Blizzard Ball Read Online Free PDF Page B

housekeeper. Respected her sobriety, but drank like fish around her. Were in awe of her job at the bank, but couldn’t save a dollar.
    “We found the boxes scattered on the street, fell out of a truck or some other shit vehicle,” Rafie said, leaning back on a kitchen chair and tipping down a long-neck beer. “So, we brought them here for safekeeping.”
    Alita gave the chair a quick pull. Rafie tumbled to the floor and spun like a break-dancer, adeptly saving his beer.
    “It’s your fault.” Eduardo said. “You said the Pakistani at the convenience store was cashing checks at your teller window trying to avoid the IRS and carrying money out of the bank in FedEx boxes.”
    Alita tried to make sense of the accusation. Eduardo and Rafie were both day laborers with a keen curiosity about money and an even keener interest in rich people. She ignored most of their inquiries. But as needed, she would parcel out bank customer information to her overbearing machismo roomies just to keep her household status buoyed.
    “Yeah, bum steer,” Rafie said.
    “I relay a simple story about a nice man who has silly banking habits and you asnos see it as an invitation to rob him? I can’t believe this.”
    Eduardo kicked a FedEx box. Tickets burst forth and littered the carpet like spent cherry blossoms. “We’ve been totally fucked over.”
    “Been through every one of the boxes, no cash,” Rafie added.
    Alita’s hands fluttered as though she were shooing blackbirds out of a corn patch. “I want you crazies out of my apartment,” she said, “and take this crap with you, right now!” She swatted a box of tickets toward the door. “I’m not going down for your stupidity.” Her anger swirled in the air along with the tickets.
    Rafie twisted the cap off another beer. “Hey, you can’t kick us out. We’re cousins.”
    Alita’s tirade trailed her into the bedroom. When she slammed the door, another poof of tickets rose and settled on the floor.
     

Peppermint
     
    Kirchner sensed the Christmas storm had the makings of a terrible mess. He pulled up his coat collar and trudged towards the house. Ice pellets stung his face like a stirred-up batch of hornets. Before going inside, he paused on the top stair step. What had been footprints on the walk only moments ago were now hardened indentations filled with the wintry mix. The snow, heavy with moisture, settled in with the consistency of wet concrete. It stuck to his car, molding it into the proportions of a great white whale. Across the street a blow-up snowman stood in front of a neighbor’s house. It was surrounded by a lighted Santa, elves, and reindeer. Plastic blight, he thought and had half a mind to use the decorations for target practice. With any luck the crap would blow away in the storm.
    He listened for the scrape of the plows. Nothing was moving. The rigs were holed up in the sheds waiting it out. Nobody was going anywhere.
    There had been a Christmas night like this not long after he’d been married. As a young cop, he had been a law enforcement junkie. Every day brought a new experience. He was hooked on the action, absorbed in it and totally alive. It took a lock-down snowstorm to make him relax even a little. He fidgeted and stressed about being trapped that night—he looked out the window, then settled into the button-tufted wing-back armchair.
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    His wife, whose sense of timing was always perfect, saw the beast was at rest and appeared with two tumblers. The air soon filled with the scent of peppermint. Peppermint schnapps with a touch of brandy was her holiday drink of choice.
    As the grog loosened the tension of police work, they spoke easily about their future. You can’t be in the law enforcement business for the money. His wife would finish her graduate work in American Indian studies, get a teaching job, so they would be in position to have children.
    “What position would that be?” his wife teased as she hiked her glass to signal