By eleven in the morning, it was too hot to go anywhere in Irvine.
Everyone in the house had found a different corner. Mama had come home late from a comedy show and was resting upstairs with the curtains closed. Daddy was in the garage, scraping melted yellow crayon out of a cup holder. Arya was reading on her bed. Jiya was walking from room to room, asking each person whether it was lunchtime yet.
Aunt Julie had come over to spend the day with the family. So far she had spent it with the refrigerator.
She found a piece of cardboard and a marker, and she wrote:
COOLING CENTER
Free entry.
Price of admission: one complaint about the heat.
She propped the sign under the air-conditioning vent in the living room, where the coldest air came down, and dragged every cushion in the house beneath it.
Jiya came first.
“It’s hot,” she said.
“Accepted,” said Aunt Julie, and handed her a wooden spoon. “That’s your microphone. Next!”
Arya came down to see what the noise was. “My room is a toaster,” she said. Accepted. Daddy came in with yellow wax on his thumb. “The car is a toaster,” he said. Accepted. Even Mama came down, in sunglasses, and said she would like to complain about mornings.
“That’s not the heat,” said Aunt Julie. “But I’ll allow it.”
For ten minutes, everyone sat under the vent together, trading complaints and laughing at the worst ones. Aunt Julie felt very pleased with herself.
Then Arya wanted to finish her chapter. Daddy remembered the crayon. Mama yawned and went back upstairs. Jiya took the spoon to the kitchen and began interviewing a banana.
The cushions were empty again.
“The cooling center has failed,” Aunt Julie announced.
Aunt Jamie had been sitting in the corner the whole time. She had not complained once.
“Did it?” she said. “Everyone came.”
“And everyone left.”
“Did you want a cooling center,” Aunt Jamie asked, “or did you want them to stay?”
Aunt Julie opened her mouth to say something funny. Nothing came out.
She had wanted them to stay. She just hadn’t said so. It was easier to make a sign.
“You made a nice cold room,” Aunt Jamie said. “Coming back is their part.”
Aunt Julie did not enjoy being understood this quickly.
She took down the sign. Then she went to the freezer, took out six mango popsicles, and laid them on a plate under the vent. She didn’t call anyone. She sat on a cushion with her own popsicle and waited, and tried to look like she wasn’t waiting.
Jiya came first, still holding the spoon. She had smelled mango.
Then Arya came, with her book. Then Daddy. Mama came last, still in her sunglasses.
Nobody had to complain. Nobody had to stay.
They stayed anyway.
Jiya looked at the empty spot where the sign had been.
“Is the cooling center closed?”
Aunt Julie licked her popsicle. “No,” she said. “It just stopped charging admission.”