I have a thing about ice.
Not ice.
Good ice.
There’s a difference.
7-Eleven has the good ice.
AM PM has good ice.
Hospitals, strangely, have really good ice.
And Sonic has the best ice.
Little crunchy pieces
that somehow make water better
and Diet Coke undrinkable without it.
Fun fact:
you can buy an entire bag of ice from Sonic.
I know this
because of course I know this.
The problem is,
by the time you get it home
the bottom has melted just enough
that once it goes back in the freezer
it becomes one enormous block.
So really,
you buy a whole bag
and get about three quarters.
Still worth it.
This started maybe 8 years ago.
I bought one of those countertop ice makers,
which was adorable
and completely incapable of keeping up with me.
So I started buying bags.
Then more bags.
Eventually I devoted
the box freezer in my garage
to ice.
Which sounds excessive
until somebody has a party
and suddenly everybody appreciates
the woman with forty pounds of ice in her garage.
Then Instacart came along.
And I realized—
Wait.
I don’t have to carry this myself.
At first,
they left the ice at the front door.
Which still left me
hauling it into the garage.
So I added a note:
Please deliver inside garage.
Then one day I thought,
I wonder how far I can take this.
Please put ice in box freezer inside garage.
And I increased the tip.
And you know what?
They did.
For a while,
the same guy kept getting my order.
Jeff.
I didn’t know his name at first.
I didn’t really know anything about him.
I’d open the garage door
when I saw he was getting close,
and sometime later
six bags of ice would magically appear
in my freezer.
Eventually we met.
One day he asked,
“Are you having a party?”
No.
This is personal use.
Which I realize
does not make the situation sound less strange.
Eventually Jeff knew the routine.
Garage door open.
Box freezer.
Ice goes in.
Generous tip.
Everybody wins.
My friends disagreed.
They called him
the creepy ice guy.
I defended Jeff.
He’s not creepy.
He delivers my ice.
Eventually he stopped getting my orders.
Different shoppers came.
Some followed directions.
Some didn’t.
But the ice continued.
A couple nights ago,
one of my friends asked,
“Whatever happened to that creepy ice guy?”
I told her
I hadn’t seen him in forever.
Tonight,
that same friend and I went out for pizza.
A man walked in.
And immediately I thought,
I know that guy.
I knew his face.
I just couldn’t place it.
Maybe AA?
That happens sometimes.
You know someone perfectly
inside the place where you know them,
then see them somewhere else
and suddenly your brain
has no idea where to file their face.
So I tried to let it go.
I couldn’t.
He sat at a table near us.
Eventually I got up for something—
napkins, maybe—
and he looked at me.
“What’s your name?”
“Molly. What’s yours?”
“Jeff.”
Jeff.
Still nothing.
“I swear I know you from somewhere.”
“Same.”
He asked if I had kids.
Yes,
but that wasn’t it.
Then—
“Do you live in Natomas?”
Yeah.
“I delivered ice to your house.”
Oh.
My.
God.
“YOU’RE THE CREEPY ICE DELIVERY GUY.”
My friend lost it.
I lost it.
Jeff was laughing.
Because sitting right there
was the exact friend
who had asked me about him
two nights earlier.
And suddenly this random man
I had been trying to place
wasn’t random at all.
He was Jeff.
The guy who used to come into my garage
and put an unreasonable amount of ice
in my freezer
once a week.
We laughed.
We talked.
I met the woman he was with.
And for a few minutes
this tiny, ridiculous character
from an old chapter of my life
walked straight back into the current one.
Then our pizza was ready.
It came with a bottle of Diet Coke.
I looked at it
and asked the only reasonable question.
“Do you guys have any ice?”
They didn’t.
Of course they didn’t.
