Perfect Little Town Read Online Free PDF Page B

trench, his hair, eyelashes, eyebrows snow-matted, too scared to even register the cold. 
    The trench leads into a small cave constructed of cantilevered bricks of packed snow, the voices muffled now. 
    Ron rises up shivering onto his knees.  There had been a lookout window, but it’s buried in new snow.  He reaches forward, pokes his finger through the soft powder, which all falls in at once.
    He ducks down, the voices audible again.
    “…little organization would go a long fucking way.”
    “Hey, watch the language around the kids, bro.”
    “You understand what’ll happen if—”
    A woman breaks in, “You’re not thinking, Dave.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “What’s his primary objective right now?”
    “I don’t know…getting out of town?”
    “How?  In this storm?  With his car toasted?  No, he needs to get out of this miserable weather or he’ll freeze to death.”
    The voices begin to fade, Ron lifting up, peering through the window, watching the crowd move by, down toward the frozen pond.
    Light passes through the window, and he prostrates himself on the floor of the snow cave, listening for some indication he’s been seen.
    After a while the voices have vanished completely, and he looks out the window again, the crowd nothing but distant, restless lightbeams, barely visible in the storm.

    -26-
    Ron massages his bare, blistered feet to get the blood circulating, colder than he’s ever been in his life, though he doesn’t think he’s freezing to death.  This little snow fort is actually warm.
    He wonders how long he’s been inside—thirty minutes, forty-five tops—and he’s spent most of it trying to convince himself this can’t possibly be happening.  He’s had “horror dreams” before—car accidents, the death of friends and family, being chased by a murderous street gang through a parking garage, life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit—but he always wakes up and the fear always leaves. 
    Even as he sits there, rubbing his cold, wet feet, he has a rock-solid premonition that in mere moments he will wake in that hotel in downtown Flagstaff he and Jessica checked into a little over twenty-four hours ago.  It was their first night on the road, and they dined at a gem of a pizza joint near the university, went straight to the hotel, made love, and crashed, tired and giddy with the thrill of finally being on vacation, next stop Colorado.
    He tells himself, and he believes, that he still sleeps in that hotel room.  He’s really tossing in bed as he hides in this snow cave, Jessica probably kicking him under the covers, swearing at him in that sexy, sleepy voice of hers to quit moving or take his restless ass over to the sleeper sofa.

    -27-
    Ron inhales the scent of hotel linens and forced air from an unfamiliar central heating system, the covers soft between his legs. 
    He throws an arm across the mattress, feels the figure of his wife asleep beside him, her naked back rising and falling against his hand.
    Later, they sit at breakfast, cream-cheesing bagels. 
    The light that blazes into the room washes out everything on the periphery and even the rogue strands of Jessica’s hair glow like incandescent silk.
    “I had the worst dream last night,” Ron says.
    “Tell me about it.”
    He thinks for a moment, says, “I forgot.”
    “Chilly in here.”  As Jessica rubs her arms, Ron notices her breath clouding.  He’s grown cold as well.  He reaches down to lift his bagel, and it looks like a bagel, the circumference lightly browned, the lox spread warming on the surface, but when he touches it, it crumbles in his fingers like snow, freezing to the touch.
    He says, “Oh, shit.”
    “What’s wrong, honey?”
    “Nothing, it’s…everything’s fine.”
    “I’m so glad we came on this vacation,” Jessica says, but she’s turned into the Viking Goddess, the ice ax run through her throat, blood pulsing out of the side of her neck and making a sound