, the
trains thundering by just twelve foot away and the black tar far too
hot to walk on barefoot. Sondra worried about Nana who slowed and
weakened as though the very life were being sucked out of her. She kept
asking after Wally but Wally was not there.

In the store the AC broke and the checkout girls
modelled bikini tops, a protest or a dare, nobody would give a straight
answer which. The manager maintained his disproval but it pulled in the
customers. He dropped soft drinks to half price and painted his own
makeshift sign to say so. Two boys working full time to keep the
fridges restocked against the crowds, everything going to pot backstage
because Wally had not turned up that morning.

Uptown they were already in the fountain. The park
had filled from lunchtime, Chinese and Latino girls in tight tight
shorts roller bladed on the paths while boys in designer sportswear
threw high tech Frisbees across the grass and a few fey society girls
in floral frocks shied into the shade. The whole town on an impromptu
half day holiday. If Wally were there he would have been organising two
football teams out of anyone who would play, but Wally had not been
seen.

Stacking shipping forms and slowly suffocating in a
stuffy office Nadia waned fast and stuck her face in the fan full
blast. Just in view through the open door Mr Cartwright laid out flat
on the floor shirtless and shoeless, the weight of him just too much to
carry. Nadia planned to bunk off long ago but was waiting for Wally to
ring and tell her where to go. The phone sat on the desk in easy reach
but remained obstinately silent.

In the fifth street bar there were just three old
boys sitting in the dark and sinking cold beer after cold beer and
getting more thirsty with every glass. They compared the day
disparagingly with heat waves of the past and blamed it all on the
global warming. Down by the river the bars and cafes heaved with
drinkers until they spilled out onto the embankment into one great
homogenous crowd, but here only those three ever came in, and they
stayed the whole day. They would have liked Wally to pass through and
drag them off somewhere else but Wally did not, no one did.

As afternoon turned to evening the heat exacted its
toll, you could see it in the gait of strangers pushing past you on the
street and in the eyes of the kiosk man taking your money for a paper.
The cloying grime clung to everybody and the madness buzzed up audibly
from the sidewalk. From the revellers who made the fountains their own
to the embankment caf? crowds the rumour was passed, Wally was gone.
Nadia left work early and spent the evening in the garden with her
mother, sipping lemonade in leafy shade. She rung Sondra but Sondra
only wanted to talk about nana, she did not know where Wally was.

In the coming weeks, as the heat slowly loosened its
grip and the city adjusted to it anyway. Downtown, in the store, in the
park, at the fifth street bar, in all the places where Wally was not,
they watched and waited for Wally, and wished him well wherever he was.
But whatever had become of him they still had jobs to go to and lives
to lead, and with or without Wally, the world went on. In time Nadia
found a new fella although she kept in touch with Sondra. Sondra alone
seemed unsurprised by Wally's disappearance, she knew something
perhaps, but she wasn't talking.