Paullina Simons - Red Leaves

It must have been in the teens with the wind-chill factor that afternoon. Spencer felt measurably colder just looking at her. One of her feet was planted firmly on the stair while the other was crossed over her knee as she was trying to pull the black boot up. she was struggling with it, finally putting the foot down on the stair and trying to pull up the boot that way.

As if hypnotized, Spencer walked slowly toward the stairs and watched her until she got the boot on. Instead of immediately putting on the other boot, she now threaded the black laces through the holes. Her foot continued to be planted on the cement stairs. Spencer’s eyes moved up from her feet to her long, bare legs, then to her dark green. Dartmouth T-shirt, then to her face and windblown hair. Spencer took his hand out of his pocket and stroked his chin again.

Her skin was very pale, though her cheeks looked ruddy from the weather beating on them. She glanced away from the boots for a moment. Her eyes locked into his. She had a big, wonderful, oval face, a young face if you didn’t see her eyes. The melting brown eyes had deep, solemn grooves around them, making her look older. Yet the eyes themselves were black-lashed, sweet and vulnerable. The combination of the innocence of the eyes and the lines around them made for an unsettling picture.

Clearing his throat, Spencer said, ‘You know, our bodies lose one degree of heat per minute.’

‘Ahh,’ she said, the corners of her lips pulling up into a smile. ‘Thank you.’

‘Yes. And I’ve been watching you for about five minutes. Maybe six.’

She flung her hair back, her hands not letting go of the laces. ‘How do I look?’

He saw her eyes and her chapped lips smiling at him. He maintained a serious expression - it wasn’t difficult, for Spencer tried to be a serious man. ‘Cold,’ he replied.

‘Actually, according to your calculations, I should be dead by now. A degree a minute, huh?’

‘Not dead yet,’ he said, nearly smiling. ‘But severely numb. Frostbitten. Lost all feeling in your limbs.’

She touched her foot. ‘You know, maybe you’re right. I don’t even feel cold anymore.’

‘See?’

He saw her lips stretch into a mischievous smile. ‘Well, then maybe you should stop distracting me, so I could put on the other boot and have at least a chance at survival.’

Spencer stopped talking, watching her until she’d laced up the other boot.

‘Where are your socks?’ he asked.

‘In the wash,’ she said, standing up. ‘And who are you?’

She was looking straight at him, and she was beautiful. Objectively, undeniably beautiful. Tall, thin, model-like beautiful, even with that unruly hair. The eyes were bottomless, Spencer thought, in their inexpressible emotion. Spencer felt a familiar pull in his stomach. He was still young enough to remember his high school days when he felt the pull every time he walked down the hall, looking at the girls in their white sweaters clutching books to their teenage breasts.

Walking up the stairs, he took off his glove and extended his hand. ‘Spencer Patrick O’Malley,’ he said.

She took his hand and shook it gently. Her hand was warm, and that amazed him. A warm hand on a barefooted girl in November in New Hampshire.

She asked, ‘Spencer, like Spencer Tracy?’

Spencer took a deep breath. ‘Yes. No relation.’

‘You look nothing like him. Kristina Kim.’

‘Nice to meet you, Kristina. Can I give you a ride somewhere so you can get warm?’

‘No, thank you. I’m going up to this building here.’

‘The Chamber of Commerce?’

‘No, the Review,’ she said.

‘Ahh,’ he said. ‘Aren’t they a bit extreme?’

‘No.’ She laughed. ‘But the reaction to them is.’ She was still holding on to his hand; then she slowly took it away. ‘If you have a Kleenex, I’d appreciate it,’ she said, sniffling.

‘I don’t, I’m sorry.’ He looked into her animated face. Her lips were smiling, too. ‘You must be from up North,’ he said. ‘Cold-blooded.’

‘I’m not from up North,’ she said. ‘But I am cold-blooded.’ She paused. ‘When I was a young girl and used to go and visit my grandmother near Lake Winnipesaukee in the winters,. I would break the ice in the lake and put my feet in the water to see how long I could stand it.’

Spencer absorbed that for a few moments. ‘How long,’ he asked slowly, ‘could you stand it?’

She smiled proudly. ‘My record was forty-one seconds.’ He whistled. ‘Forty-one, huh? How does frostbite figure into that?’

‘Prominently,’ Kristina said. ‘It was still a record.’

‘Bet it was,’ said Spencer. ‘Was it a competition?’

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘You don’t do something like that just for the heck of it.’

‘No, of course.’ He raised his eyebrows at her. ‘Something like that you’d need to do for a really good reason.’

Kristina smiled mischievously at him. ‘That’s right.’

Spencer was curious. ‘Who were you competing against?’

‘Oh, you know.’ She waved her hand vaguely to punctuate her vague answer. ‘Friends.’

This was curiouser and curiouser. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Some friends. A little girl in the woods -’

‘On the lake,’ she corrected him.

‘On the lake,’ he continued. ‘Sitting there, breaking ice, looking for a hole in the ice to put her bare feet in. That just sounds so…’ He couldn’t find the right words. He remembered his own childhood and going out on the ice on the lake near his house. Even when the lake was frozen solid for weeks, he was nervous about stepping onto the ice, because ice was water to him, and he had heard of only one man who could walk on water, and Spencer was sure as hell it wasn’t himself. ‘So… intense,’ he finished. ‘Who was watching you?’

‘Grown-ups can’t watch over you every minute, you know,’ said Kristina, looking at her boots, and Spencer, thinking back to his own childhood, knew she was right. Grown-ups had rarely watched over him.

‘Why would you do that?’ he asked her slowly. ‘Why would you put your feet into freezing water?’

Shrugging, she said, ‘Because I was afraid.’

‘Afraid of what?’

‘Afraid of doing it.’

‘With good reason.’

‘I did it,’ she said, ‘to show that I wasn’t afraid.’

‘Show who?’

‘Me,’ she replied, a little too quickly. ‘Me… and my friends.’

He saw that she was shivering. He wanted to give her his own warm parka, but he didn’t think she’d take it. She didn’t seem the type.

‘Hey,’ he said on an impulse. ‘You want to go grab a cup of coffee?’

She shook her head, walking past him down the steps. He followed her. ‘Come on. A cup of coffee. It’ll make you warm.’

‘Warm?’ she said. ‘It’s twenty degrees outside. I’ll get back outside and just be cold again. I’d love to, really, but I’ve got a million things to do today.’

‘What’ve you got to do today, Kristina? It’s Sunday. Even God rested on Sunday.’

‘Yeah, well, did God have basketball practice? Did God have a quiz on Aristotelian aesthetics tomorrow? Thanks. Maybe another day.’ She looked up at him. There was something in her black eyes, something impenetrable and yet broken. He really wanted to take her for coffee.

‘Come on,’ he said. Spencer O’Malley was determined. It had been a while since he’d asked anybody for coffee. ‘It’ll be quick, I promise.’

Kristina sighed and smiled.

‘Come on,’ he repeated.

She tilted her head to the side. ‘Are you buying or crying?’ ‘Both,’ he said quickly, not wanting to show her how pleased he was.

‘Well, then, let’s go to EBA. They have Portuguese muffins that are to die for,’ she said.