The Gelato Call List

     I work at a gelato shop. It’s not in Italy, it’s in Muncie, Indiana, so it is arguably less exciting than its European counterparts. It’s a cute place though, with chairs that look like they're straight out of the cottage you wish your fairy-godmother lived in, all upholstered in velvet with tapered wooden legs.

     Our store can produce 102 flavors of gelato, but we only display 20 at a time. This keeps the clients guessing due to the fact that we rotate through the flavors with no real system. One day we’ll have pistachio, the next day flan. One day you come in after a long shift dreaming of espresso gelato only to find 20 different berry sorbets.

     “That’s life,” I always tell the customers, when they find their favorite flavors aren’t being served. I shrug impartially, as if the choosing of flavors was a game of chance or destiny — some kind of karmic order that operates entirely independently of human choice. It isn’t; I choose the gelato.

     Some mornings, I feel like a God, going to the freezers in the back to choose what flavors we will serve, knowing that my decision will ultimately bring joy or disappointment to our loyal guests. I know deep in my heart that it is the simple things which make up a life: the gas price going down by two cents; the sun making its debut on a cloudy day right as you clock out of work; a stop light switching to green just as you pull up; seeing your favorite dog breed on a walk around your neighborhood. Gelato can break hearts. Of this, I am certain.

     Our gelato guy, Farid comes in thrice a week to whip up a new batch. We tell our clients that our gelato is ‘genuine Italian’ because the flavorings come from a manufacturer in Italy. But the milk comes from a farm just out of town and Farid was born in Jordan and immigrated here when he was 2. His dad’s an engineering professor at Ball State. Not an ounce of Italian blood in him. Still, sometimes we do our best impressions of Italians, speaking with our hands and adding extra rhythm to our words.

     “Well-a, Lilly. It’s-a kind-a day-ya don’t-a wann-a be-at work-a, ya-know-a?” he’ll say.

     “Mama-mia, I-a feel-ya!” I’ll reply.

     I am Italian though. I took a DNA test shortly after my grandmother passed. When I found out about my genetic inheritance, I told the manager, Pete, that I was from Italia.

     “Now we have a genuine Italian working here,” I said.

     Pete was just staring at his computer in the back office playing Snake. His snake kept dying because he kept running into his own tail. It wowed me that his managerial acumen in no way transferred to skill in the gaming world.

     “What percent Italian are you?” he asked after his snake died again.

     “Like ten percent at least.”

     “No good,” was all he said. He was a wise man. I sighed and went back to work. What could I say? Ten percent of something meant I didn’t count. But, according to the DNA test, I wasn’t more than fifteen percent of anything. A splattering of Spanish. A dash of German. A portion of me was Anglo-Saxon. I was a patchwork of somethings and all it added up to was one big fat nothing. This made me sad, and when I was sad, I would eat a spoonful of gelato. It wasn’t doing anything good for my figure, Farid had said as much. Farid, who was something: Jordanian.

     And what had my grandmother been? I’d never bothered to ask.

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*

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     The truth is, I didn’t need a job or money. At least I wouldn’t for a couple years after my grandmother died and willed me her entire life’s savings. Her last will and testament revealed that she’d been hiding the key to her bank lockbox in a broken microwave. I’d always wondered why she didn’t let me buy her a new one when I came over and tried to reheat leftovers.

     “You must know, Lilly, that sometimes things only appear to be broken,” she replied cryptically whenever I complained. Even after I discovered the microwave served as a hiding place, I continued to believe it was in fact broken in the sense that it did not serve its intended function and left us eating cold soup the many nights I joined her for dinner.

While my grandmother’s money gave me the financial security most 26-year-olds could only dream of, it didn’t save me from life’s biggest problem: the search for excitement in the unending spinning of earth on its axis. So, after suffering from a long period of boredom too mundane and All-American to be called anything fancy and French like ‘ennui,’ I decided to get a job to kill time. Thus, the gelato shop.

