My story presented here was a combination of a real situation (the storm) and a fantasy (the relationship). I even did the research to get the date right.
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The Scene.
For years now my roommate has been telling me about the yearly parade of men looking for their winter lovers. I always made fun of him and told him he was full of it... I even did some internet searches to show him that there was no literature out there that supported his crackpot notion. It seems so shallow for somebody to be looking for someone warm to fill their bed (and presumably their heart) just as the cold weather closes in... Over the years, though, I don't know if it was from the repetition or what, I came to embrace the idea, if just a little bit. I never really considered doing anything about it, of course. For years, this was a rite shared between us. With the coming of fall, he'd mention the winter lovers and I'd laugh derisively a bit while secretly my heart was warmed by the thought.
The Winter Lovers - The story
The date is Friday, March 16, 2007. The weather forecast has been marginal all day and the skies are gray. I'm at work and as has been our habit once a week, a bunch of us pile into someone's car and go out for lunch. The management encourages it as a team-building exercise and winks at it if we're back a bit late. This day, though, the freezing rain has started falling while we are eating and it takes us an extraordinary time to drive back to work. We are just getting back to work an hour later for a drive that ordinarily takes ten minutes. We're all tense, crowded six to a car, and we're relieved to arrive back and stretch out for a while at our desks. An hour later, the word comes down that the newly-elected Governor has released the state workers to go home early and has encouraged businesses to do the same. Our company sends us home as well. Waiting a while for the stampeding herd to disperse, I finally can get into my car and make my way toward home. I notice it's a little slippery underfoot and decide it would be wise to keep the speeds down for safety. I have only traveled a quarter-mile and here is a traffic jam before me. It looks as if everybody has decided to take the same route home as I have. Nothing to do but to wait it out, I suppose. Even if I wanted to change my mind, the traffic has closed in behind me, eliminating any escape route. I'm drawn along with the flow, moving at a pace that wouldn't challenge someone on foot. Fifteen minutes later, I'm barely a dozen feet further along. Occasionally there is a wailing police cruiser demanding we make way. I can't imagine how they can progress, but they do eventually. This particular roadway we're on has an odd structure: If you want to travel east, you need to go west a quarter mile then take a dogleg turn and drive the same distance back east. The problem is, the western trip is downhill; the eastern part is uphill. It turns out that there has been an accident on the uphill stretch and the police have blocked off the uphill section while the accident is dealt with. In the meantime, the freezing rain is continuing to fall, coating the uphill, now mostly empty road with a slick glaze of ice. When the officers reopen the eastbound uphill roadway, nobody can climb the grade. They are all spinning out and smoking their tires hoping to ascend by sheer force of will. This is not good. Nobody is going anywhere for a while. Through ice-glazed windows I'm trying to people-watch out of boredom while the news-radio station is turned on as a soundtrack and I notice one particular guy trying to desperately scrape away at his windows with an improvised scraper. It's not going so well and I notice he's also bare-headed and wiping his brow to keep the freezing rain out of his eyes. I've been getting out occasionally to scrape the windshield myself since the combined force of the wipers and the defroster is no match for the freezing rain and you need to keep up or when the logjam does break, you won't be able to drive away for lack of vision. I'm watching this guy and he seems to be getting increasingly frustrated and I'm taking some pity on him when I remember that I have an old snow brush-scraper in the trunk. I've just replaced mine and haven't had the heart to toss out the old faithful thing I've had for years. I go back and retrieve the scraper and also a spare stocking cap I keep in the car and walk them down to where he is working. I interrupt him and say "It looks as if you could use these."He says "Are you sure? You won't need them?"
