Let It Snow

The Duke looked me over and smirked. “May I point out,” she said, “how much you will soon regret not listening to my footwear advice back at the house?” I glanced down at the snow falling on my Pumas and winced.

JP remained upbeat. “Yes! This is going to be fine! There’s a reason that God gave me ripped arms and pecs, dude. It’s so that I can dig your car out of the snow. I don’t even need your help. You just chat among yourselves, and let the Hulk work his magic.”

I looked at JP. He weighed perhaps 145 pounds. Squirrels have more impressive musculature. But JP was unfazed. He tied down the earflaps of his hat. He reached into his oh-so-tight snowsuit, pulled out wool gloves, and turned back to the car.

I wasn’t interested in helping, because I knew it was hopeless. Carla was six feet into a snowdrift almost as tall as my head, and we didn’t even have a shovel. I just stood in the road next to the Duke, wiping the wisp of wet hair sticking out under my hat. “Sorry,” I said to the Duke.

“Eh, it’s not your fault. It’s Carla’s fault. You were turning the wheel. Carla just wasn’t listening. I knew I shouldn’t have loved her. She’s like all the others, Tobin: as soon as I confess my love, she abandons me.”

I laughed. “I never abandoned you,” I said, patting her on the back.

“Yeah, well, (a.) I never confessed my love to you, and (b.) I’m not even female to you.”

“We’re so screwed,” I said absentmindedly as I looked back to see JP tu

“Yeah, I’m already kind of cold,” she said, and then stood next to me, her side against mine. I couldn’t imagine how she could be cold beneath that gigantic ski coat, but it didn’t matter. It reminded me that at least I wasn’t alone out here. I reached up and mussed her hat as I put my arm around her. “Duke, what are we go

“This is probably more fun than Waffle House would be, anyway,” she said.

“But the Waffle House has Billy Talos,” I said mockingly. “Now I know why you wanted to go. It had nothing to do with hash browns!”

“Everything has to do with hash browns,” she said. “As the poet wrote: So much depends upon the golden hash browns, glazed with oil, beside the scrambled eggs.”

I didn’t know what she was talking about. I just nodded and stared up the road, wondering when a car would come to rescue us.

“I know it sucks, but it’s certainly the most adventurous Christmas ever.”

“Yeah, which is actually a good reminder of why I am generally opposed to adventure.”

“Nothing wrong with a little risk-taking here and there,” the Duke said, looking up at me.

“I couldn’t disagree more, and this just proves my point. I took a risk, and now Carla is stuck in a snowbank, and I will soon be disowned.”

“I promise you that it will be okay,” the Duke said, her voice measured, quiet.

“You’re good at that,” I said. “At, like, saying crazy things in a way that makes me believe them.”

She stood up on her toes, grabbed me by the shoulders, and looked at me, her nose red and snow-wet, her face close to mine. “You do not like cheerleaders. You think they are lame. You like cute, fu

I shrugged my shoulders. “Yeah, that didn’t work,” I said.

“Damn it.” She smiled.

JP emerged from his snow tu

“Okay,” I said, nervous.

“I can’t really think of an easy way to say this. Um, in your opinion, what would be the ideal number of wheels for Carla to currently possess?”

I closed my eyes and let my head swivel up, the streetlight bright through my eyelids, the snow on my lips.

JP continued, “Because to be totally honest, I think the best possible number of wheels for Carla would be four. And right now there are three wheels physically co

I pulled my hat down over my face. The depth of my screwedness washed over me, and for the first time I felt cold—cold at my wrists, where my gloves did not quite meet my jacket, cold on my face, and cold in my feet, where the melted snow was already soaking into my socks. My parents wouldn’t beat me or brand me with a hot coat hanger or anything. They were too nice for cruelty. And that, ultimately, is why I felt so bad: they didn’t deserve to have a kid who broke a wheel off their beloved Carla on the way to spend the small hours of Christmas morning with fourteen cheerleaders.

Someone pulled my hat up. JP. “I hope you’re not going to let a little hurdle like not having a car keep us from the Waffle House,” he said.

The Duke, who was leaning against the half-exposed back end of Carla, laughed, but I didn’t.

“JP, now is not the time for fu

He stood up straighter, as if to remind me he was just a little bit taller than I, and then took two steps into the middle of the road, so that he stood directly beneath the streetlight’s beam. “I’m not being fu

“Wise people,” the Duke said dispassionately.

“Oh, come on!” JP said. “I get nothing for that? Nothing?!” He was shouting now over the sound-muffling snow, and JP’s voice seemed to me the only sound in the world. “Do you want more? I’ve got more. Lady and gentleman, when my parents left Korea with nothing but the clothes on their backs and the considerable wealth they had amassed in the shipping business, they had a dream. They had a dream that one day amid the snowy hilltops of western North Carolina, their son would lose his virginity to a cheerleader in the women’s bathroom of a Waffle House just off the interstate. My parents have sacrificed so much for this dream! And that is why we must journey on, despite all trials and tribulations! Not for me and least of all for the poor cheerleader in question, but for my parents, and indeed for all immigrants who came to this great nation in the hopes that somehow, some way, their children might have what they themselves could never have: cheerleader sex.”

The Duke applauded. I was laughing, but I nodded to JP. The more I thought about it, the stupider it seemed to go hang out with a bunch of cheerleaders I didn’t even know, who would only be in town for one night, anyway. Nothing against making out with cheerleaders, but I had some experience in the field, and while it was good fun, it was hardly worth trudging through the snow for. But what could I lose by continuing that had not already been lost? Only my life, and I was more likely to survive by walking the three miles to the Waffle House than the ten miles home. I crawled into the back of the SUV, grabbed some blankets, made sure all the doors were closed, then locked Carla. I put a hand on her bumper and said, “We’ll come back for you.”

“That’s right,” the Duke said soothingly to Carla. “We never leave our fallen behind.”

We had trudged no more than a hundred feet past the curve when I heard an engine rumbling.