     You might call the shop rustic, except that it’s lodged in the middle of a strip mall. We are flanked on one side by a Boot Barn, and on the other by a craft store out of which wrinkled, blue-haired women are forever spilling, as if they’ve teleported there from some blackhole in the universe that holds an infinite supply of elderly knitters waiting to spawn in the yarn aisle.

     The owners of the gelato store wanted to curate a style that reminded our clients of “the old country.” The owners aren’t Italian, but they were aiming for that broad sort of old-country-look that Disneyland or a historical theme park might evoke: all empty symbolism.

     The tile floor is covered with eclectic rugs to disguise the otherwise strip-mall aesthetic. There are ancient, rusty farm tools on the walls that no one knows how to use anymore. One day, when we were particularly slow, I spent three hours trying to identify the curved metal and splintering wood handles. Breast plough. Turnip chopper. Pea flail. Post hole borer. The names of the tools could easily be shared with S&M toys. What did these farmers of yore need to flail? Whose breasts were they plowing? And most importantly, what holes were they boring into?

     The most important part of my job begins at 8 o’clock when we open. Usually we don’t have guests at least for the first hour because honestly, who wants gelato that early?

The first task of the day is opening the binder labeled GELATO CALL LIST. This binder is as holy as the Bible in this store. In it are sheets with names of our regulars, their favorite kind of gelato, their phone numbers, and a detailed record of every time we’ve called them and every time they’ve come in.

     It goes like this: after you bring out the 20 flavors of the day, you call everyone whose favorite flavor is out. You either leave a message or talk to them directly. The script for the message is simple.

 

Hello NAME OF CUSTOMER, this is EMPLOYEE NAME. I’m calling from Muncie Gelateria to tell you that CUSTOMER’S FAVORITE FLAVOR OF GELATO is being served today. I cannot guarantee your favorite flavor will still be on display tomorrow, so it is imperative you come today to get yourself a scoop. Have a sweeeet day! See you soon.

 

     It is astounding how many people really pick up their phones. It is even more astounding how many people actually come to get their gelato. This is what I mean by gelato breaking hearts. Pete once estimated that three-fifths of our sales were from these calls.

     And this is how my job went. Every day, out with the old flavors, in with the new, dialing strangers to spark some joy with sweet cream and chocolate mint. Clock in, clock out. Months passed. My grandmother’s body changed colors, her skin slowly peeled and fell off deep in that underground coffin. Gelato was sold and heavy pans of it were emptied into the stomachs of our desperate customers. I barely touched the money my grandmother had left me because I could find nothing to want. I didn’t care for handbags. I wore a uniform to work so had no need for other clothing. I hated traveling. I already had 124 channels and subscriptions to every major streaming platform. So I simply worked and gained weight. Farid made comments on my body that were increasingly ambiguous, tainted with that teasing tone that was either flirtation or school-yard bullying. I felt the old boredom creeping in, but this time the boredom was edged by terror. I had gotten this job explicitly to fight the boredom. What would I do if I was bored and had a job? I couldn’t get a hobby. Some people were built for hobbies, but I wasn’t. What was there to do?

     Then one day, I brought out the cilantro-lime gelato. I sampled it and it tasted exactly as you would expect. The citrus and the herb threw a small party on my tongue. Not a rager of a party, but something more like a quiet, semi-formal schmooze-fest. Subtle flavor edged by semi-sweet tang. The gelato radiated a muted green color like glow-in-the-dark plastic stars on a child’s bedroom ceiling.

     In the GELATO CALL LIST binder, only one person listed this flavor as her favorite: Pamela Ortega. The first time I called her, I left a voicemail. “Hello Pamela, this is Lilly. I’m calling from Muncie Gelateria to tell you that cilantro-lime is being served today. I cannot guarantee your favorite flavor will still be on display tomorrow, so it is imperative you come today to get yourself a scoop. Have a sweeeet day! See you soon.”

      But I did not, in fact, see her soon. This on its own was not unusual, but when I looked to see the record of past calls a chill ran through me — a chill not induced by the air-conditioned 68 degrees of the shop. Pamela Ortega had received an astonishing 49 calls, spanning five years, since her name was added to the list, and though voicemail after voicemail had been left, there was no record of her arrival at the shop. It seemed she had come in one day five years before, tasted the delicate flavor of our cilantro-lime gelato, declared it her favorite, given us her number, and disappeared.

