The Heat

You didn't expect it to be this hot in Cambridge. And last weekend when you were coming back here, the subway broke down, and the trains only made it to Kendall, where you have never, ever been before, and you had to get on a bus there to ride into Harvard Square, and it was hot all over.

For the whole week, it has been hot. And there are not too many ways to get away from the heat. You can walk around outside, because it is usually cooler out there, or go to the Brattle and watch a W. C. Fields movie you have seen three times already on television, or you can sleep in Lamont, just lie down and sleep, because it is air-conditioned there.

Raspberry-lime rickeys are good in this weather and so is Ballantine Ale and so is Dannon Apricot Yogurt. Big, thick, greasy Elsie Burgers are not good. Ice cream cones are not good. They are sticky and they chalk up your mouth and make you thirsty, but you eat them anyway. The line is long at Brigham's and it is air-conditioned there too.

Working is a sad thing to do in the heart. The words on the page of the book get heavier and heavier and finally melt away. Your fingers stick to the typewriter keys and the typewriter keys stick to the paper, which is swollen with water from the moisture in the air.

The moisture in the air makes you swollen with water too. Your arms and legs seem heavy and bloated, but it is a pleasure to sweat in this weather. Your body is covered with a sheen of sweat, and when a breeze comes by (a breeze that has made it all the way to Cambridge from the sea, all the way through Boston), it washes over the sweat and cools you off. It is almost as good as when you come out of the bathroom still wet from the shower.

People do things in the heat they do not usually do. A girl took a bubble bath in Mister Bubble Bath for two hours. Another girl bought a dress that had no back and hardly any front and no bottom to it. People do not wear shoes and do not wear underwear. Long hair, you admit, is a problem in the heat, but it has been long for so long, you do not remember how cool it was when it was short, and that is just as well.

Heat makes you think of cool, of getting out of this place. You can go to Crane's Beach, which is good, or Revere Beach, which is bad because the water is slick with oil and is streaked with something that is reddish brown and looks very bad. You can go to Cape Cod, which is good if you know somebody. Or you can go to Maine, which is probably just as hot as it is here anyway.

Things smell more in the heat. The heat holds the smell in, brings it closer to you. You can smell the garbage rotting in the sun next door. And when you walk by Briggs & Briggs there is some dog crap all wet in the sidewalk and it smells up half a block and it smells up your shoes.

There are ways to love the heat. You can make it come to you strong. A fellow shut himself up in the bedroom of his apartment, closed the door and window and got under the covers and thought about being out in the Sahara. He got a very close to the heat, real heat, not like a sauna bath or a steam bath.

Another fellow walked all the way down Mass Ave from the Spa to the Square and up the street to Brigham's going into every store; since they are nearly all air-conditioned. He decided that the Cambridge Trust Company had the best air-conditioning. He also liked Crimson Travel, but it was so small there he could not be inconspicuous and they kept asking him where he wanted to go.

When it is hot like this you want to go somewhere. You can go back to winter in Cambridge, when the snow is dirty gray on the sidewalks and on the curbs. But in the winter you understood the place. And you can think back to winter, like the time last year on Christmas Eve when the cook at the Bick was getting so many orders for English Muffins that he was refusing to make them. And the yellow-haired lady with no teeth who works behind the counter giving orders to the cook was getting very angry. At one minute after midnight on Christmas Day, she said very loud, "Fuck you, cook," and she walked out. But it is summer now, and hot.