Family

“Where are your keys?”

“In my pocket.”

“Where?”

“In my pocket! You're blocking the TV.”

Jackson swatted at his boyfriend Ethan, who really was blocking the TV as he dug in Jackson's pants pocket (of the pants he was wearing) for his keys.

“I can't get them while you're sitting,” Ethan complained. “Come on, we need to move the car.”

Jackson retrieved the keys from his pocket and tossed them to Ethan, asking, “Why?”

“The only spot I could find was on this side of the street. All day parking is on the other side tomorrow, and I can see an open spot from the window.”

“OK.”

Jackson wasn't really listening. He'd just arrived home from a grueling ten hour shift at the restaurant (there had been a private event and he'd had to help set up), then nearly an hour commute on a packed train. He didn't even remove his vest and tie before collapsing onto the couch to catch up on episodes of Empire on Hulu. He wasn't moving his butt until it was time to go to bed. Or he had to pee. One of the two.

Ethan returned from moving the car. “Are you going to change?”

“I was thinking of ordering take-out. I'll pay, and you carry it to me from the door.”

“We can't.”

Jackson's face puckered as if wounded. “Why not? I'll let you pick the place.”

“We can't!” Ethan repeated. “Sharon and Tina's kid's birthday party is tonight, remember? We're supposed to go over for a backyard potluck. We're bringing brownies.”

Jackson groaned, rubbing his face with both hands. “Lesbians and their fucking potlucks!”

Ethan pat Jackson's shoulder in sympathy. “We don't have to stay the whole time. I already told Sharon it was a long day for you. But Cam will be here any minute to pick us up, so if you're going to change, you better do so now.”

Jackson sighed dramatically and turned off the TV. “Fine. But if Cam's driving, how are we going to leave whenever we want?”

Ethan rolled his eyes. “You know Cam never stays late. We'll be fine.”

When Jackson emerged from the bedroom in fresh clothes, Ethan was packing the home-baked brownies into an insulated bag so they'd stay warmer.

“Why is this party so late? Why isn't it, like, tomorrow afternoon?” Jackson asked.

Ethan shrugged. “Family party is tonight. Kids party is tomorrow.”

“So we're family?”

Ethan smiled. “We're not kids anymore.”

Jackson made a face, and Ethan chuckled, wrapping his arms around his love and kissing him on the cheek.

“Come on,” he said. “Let's go be family. And we can do more not-kids-anymore stuff when we get home.”

Jackson grinned. “Deal,” he agreed, and they kissed.

The Diner

She stared out the window at the trucks neatly lined up on the other side of the railing that separated the diner's parking lot from that of the trucks. She didn't know exactly what kind of business their neighbor was. She'd only been working in the diner for a few months, and she only wondered about the business at times like this, when it was dark out and customers were few. Her mind wandered then.

She couldn't tell if the trucks' headlights were actually on or if the lights from the parking lot hitting them made them appear so. An old movie from her childhood came to mind about trucks coming to life and killing people. They had trapped a group of survivors inside a gas station and kept circling so the people couldn't escape. Or maybe it had been a diner.

“Order up!”

She turned, but Gail was already on it. It was for Gail's customer. The only customer she had on her side was drinking coffee, and she'd already given him a refill two minutes before. She'd only turned out of habit.

Coffee wasn't a bad idea. She didn't really need the caffeine; she wasn't tired. But she was bored. She was feeling fidgety, and spinning the cup on the counter, twirling the spoon would give her hands something to do. She poured herself a cup and grabbed two packets of sugar from the bowl of sweeteners. They were the last two packets.

As she slowly stirred the sugar into the coffee, she stared at the bowl of sweeteners, normally white, pink, and yellow, now just pink and yellow. She should refill it with white. Three white, three pink, and three yellow. That was the minimum she surmised anyone would need, so she tried not to let any of the bowls get below that. This one was off-balance: no white, two yellow, and four pink.

Without taking a sip of coffee, she refilled the bowl of sweeteners, then went down the counter and around to the empty tables and refilled the rest. The evenly wide tricolored stripes in the bowls pleased her. She felt accomplished. She'd done something.

She refilled her customer's coffee and checked his bowl of sweeteners. There were three white, three yellow, and four pink. She took the fourth pink and returned to her perch behind the counter so she could look out the window at the trucks that may or may not have had their headlights on. That may or may not have been like the trucks from that movie that held a group of people hostage in a gas station. Or maybe it had been a diner.

Snowscape

He could do this. No, he would do this. There was no real choice but to keep going. If he turned back now, there was no guarantee he'd be able to drive, and he'd certainly never catch a bus to make it to work on time in case driving didn't work out. Never mind the zero degrees. Never mind the minus ten wind chill. Never mind the snow drifts and the ice hiding below the snow drifts. He had to make this work. He had to get to that bus.

Why couldn't it have been his left foot? he wondered as he thumped along, eyes on the ground, darting from one potential trip hazard to another, even the imagined ones. With his left foot in a walking cast, he could still drive. But no, it was the right foot, the driving foot. A foot that was then swathed in two pairs of thick, white sweat socks with a plastic sandwich baggie rubber banded around the toes. It was not remotely enough to keep out the chill.

The neighborhood trees around him were gaunt, skeletal, like the figure in Edvard Munch's the Scream. That is how cold it was. If he didn't make it, would he be found like that? Wobbled and withered, his mouth frozen in the middle of a cry of nooooo? By some poor sap, perhaps, taking his happy but shivering dog for a walk? Because you always have to take dogs for walks, no matter the weather. He was pretty sure it was in the owners manual. You could buy sweaters and booties to protect their furry bodies and tender paws, but a-walking they must go. And so did he.

How long had it been? Five minutes? Ten minutes? An hour? Google Maps had promised a fourteen minute walk, but that was for a normal person in normal weather, not a chump in a walking cast making his foolish way through the aftermath of a blizzard. Why did they call it a walking cast, anyway? He wasn't walking. It was more like toddling. Or lurching, at the moment, since his padded winter boot was taller than the cast, thus completely throwing off his gait.

He looked at the street signs. Carver Ave? Where was that? It was a straight shot to the bus stop. There was literally no way he could make a wrong turn. He peered more closely at the houses around him. Nope, totally unrecognizable. Hills of snow all around.

He kept going.