     Usually, after three voicemails, customers either picked up their phones at last, came in to thank us for our persistence, or asked rather rudely to be put on our Do Not Call List, as if we were some kind of scamming phone bank that had mined their data, not a gelato shop to which they had once willingly given their information.

     Who was this woman who hadn’t picked up her phone in five years? How old was she? Where did she live? Did she ever leave her house? And what did that house look like? Was her microwave broken? Was there anyone on this earth who loved her? Was she on some kind of diet? Was there anything she loved? Aside from, of course, cilantro-lime gelato.

     I recorded my message, closed the binder, and went on with my day, trying to forget Pamela Ortega. But I dreamed of her that night. Dreamed of a woman standing on the edge of a skyscraper, still as a gargoyle. She was dressed in a Christmas sweater, just like the one my grandmother had worn when I last saw her. It had reindeers knitted in, all chained together as they pulled Santa’s sleigh. They ran around the chest of the sweater. Ran and ran around that wool, never taking flight, just pulling that jolly fat ass on his sleigh for eternity. Sisyphean reindeer.

     The Pamela Ortega of my dreams had hair the surreal white of a cartoon dove. I did not see her face. I stood behind her, willing her with some unspoken power not to jump.

     The next day I found myself pulling out the cilantro-lime flavor once again, hoisting the heavy pan to the front, and dialing Pamela Ortega’s number. Voicemail. I recited the script into the receiver. Messages were left all the time. Just a voice sent into the ether. My words, floating around out there in space. Only faith, it seemed, kept virtual communication alive. There were no return-to-sender envelopes. No bottles washed ashore. Just pings of electronic sound shot across miles with the hope that somewhere, by someone, we would be heard.

     By the time I brought out the cilantro-lime flavored gelato for the seventh day in a row, I knew I had become obsessed. This was breaking protocol. We don’t like to have the same flavor out more than two days in a row, but I was on a mission and no one, not even Pete or Farid could stop me.

     I rubbed my right bicep, which was sore from days on end of scooping gelato, as I once again lifted the GELATO CALL LIST out from its sacred dais under the register. I hardened myself and prepared to call Pamela Ortega for the seventh day in a row, having resolved the night before to personally track her down using all means necessary if she did not pick up. This is because I had continued dreaming of her all the previous six nights. Dreamed up six separate Pamela Ortegas. Dreamed her until I felt I knew her.

     She was always standing on the edge of something. A skyscraper, the ocean, a highway, a jungle. Always about to leap or step into something wild and dangerous and be lost forever. Her blood shone blue through spider veins that webbed around her pale skin. Once, on the fourth night, she turned her head just enough to show me one-quarter of her profile. A nose and the edge of a cheek was all I could see, jutting out from the hidden face. It suggested nothing about her visage in its entirety, and in fact, I awoke from the dream less certain of her appearance than when I had seen only the back of her head.

     After this succession of dreams, I had grown certain that Pamela Ortega was in trouble, and needed us — had needed us for nearly five years. So on this seventh day, I knew I must do something if I still couldn’t reach her.

     The freezers’ hum accompanied the bright ring of the telephone in my ear. I counted the rings. Brinnnnng. One. Brinnnnng. Two. Brinnnnnggggggg. Three. The fourth and final ring nearly pierced my eardrum. Then came the robotic voice letting me know that the number I had called was not available and asking if I would like to leave a voicemail. I hung up before the robot could sound its beep after which I was to leave a message. I could not leave another message. I had lost faith in the telephone.

     I ran to the back room where Pete was staring at a spreadsheet.

     “Do you know Pamela Ortega?” I spat the words, out of breath and feeling the weight I’d gained in the months since I started the job in the chafing between my thighs.

     “Pamela who?” Pete asked.

     “Pamela Ortega. Cilantro-lime. From the call list?”

     “You honestly think I know every customer in that call book? There must be something like three hundred names in there.”

