Perfect Little Town

Four blocks up, they cross 8th, and Ron stops under a canopy with “Out There Outfitters” in block letters stitched into the façade of the canvas, the snow having blown against the cloth, covered most of the words.

“Why are we here?” Jessica asks.

“If we don’t get out of the elements, we’re going to die.  I figure it’s better to break into a commercial space than a private residence, right, counselor?”

She stares at him like he’s lost his mind.

“Honey, you got a better idea?”

“No.”

“Then keep a lookout and pray this place doesn’t have an alarm.”

Ron lifts the chrome, cylindrical trashcan topped with a little cigarette butt-filled sand pit over his shoulder and runs at the storefront glass.  The first strike sends a hard recoil back through the trashcan, which flies out of Ron’s grasp and smashes into the snowblown sidewalk, the glass still intact, unblemished.  He lifts the trashcan and goes at it again, the next impact causing crystalline-shaped fractures to spread like a virus through the tall window.  This time, Ron steps back and hurls the twenty-pound trashcan at the cracking glass.

It punches through, the window disintegrating.

Ron and Jessica wait ten seconds, eyes locked.

She says finally, “No alarm.”

“Or maybe it’s disabled ‘cause the power’s out.”

-19-

They climb down out of the storefront and walk past the cash register.  Up ahead, a group of figures congeal Ron’s blood and he freezes, lets out a tiny gasp.

Jessica says, “What is it?”

“Nothing.”

Just a trio of ma

They move on past the display cases containing rock climbing hardware and an array of ice axes.

Against the back wall, mummy bags dangle from the ceiling, flanked by dozens of external and internal frame backpacks.

They pass through a rear doorway into a dark, narrow hall.  Jessica tries the door to the bathroom, but it’s locked.

“Damn.”

“You gotta go, babe?”

“Yeah.”

“You should squat right in front of the cash register.”

“You’re a child, Ron.”

They head back into the store.

“There it is,” Ron says.

“Where?”

The darkness makes it nearly impossible to see, but in the middle of the room, between racks of overpriced Patagonia shirts and Columbia down jackets, a diorama has been constructed—dormant campfire ring, ma

Ron and Jessica untie their shoes and strip out of their wet jackets and pants and crawl into the tent, into the sleeping bags, zip themselves up.

After several minutes of intense shivering, Ron notes the return of warmth—the electricity of pins and needles in his extremities, the burn of mild frostbite on his cheeks.

“You getting warm?” he asks.

“Little by little.”

He scoots his bag toward Jessica’s until he feels her breath in his face.

“How’s the pain?”

“Quit asking.”

“Sorry, I’m a doctor, it’s in my—”

“You’re a plastic surgeon.”

“Ouch.”

“I didn’t mean that.  I’m just in a ton of pain here.”

“You think this is one of those experiences we’re go

“Are you kidding?”

They lie in the dark, listening to the low moan of wind pushing through the broken glass of the storefront.

At length, Jessica sits up, says, “I can’t sleep.  I’m too thirsty, Ron.  All that wine and walking around—I just got dehydrated.”

“All right, you know that pot sitting out there in the fake campfire ring?”

“Yeah.”

“Take it out onto the sidewalk and fill it with snow.  You’ll have to pack it in really tight.  I’ll see if I can fire up the camp stove.”

-20-

Before starting his practice thirteen years ago, Ron was an avid outdoorsman, spending countless weekends in the Cascades, even squeezing in a weekend a month outdoors during the slog of med school.  As he kneels by the fire ring in the dark and fumbles with the camp stove, he realizes how much the gear has changed in over a decade, evidenced by the five minutes it costs him to unravel the mystery of attaching the red canister of white gas.

As he screws it in, he hears Jessica climbing back through the storefront, pushing her way between clothing racks.

“How’s it going?” she asks.

He strikes the match, holds it to the burner.

The stove flares up.

As the fire burns down, quickly consuming the modicum of propane, he opens the gas, the lazy orange flame transformed into a low blue roar.

“Put it right here.”

She sets the pot down on the stove.

“Why don’t you get three water bottles—I saw them by the daypacks—and fill them up.  It’s go

While Jessica goes for more snow, Ron sits beside one of the ma

It takes longer than he anticipates, but soon he has half a pot of slush, which he pulls off the heat and transfers into a water bottle that formerly belonged to the cute blond ma

He says, “Jess, what’s taking?”

Another minute crawls by.

He puts on his jacket and cold, wet shoes.

Turning down the heat, he stands and walks toward the front of the store, past the cash register, into the storefront.

Snow blows in through the shattered window.

Ron steps down onto the sidewalk.

“If you’re fucking around here, Jess, I will divorce you, ‘cause this isn’t even remotely…”

No response but the quiet patter of snowflakes on his jacket.

Ron glances down at the three water bottles lying in the snow, then the multiple sets of tracks leading up the sidewalk.

Twenty feet ahead, darkness and snow obscure everything.

His watch beeps midnight, and for a moment he feels sick with fear, sick to the point of vomiting, but he shoves it back into that long-forgotten nook in the pit of his stomach that he hasn’t needed since med school—those nights he woke in cold sweats in the dark, convinced he didn’t have the hardwiring to pass the boards.

-21-

In the cold, snowy silence, Ron walks up the sidewalk, his cheeks begi

He’s slept outdoors in the desert waste of Canyonlands National Park, in the immense sweep of Denali where it got so quiet those Alaskan autumn nights (after the mosquitoes finally shut up) that he imagined he could hear the stars humming like distant generators.

The silence this winter solstice as he walks the empty streets of Lone Cone seems something else entirely—more a mask than an absence, and not a shred of peace contained within it.

The tracks turn down 3rd Street, Ron’s legs aching as the snow melts and seeps through his khaki slacks.  He wishes he’d thought to outfit himself in new, dry clothes from the hiking store, but it’s too late for that now.

Around the back of a late Nineteenth-Century brick building, he turns into an alley, and after twenty feet, arrives at a pair of doors without handles—the termination of the four sets of tracks.

He beats his fists against the doors, shouting, “Jessica!  Can you hear me?”

If she can, she makes no answer.

Ron spins around, stares at a Dumpster capped with snow, at the power lines above his head, dipping with the weight of several fragile inches that have collected on the braided wire, hears a rusty door several blocks away swaying in the wind, hinges grinding.

It occurs to him that he might be losing his mind, and he sits down against the building and buries his head between his knees and prays for the first time in many, many years.