Ronald Malfi - Snow

“Christ,” she huffed, and dropped both bags at her feet right in front of him. “It’s like Custer’s last stand in here. What’s a girl gotta do to get a drink, anyway?”

Todd grinned. “I think you made out pretty well, actually. No arrows in the back or anything.”

“Although I think some Indian brave back there cupped an ass cheek.” She pulled the knit cap off her head and a sprig of red wildfire hair exploded from her scalp. She had a cute face, though, with narrow cheeks and large, beseeching green eyes. A smattering of faint red freckles peppered the saddle of her nose. All of a sudden, what with three days’ growth on his face and dark patches beneath his eyes, Todd felt uncharacteristically self-conscious. “I really should have brought my stun gun,” she said, her eyes not settling on him for more than a split second. “March through the crowd like a goddamn cattle driver.”

“Maybe a stun gun won’t be necessary,” he said. “What do you want?”

“To drink?” She looked instantly flummoxed. Then: “Oh, yes—uh, do they have Midori?”

He blinked. “I don’t know.”

“Midori sour, if they have Midori. But do not substitute generic melon ball for Midori,” she added quickly. “It’s not the same and, anyway, I think something in the melon ball makes me break out in hives.” She raked stunted fingernails down the length of her neck, as if the simple mention of hives had summoned them into existence.

“Duly noted,” Todd said. As it turned out, the bartender had Midori. The drink was mixed and set on the bar posthaste. “Merry Christmas,” Todd said, and they clinked glasses.

“So you’re a ‘merry Christmas’ and not a ‘happy holidays’ kind of guy, huh?”

“I’m sorry, did I offend you?”

“Not at all. It’s refreshing. I’m so sick of political correctness. I’m suffocated by it. We’re so goddamn politically correct that we lose our individualism, our definition as human beings. Don’t you agree?”

“I guess I never thought of it that way.”

She downed half the drink in one healthy swallow. Then she set the glass down on the bar and proceeded to pull off her leather gloves. She was sporting a jammer roughly the size of a disco ball on her ring finger. It sparkled like a movie star’s smile.

“God,” she groaned, “can you believe this weather?”

He nodded, sipping his scotch. “Your flight cancelled or just delayed?”

“I had a dream last night that I was trapped inside a submarine and there were all these people in business suits all trying to climb up the ladder and get out of the sub.” She had totally ignored his question. “They started pulling each other off the ladder and fighting and clawing at each other like animals. Women, too, only they were in ball gowns. Just everybody swinging and punching and clawing at each other. I just stood off to one side and watched the whole thing go down. Then, from somewhere deep in the belly of the sub, some big alarm starts going off.” When she imitated the alarm sound from her dream—“ WEEE-ooh, WEEE-ooh, WEEE-ooh”— several heads turned in her direction. She didn’t seem to notice. “So, shit, we’re sinking, right? And these assholes are just pawing at each other like children on a playground, grabbing each other in headlocks and rolling around on the floor of the sub.” She sighed and looked instantly miserable. And somehow that made her more attractive. “I guess it was a prophetic dream.”

“Prophetic? You mean you were on a submarine this afternoon? That actually happened?”

“Lord,” she groaned, rolling her eyes playfully. A coy smile overtook her features and he felt something squash that uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. She held out one hand—the one flaunting the massive engagement ring—to address the overcrowded barroom. “Are you really that literal? I’m talking about here, right here in this airport.” She frowned but meant nothing by it. “Where’s your sense of symbolism?”

“I guess I’m not very symbolic.”

“Well, then,” she motored on…then paused, her eyes finally settling on him. They were brilliant aquamarine eyes, shimmering like Caribbean water. “Hey,” she said, her voice softer, “I’m sorry. I’m going off like a firecracker. I’m Kate Jansen.”

“Hey, Kate.” They shook hands. “Todd Curry.”

“Thanks for the drink, Todd.”

“No sweat.”

“I guess you’re one of the terminal,” she said.

“Terminal?”

“A casualty of all these cancellations.”

“Oh.” He smiled. “Terminal. Very clever. I get it.”

“Where’re you headed?”

“Well,” he said, glancing again at his wristwatch, “I was supposed to be on the four-thirty flight to Des Moines, which is now the six -thirty flight…”

“Then we’re both afflicted with the same ailment.” Again, she clinked her glass against his, then took another strong swallow.

“So you were on that flight, too, huh?”

“Guilty as charged. Was tasked with spending Christmas with my fiancé and his family, but I guess it’s in the gods’ hands now.”

“You say ‘tasked’ like it’s some sort of castigation.”

“Oh,” she said, nodding fervently, “it is. His family is atrocious. They’re like the villains in a Charles Dickens novel, all hunched over and swarthy, wrapped in drab, colorless clothing and screaming at peasant children.”

“They sound marvelous.”

She exhaled and he could smell her perfume—something sweet, like candy—mingled with the Midori on her breath. “But I love the son of a bitch, so I put up with them.”

She caught him looking at her diamond ring but didn’t say anything about it. Todd quickly jerked his eyes away and feigned interest in the newscast on the television. Snow, snow, and more snow. Damn it, he thought, still picturing Justin in his Turbo Dogs pajamas. I tried, buddy. I tried.

“How about you?” she said. “Is Des Moines your final destination?”

“Yes.”

“Going home?”

“Visiting my son.”

“So you’re divorced?”

“Yes. He lives with his mother.”

“You two get along? You and the mother, I mean. Not the kid.”

“No.”

“Your fault or hers?”

“That we don’t get along?”

“The divorce in general,” she clarified. “Your fault or hers?”

“I…it was mutual, I guess.”

“Mutual?” She looked skeptical.

“It just didn’t take.”

She laughed once, sharply. More heads turned in her direction. “You say it like a surgeon who’s just botched an operation. ‘The transplant didn’t take.’”

“What I meant was we both agreed it was for the best.”

“So you both equally agreed that she’d keep the kid?”

Her boldness shocked him. “Wow. You go right for the jugular.”

“Oh?” She seemed genuinely surprised. “I’m sorry, was that rude? I get weird talking about divorce. My parents went through a messy one when I was eleven and I took turns playing the hostage for each of them. I’m sure it fucked me up in more ways than one, too. You should have seen me in college, boy.” She lowered her voice a bit. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“It’s okay. I guess there’s no such thing as an easy divorce.”

Kate Jansen offered up that same coy little grin. “Or an easy childhood.”

This made him think again of Justin. What the hell was he doing? It was Christmas Eve and he was drinking scotch in an airport bar while chatting up some stranger. He set his drink on the bar and picked up his laptop. “It was nice meeting you, Kate, but I should go check on my flight.”

“Our flight,” she corrected.