     I should have known better than to ask Pete about a customer. He had a keen eye for accounting and logistics, but he did not know our people. I glanced at the clock above Pete’s desk. It read 8:23. Farid wouldn’t be in until 10 at least, and if there was someone who knew Pamela Ortega, it was Farid, who had worked at the shop for 6 long years.

     Then it was a waiting game. I returned to the front of the shop and stared at the wall of tools. My mind wandered again, wondering what terrible trap Pamela Ortega was caught in, what horrible forms of torture she might be subjected to. I stared back down at the gelato, trying to see signs in the swirls. Were there any words spelled out in the arrangement of sprinkles? Nothing. The universe had nothing kind to offer.

     Pamela Ortega could be anywhere, but my worst fear was not that she’d been kidnapped—a possibility I knew was far-fetched, as much as it nagged at me—but that she was at home, alone and never leaving. A recluse. A lonely person like Eleanor Rigby or Father McKenzie from that Beatles song. Just waiting, waiting for someone to throw her a gelato-shaped life preserve.

     Time moved like caramel falling from a tin. Moved like the sun slowly cresting outside over the strip mall parking lot. Farid, I whispered to no one. Farid, we must help Pamela Ortega. Then, like a miracle, Farid came in early. It was 9:02.

     “You’re here!” I shouted.

     “Why are you so happy to see me?” He walked right past me, heading to the office. I had never seen him in such a hurry to get work done. I sped behind him.

     Three people was too many for Pete’s office, which was the size approximately of an accessible porta-potty.

     “Why are you back here?” Pete asked. He seemed upset to be distracted from his video game. He was playing one of his favorite games where you pretended to run an ice cream store. The animated customers were always getting mad at him for messing up their animated orders. Why did he want to play an imagined version of his own job? I couldn’t make sense of it.

     “I’m asking Farid about Pamela Ortega.”

     “Who?” Farid asked.

     “Do you know Pamela Ortega?”

     “No, and why does it matter?”

     Farid was normally happy. A cheerful disposition seemed as much a part of his job as making gelato. He liked to rib me sometimes about how I still didn’t know how to drive even though ten years had passed since I could legally obtain a license. And I liked to tease him about how he’d failed his successful engineering-professor dad by becoming a gelato maker. We both liked, of course, to speak in the bad Italian accents. But now, Farid spoke with no silly accent at all. His voice was hard and serious.

     “I am worried something bad has befallen her.” I didn’t normally speak this way, with words like ‘befallen,’ but that was the only way I could think to describe my fears.

     “I’m sure she’s fine.” Farid said. “Go watch the front of the shop.”

     I did as I was told, the atmosphere in Pete’s office had become suffocating, what with Pete wanting to keep playing the ice-cream shop game and Farid acting like he was in charge of me. But the moment I got to the front of the shop, I hated myself for walking away with my tail between my legs, giving up so easily on discovering the fate of Pamela Ortega.

     The front door opened and a stream of high school kids in jerseys came in, demanding all kinds of things, pressing their oily fingers against the glass, and ordering either too loudly or too softly. By the time they had left, I could tell Farid was setting up in the kitchen by the sound of metal pans being thrown around.

     I kicked open the swinging door like I’d seen people do in Western movies and Farid looked up at me.

     “What do you know about Pamela Ortega?”

     “Nothing.” He pulled out a tub of gelato flavoring and a jug of milk, slamming each on the counter with far more force than was strictly necessary.

     “Why are you acting like that?”

     “Like what?” He slammed down a pint of frozen strawberries.

     “Like you-a are-a upset-a,” I said, hoping that the Italian accent would lighten the mood.

     “I’m not upset, I just had a long night.”

     “What happened?”

     “My dad’s just pissed at me.” He lived with his dad even though he was 28. This was something we had in common. I hadn’t moved out of my mother’s house. Farid and I agreed this is why neither of us had progressed socially or financially, but both of us also confessed we had no idea how to change our respective situations. I hadn’t told him about the inheritance, partially because of some vague shame I felt about my undeservingness and partially because I knew that that amount of money should have moved me forward.

