It was already hot outside even though it was still early in the day. It had been baking for days, and the nights were just a brief respite of slightly cooler temperatures before the sun came back up and started cooking you again. It was like being put on simmer for a while, before the celestial hand turned the heat back up to “full” again.
The heat had gotten to Raymond, and he felt like he was wandering around in a fever dream all the time. He had quit smoking a few years previously and the constant heat was comparable in terms of what it did to his mood. Though when he’d quit smoking he was constantly enraged. The heat just made him irritable all the time, so it was slightly better. Only slightly, though.
The heat also reminded Raymond of his father’s eggs. When he was young, on really hot days his father had left a black, cast-iron frying pan on the front steps to heat up. He put it out in the morning, and by two in the afternoon, the black iron had been heated by the sun. When he felt it was ready, his dad would go outside and crack a couple of eggs into the pan.
Cooking took longer than it ought to have—about half an hour instead of a few minutes, but he usually managed to cook a couple of eggs. He grabbed a lid from one of the other pots, so that he could keep the heat in.
It didn’t always work, however. There were a couple of times when Raymond’s dad had gotten over-ambitious, and though it had been hot, it hadn’t been hot enough. On those occasions the eggs had stayed pretty runny and even the whites hadn’t ever gotten cooked. When this happened, he’d just shrugged, smiled and taken the pan back inside to rinse it out. Then he’d make fried eggs on the stove for Raymond and his sister.
The regular eggs tasted better, and they weren’t nearly as runny. Even on the hottest days, the outside eggs would cook, but the yolks were still runny. The inside eggs would always be cooked right through. They didn’t come with the sense of accomplishment that came with an outside egg, however.