A Scoop of Scandal

But the feeling that I was a criminal didn't go away. I was an outsider: in my parents' homes, in my expensive school, in Washington itself.

Every night, I took off my clothes in the living room my stepmother had decorated with elaborate furniture, walked past the crossed swords she had hung on the wall, went outside and dove into the pool, where I swam looking up at the trees and the stars, trying to shed the ice cream residue that coated my body and never seemed to go away.

Then, in my pajamas, I'd watch the rerun of the day's Iran-contra hearings on public television, working my way through a bowl of Bob's. I ate the exotic flavor, Mozambique, so loaded with cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon that it reminded me of a kretek cigarette, while Robert McFarlane, the former national security adviser, with his calm demeanor and serious eyes, recounted the dates and times of phone calls. I devoured butter pecan while McFarlane successor John Poindexter, robotic behind round glasses, discussed who had signed what and when. I chopped into the rainbow-streaked vanilla, eating it color by color, as White House military aide Oliver North, in uniform and wearing a grim, brokenhearted look, showed his disappointment in Congress for criticizing his commander in chief.

If the facts lined up against him, Reagan could be impeached. I hoped that would happen, and that Bob would create a special flavor called Impeaches and Cream. But I didn't know Bob's politics. I didn't even know if Bob existed. He was as invisible and distant to me as many of the witnesses claimed Reagan was to them.

When it got slow at work, in that first week, I would talk about the previous night's hearings with Ivor. We weren't idle, of course. He had a clipboard listing the night crew's side chores, and our evenings were measured in check marks beside each task. I refilled the cake-cone dispenser as I wondered aloud what lay behind McFarlane's facial expression. Ivor disassembled a clogged syrup pump while expounding on the CIA's long history in Central America. I said I couldn't believe that someone who looked so much like a Poindexter was actually named Poindexter. Ivor explained the history of the Sandinistas. Damn, I thought, this guy is smart.

I was so alone that summer that his talking to me felt like an act of kindness. At Bob's, I didn't feel like a trespasser. The more Ivor and I got to know each other, the more I admired his conscientiousness. He had so much of what was lacking in my life and that of the country -- impartiality, reliability, responsibility.

As the summer went on, we lingered at my car after closing up, talking past the time the pint I was taking home started to melt. And later, while I swam, I began to think how great it would be to see his shadow next to mine on the bottom of the illuminated pool. But he had a girlfriend, and I doubted he was interested in me. I was too far away from the very center of coolness. So I went in every day, keeping my crush to myself, and doling out my frozen ounces of reward and punishment.

I got better and quicker at judging the portions. My hand now had the sensitivity of the scale, so I added other variables to the quality of a serving.

When a customer in a cap and cleats said: "Hey, beautiful, I'm treating my team to double scoops of butter pecan," I looked into the tub, found the richest cluster of roasted nuts, and dug in. I could also spot barren sections -- every tub of ice cream has them -- stretches equivalent to a butterfat desert. This was where I burrowed in for the disagreeable or obnoxious customers.

I knew how to dig my scoop deep down and fill it with a dome of ice cream as solid and dense as a baseball -- so thick it melted more slowly, so sturdy you could lick full force and never topple it from the cone. But I also could graze my aluminum dipper lightly across the tub, so it captured only a thin spiral. When this second type was stacked in a cone, it made a flimsy dome that began to collapse even before an unpleasant customer's tongue had finished its first arc across the surface.

I stared into those tubs all day. Sometimes, I dreamed about them, the way you do about waves when you have been at the beach all day.

One day, in mid-August, I arrived at work and didn't want any ice cream. It had already happened to Ivor. He ate only toppings: M&M's and jimmies, walnuts and blueberry syrup, nonpareils and whipped cream. When I told him about my sudden unexpected aversion to our inventory, he paused in his work, a move that was so unusual, I felt a catch in my throat. "Check this out," he said. He scooped up a globe of raspberry sorbet, shinier than ice cream, the color a deep red, dropped it in a cup and drizzled a stream of hot fudge on top.