     “What’s he pissed at you for?”

     “Same old bullshit: says I have no friends, talks about my brother finishing up med school, asks why I’m still in Muncie and when I’m going to go back to school.”

I hadn’t known Farid had a brother, and though I knew Farid had a dad (he was always complaining about him), I still had a hard time imagining Farid outside the confines of the gelato store as a real person with a real family. What did he do when he wasn’t making gelato? Did he, like me, come home from work staring at his hands and wondering why we had them? What were they for?

     Before I could think of something to say, I heard the front door open, which meant I had to go back to serving gelato. Farid gave me a get-back-to-work look and I went back to the front, pausing the conversation, and thus pausing my search for Pamela Ortega.

     Two women were standing, holding hands, in front of the case and surveying the flavors. I offered a recommendation. Orange-cream-soda.

     “Don’t you have any normal flavors?”

     “Over there we have lemon-mint-spa-water,” I offered, my mind still on Farid’s bad mood and Pamela Ortega’s sure death or destruction if I did not help her.

     “I mean like normal flavors…like chocolate and vanilla?” asked one of the women, who wore paint-stained overalls and steel-toed work boots. I was angry with her suddenly. Who was she to decide what normal flavors are – what normalcy looked like?

     “The beauty of this shop is that the flavors are chosen at random,” I explained. “You come here for excitement!”

     The other woman, who wore a dress, giggled and whispered something in the first woman’s ear. I began to sweat, despite the cold in the shop. In the kitchen, Farid was slamming a freezer door shut. Neither of us had friends. All we had was gelato. I tried to be patient and pleasant, to do what customer service workers are meant to do: empty myself of anything but toothy-smiles and rote greetings. But I thought of that Beatles song again, the part where Eleanor Rigby is buried along with her name.

     “Anything look good?” I asked, a bit too aggressively. The women leaned together and whispered to one another and I was outside of it. Their hands were locked in a way that seemed both practiced and natural, like they knew what hands were for. Pamela Ortega was just some woman who loved cilantro-lime gelato. And I was just some gelato scooper in Muncie, Indiana.

     My grandmother died just as Spring was starting. She had been in bed, the cottonwood flashing its leaves over the birdbath she’d placed just outside her bedroom window so she could always see it - could always see the small living things moving about, eating and landing and taking off. The weekend she died, my mom had been in Branson, Missouri with her boyfriend on a ‘relationship-repair’ vacation, and I had been in my bedroom at her house staring at Omegle on my laptop, chatting with strangers who every once in a while would pull out their genitalia and ask me what I thought of them. My grandmother had called me in the morning the day she died, and I hadn’t picked up. But she’d left me a voicemail asking if I wanted some chicken noodle soup and telling me she loved me. I spent the day after she died Googling “What does it mean to die of old age?” and “What do people see right before they die?” and “How to not regret-” and reading every result, feeling none of them explained anything.

     My mother had asked me after the funeral why I thought my grandmother had left me the money and not her. I had said I didn’t know. My mother had glanced back to where boyfriend sat in the car, waiting to take us all home. “There is only one thing more powerful than love, Lilly” she told me, “and that’s pity.”

     But she let me keep the money.

     The two women finally picked the root beer flavored gelato and left without tipping. I didn’t need their money, and didn’t deserve it.

     I went back to the kitchen. Farid looked up at me, exhausted.

     “Are you going to ask me about what’s-her-name again?” he asked.

     “Pamela Ortega,” I said, but I whispered it now, her name feeling like a word repeated until it lost all meaning.

      The walk-in freezer door was open behind Farid, emitting a gust of cold that was almost a physical thing, with vibrant color and mystical shape. The kitchen seemed to shrink around us, our two bodies caught in the narrow alley between the sinks and counter. Farid looked at me like I was very far away and I was, I suppose. He was paunchy and his beard was patchy. He was shorter than me, and I had the sense he resented me for it. I did not know him, not fully, not outside of Italian accents and both of us being losers in the classical sense, but I felt, looking at him cast between the chrome fixtures, that I needed him, needed someone, and that Pamela Ortega would be fine without us.