blizzard whipped their faces and stuck to their sides. Should I have offered Mrs Covington my down jacket? he wondered. Old ladies get cold . . . especially those with her kind of blood.
George switched on the car radio. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was deploying a hundred and fifty additional ground-launched Raven cruise missiles in Belgium to offset the Soviet deployment of three hundred intermediate-range SS-90 missiles in Poland. The snow slackened. George hummed along with Brahms’s String Quintet No. 2 in G Major. The van sailed into the white city.
He parked in a lot – five dollars, paid in advance, but who cares when you’re about to get a free scopas suit? – and, securing Nadine’s map under his arm, set off. The storm was over. Snow crunched beneath his boots. White sculpted mounds clung to everything, cars, fire hydrants, litter receptacles, subway entrances, all lying half-interred, vast pieces of quiet. Scopas-suited Christmas shoppers appeared on the frosted streets. George saw a Santa Claus, then an other, and another. Their scopas suits were blood red. Beards were glued to their helmets. The white strands vibrated in the wind. When the Santa Clauses rang their bells, the sound was lost in the fast bitter air.
George hurried on. He pitied the shoppers, sealed in their suits, unable to sense the magical white silence. Walking here was like being on a deep-sea dive into the heart of winter. He wore a wool cap, wool mittens, and a down jacket, but they were not enough – the wind still pinched his nose, stung his cheeks. Curling his fingers into self-warming fists, the epicure of everyday pleasures wished for hot coffee.
By the time he reached Snapes Hill, he had started doubting the wisdom of his trip. A free scopas suit? Just for making up a couple of silly epitaphs? More likely the black-blooded old woman was playing some senile joke. (‘I have always been with you . . .’ Nut talk.) He looked at the prehistoric megalith. Crude, humorless, and stern, it towered over stones of more conventional design. Here at the Snapes Hill Burial Grounds a canny observer could witness the entire evolution of a technology. In one section rose the limestone memorials, names, dates, and fond remembrances smeared away by decades of Boston weather. In an adjacent area leaned markers of slate, a sturdier proposition, inscriptions soft and worn but still readable. And finally, of course, the precincts of immortal granite, more permanent than anything a Pharaoh had ever demanded.
He left the graveyard, walked on, and suddenly it appeared, the coffee shop of his humble dream, the Holistic Donut. He went inside, treated himself to coffee with actual cream plus two donuts filled with a wondrous white goo. The waitress’s breasts flowed lushly against her scopas suit.
Had he and Justine conceived an Aubrey Paxton that morning? George began to whistle. Daddies could sense these things. Father’s intuition.
Still whistling, he stepped out of the Holistic Donut. He consulted Nadine’s map, charted his course. He turned left, went down an obscure street called Gooseberry Place, turned right, followed something called Pitchblende Lane, turned left, entered Moonburn Alley. It was a twisted, cobblestoned passageway pinched between rows of shops – cheese shop, rare coins shop, used books shop, clock repair shop – each snug and quaint, crescents of snow resting in their windows. Golden light spilled through the panes, marking the ground with shapes that George decided were elf shadows. Tonight, he thought, I’ll tell Holly a story about an elf who casts a golden shadow.
The sign advertising Theophilus Carter’s establishment was a hearty slab of oak bearing a painted teapot captioned THE MAD TEA PARTY – REMARKABLE THINGS FOR HUMAN BODIES . Under that, PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS CARTER – TAILOR, HATTER, FURRIER, INVENTOR, PROPRIETOR . Across the front of the Mad Tea Party ran a bellied, multi-paned window
George switched on the car radio. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was deploying a hundred and fifty additional ground-launched Raven cruise missiles in Belgium to offset the Soviet deployment of three hundred intermediate-range SS-90 missiles in Poland. The snow slackened. George hummed along with Brahms’s String Quintet No. 2 in G Major. The van sailed into the white city.
He parked in a lot – five dollars, paid in advance, but who cares when you’re about to get a free scopas suit? – and, securing Nadine’s map under his arm, set off. The storm was over. Snow crunched beneath his boots. White sculpted mounds clung to everything, cars, fire hydrants, litter receptacles, subway entrances, all lying half-interred, vast pieces of quiet. Scopas-suited Christmas shoppers appeared on the frosted streets. George saw a Santa Claus, then an other, and another. Their scopas suits were blood red. Beards were glued to their helmets. The white strands vibrated in the wind. When the Santa Clauses rang their bells, the sound was lost in the fast bitter air.
George hurried on. He pitied the shoppers, sealed in their suits, unable to sense the magical white silence. Walking here was like being on a deep-sea dive into the heart of winter. He wore a wool cap, wool mittens, and a down jacket, but they were not enough – the wind still pinched his nose, stung his cheeks. Curling his fingers into self-warming fists, the epicure of everyday pleasures wished for hot coffee.
By the time he reached Snapes Hill, he had started doubting the wisdom of his trip. A free scopas suit? Just for making up a couple of silly epitaphs? More likely the black-blooded old woman was playing some senile joke. (‘I have always been with you . . .’ Nut talk.) He looked at the prehistoric megalith. Crude, humorless, and stern, it towered over stones of more conventional design. Here at the Snapes Hill Burial Grounds a canny observer could witness the entire evolution of a technology. In one section rose the limestone memorials, names, dates, and fond remembrances smeared away by decades of Boston weather. In an adjacent area leaned markers of slate, a sturdier proposition, inscriptions soft and worn but still readable. And finally, of course, the precincts of immortal granite, more permanent than anything a Pharaoh had ever demanded.
He left the graveyard, walked on, and suddenly it appeared, the coffee shop of his humble dream, the Holistic Donut. He went inside, treated himself to coffee with actual cream plus two donuts filled with a wondrous white goo. The waitress’s breasts flowed lushly against her scopas suit.
Had he and Justine conceived an Aubrey Paxton that morning? George began to whistle. Daddies could sense these things. Father’s intuition.
Still whistling, he stepped out of the Holistic Donut. He consulted Nadine’s map, charted his course. He turned left, went down an obscure street called Gooseberry Place, turned right, followed something called Pitchblende Lane, turned left, entered Moonburn Alley. It was a twisted, cobblestoned passageway pinched between rows of shops – cheese shop, rare coins shop, used books shop, clock repair shop – each snug and quaint, crescents of snow resting in their windows. Golden light spilled through the panes, marking the ground with shapes that George decided were elf shadows. Tonight, he thought, I’ll tell Holly a story about an elf who casts a golden shadow.
The sign advertising Theophilus Carter’s establishment was a hearty slab of oak bearing a painted teapot captioned THE MAD TEA PARTY – REMARKABLE THINGS FOR HUMAN BODIES . Under that, PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS CARTER – TAILOR, HATTER, FURRIER, INVENTOR, PROPRIETOR . Across the front of the Mad Tea Party ran a bellied, multi-paned window
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