Jonathan had many things.
A house.
A cat.
A pile of old and dangerously outdated magazines.
But most importantly, Jonathan had his smile, which was a particular sort of smile, a very specific kind of smile. A sunny sort of smile.
(Oh, and he liked the summer. In Jonathan’s opinion, July was at least three months too short.)
So when Jonathan woke up bright and early one day to see the shade already cooking off the morning pavement with the snap hiss and pop of frying dew, WELL
he was pretty pleased.
Him and his smile, his very sunny smile.
“A good day, to-day!” he told his cat brightly. It ignored him.
There was no time to waste, not on something like this. Jonathan had a quick breakfast of whistles and cereal and hurled himself out on the streets, every pore wide open and sucking in the furious sunshine.
“What a lovely morning!” he told a twitching songbird. It peeped at him and slowly slid backwards off its twig, dangling from its toes.
Downtown, that was the place to go. Jonathan would get a paper there, and some coffee.
So he walked, because the busses were held up by traffic which was held up by all the tires and asphalt melting together into a sort of petroleum omelet, hissing with tar and bile.
“A good day to walk, to-day!” Jonathan sang out at the honking, screaming masses. “A very good day indeed!”
He took the time as he walked to compose another little song, which he whistled freely to the world. Each note scraped and sparked against the air, like a flint and steel.
“A paper!” he said to the last newspaper stand in town.
“A drink!” he said to the fourth of the fourteen coffee shops he’d walked past.
The coffee had evaporated in its cup, leaving only a lukewarm residue of droplets. But the paper warmed his hands as he sipped it, cinders flaking from its edges.
“Heat wave?” Jonathan asked sardonically as it crumbled into ashes in his palms “Balderdash! Poppycock! Why, this is the nicest it’s been since ’08!”
He snorted – which blew away the smouldering remnants of sections A through W – dusted off his palms, and headed down to the park.
It was bright and early in the park. The lake shimmered and steamed, generating its own surly haze. The trees roiled spasmodically in the murky air; half-wilting, half-combusting.
“A lovely day for a dip,” said Jonathan. He took off his shirt and socks and hung them on a panting, immobilized seagull, then splashed in with a slosh and a cheer and a “brr! Lovely!” He swam out to the dock and back again three times – once on his front, once on his back, and once on his side – and then floated there blissfully, staring up at the dried, withering sun. It looked like an old cranberry.
“Wonderful!” said Jonathan.
The sun made a noise like ‘pbblt’ except smaller and exploded.
Jonathan frowned, decided that wasn’t important, and felt the back of his skull touch sediment. The lake had evaporated.
“I could use a nice sandwich,” he said to himself.
The café was closed. The fry truck was fried. And what had happened to the ice cream stand was simply unspeakable.
“Gosh, that’s awful,” spoke Jonathan, who didn’t let that sort of thing stop him. He wrung the sweat and evaporated fat out of his shirt and squinted through the burning plastic and chrome of the marina. “Aha!” he said. “The tuck shop!”
The tuck shop was also rubble, but through a minor miracle one of its fridges was only partially incinerated. Jonathan extracted a single unpunctured Freezie from it, and inhaled its sugary vapour through his nose.
Jonathan’s walk home was brisker than it had been that morning, despite the increased heat and the incineration of whole blocks. Where his path took him uphill he took off his shirt and used it as a sail to harness the searing winds generated by the firestorms; and the sidewalks were liquid and splashed under his feet, sliding him on his way.
As he stood at the door of his house once more, Jonathan stopped for a moment – at first to extract himself from the molten remnants of his sandles, but then to consider some deeper thought, something that cried out for expression.
He looked up at the sky, boiled cloudless and seared red.
He looked across the city, at the running, liquid glass and crackling wood.
He looked down at the ground, which was belching forth pockets of sulphurous gas.
He frowned, pursed his lips, shook his head, cleared his throat.
And he spoke.
“A bit hot out there, eh?” said Jonathan, as all around him passers-by burst into quiet and consuming flames. “Boy, it’s a real screecher.”
Then he went inside his house, which exploded.
His cat made it out just fine though.